Columbia Icefields

Map & Location
The Columbia Icefield is the largest icefield in the Rocky Mountains.

It resides near or along the Alberta - British Columbia border.

It resides in Jasper National Park - Alberta, Canada.

It isn't very far from where we are right now, which is Edmonton. I've heard it only takes a couple hours.

Size
The summit is over 3,000 metres in height and covers about 250 square kilometres making it the largest ice field in the Rock Mountains.

Glaciers
The ice field is comprised of 6 major glaciers. The Saskatchewan, Athabasca, Columbia, Dome, Castleguard, and Stutfield. The highest point in the Columbia Icefield is Mount Columbia, with a height of 3,700 metres.

Temperature/Climate
Based on peoples' experiences, the icefield is usually around 5 degrees Celsius but can feel colder due to the wind.

With climate change, this could change very quickly.

Snowfall
It receives up to 7 metres of snowfall every year.

Rock Family
The Columbia Icefield belongs to the sedimentary rock family.

Composition
"Wasn't able to find much for this one"The Columbia Icefield is composed of sheets of sedimentary rock and snowfall. The rocks of the ice field started forming over 500 million years ago. More information on this can be found in Formation Time

Type of Formation
The mountains that make up the icefield are made of thick slabs of limestone and dolomite that were stacked on top of sandstone and shale. The sheets of sedimentary rock were stacked on top of each other.

The mountains got their shape through weathering and erosion.

[I'm also going to assume that] The mountains that make up the Columbia Icefield are complex mountains.

Formation Time
The rocks of the ice field started forming over 500 million years ago when marine sediment was compacted on a floor of shallow sea.

The Rocky mountains started to develop about 75 million years ago when the Kula plate was subducted by the North American plate.

The Columbia Icefield itself started to form during the Illinoisan period, which occurred 240,000 to 130,000 years ago.

Evidence of these events and the time they occurred include include the strata, which can help us determine the age of the rock or the sequence of events that took place, which is very important in this case. Also, during the Pleistocene, a lot of glaciers began to develop, which is another piece of evidence.

Facts

 * 1) The Columbia Icefield has been recorded for over 125 years, and there have been signs of melting due to global warming. The glaciers have been melting for a while now and will continue to melt, potentially at a higher rate, if a solution is not found.
 * 2) It gets an average of 7 metres of snow every year.
 * 3) It has 30 distinct glaciers, covering approximately 230 square kilometres making it a massive ice field.

Sources/References
Parks Canada

PeakVisor

Britannica

Small note
Why is finding information on the formation so difficult

-Ian Kalmanovitch