Blue Glacier, Olympic National Park

Blue Glacier is a large glacier located to the north of Mount Olympus in the Olympic Mountains of Washington. The glacier covers an area of 1.7 sq mi and contains 580,000,000 cu ft of ice and snow in spite of its low terminus elevation. The glacier length has decreased from about 3.4 mi in 1800 to 2.7 mi in the year 2000. Just in the period from 1995 and 2006, Blue Glacier retreated 325 ft. Blue Glacier is also thinning as it retreats and between 1987 and 2009 the glacier lost 178 ft of its depth near its terminus and between 32 and 48 ft in the uppermost sections of the glacier known as the accumulation zone. ()