For a glacier to be extinct, it essentially has to stop moving under its own weight. Think of a conveyor belt, almost, with snow falling and compressing into ice under the weight of more falling snow. Eventually, after years and years of this happening, gravity pulls that slab very slowly down whatever mountain the glacier might exist on. Through this all, more snow will fall. If more snow falls in the winter than is lost in the summer, then the glacier grows. If the opposite happens, then it shrinks. If a glacier shrinks enough, then that flow is stopped—it no longer moves under its own weight. The glacier becomes extinct.

Mt. Hood in Oregon is home to 12 glaciers. Of those 12, 10 are active. One is extinct and one, Palmer, home to Timberline Lodge and High Cascade Snowboard Camp, is now simply just a snowfield, no longer retaining any glacial status.

As sensational as this fact may sound, it is not a new development. In fact, Palmer went extinct in the 1980s, before the first year of HCSC in 1990—though Mount Hood Summer Ski Camp (MHSSC)  has been active on Palmer since 1979.

The troubling aspect of this is that Palmer was simply the first casualty on Hood. Mt. Hood’s Glisan Glacier formally went extinct in 2023. In fact, every glacier on Mount Hood is currently receding, and the Oregon Glaciers Institute reports: "Half of the named glaciers in Oregon’s Cascades [where Mt. Hood resides] have already disappeared or will be gone before 2050.”

These facts, coupled with the announcement that Timberline Lodge will be closing early this year due to a lack of snow, raise the question: Are we losing summer snowboarding? And similarly, what do we lose if we lose that?

Summer culture at Hood has already seen its fair share of change since the golden age of the 2000’s and 2010’s. Gone are the days of summer premieres, campers reaching a kind of celebrity status within the institution, or even individual lanes for the different camps that are offered. Session recaps still come out, but they’re not the kind of glorious celebrations they once were. And while the culture around summer boarding has changed, the physical act of snowboarding itself remains. For now.

Mt. Hood is not the only assortment of glaciers in decline. Mt. Rainier, just across the border in Washington, has lost about 25% of its glacial volume—the length, width, and depth of a glacier—since the 1970s.

Camp of Champions on Whistler’s Horstman Glacier shut down its operation in 2017. In an open letter, the camp's owner and founder, Ken Achenbach, bluntly ruminates over the glacier’s decline.

“The giant pile of snow connecting the glacier to the top of the lift and the glacier itself is melting,” he writes. “...To give you an idea of how much melting has happened the last few years, in 2015 alone the glacier lost 35 vertical feet of ice. Last year, the entrance to the entire glacier had to be moved 40 feet lower.”

For us, the people who spend time on snow all year round, this loss isn’t surprising. It’s something we can see and experience.

“When I was younger, it [Mt. Hood] was open until September every year,” Griffin Frigaard, head coach at MHSSC, told me. “Now, it’ll close in August, and it continues to close earlier seemingly every year.”

To many, the question of what will be lost if we lose summer snowboarding is hard to answer. The culture, sure, but people will argue that has already been lost.

“10 years ago, everywhere you looked around Hood, you’d see your favorite pro or OG legend. There was an energy that made people gravitate to this place,” Frigaard said. “That pretty much went away when the parks fell off after they decided to monopolize.”

Griffin, here, is talking about the consolidation of the park and the disappearance of individual lanes.

So summer snowboarding, at Hood or anywhere else, is different from what it once was, but the byproducts are in many ways the same. Mainly, getting kids stoked to ride. Campers show up and, if we as the snowboard community are lucky, they fall in love with riding the same way so many others have. That’s important and, though so much of the culture around summer boarding has changed, that has not. And if we lose that, then we lose a potential next generation of pros, customers, fans, and industry workers.

There is no evidence that Mt. Hood has ever considered closing summer operations for good. And as for this summer in particular, camp is going on, just on a toned-down schedule. The same is true for Woodward at Copper—camp will run, but it will run short.

The concern is that these trends will continue, that the temperatures keep increasing, the droughts keep existing, and the glaciers keep melting. And in the face of dire planetary change, the question of whether we can still strap in in August seems mundane, bordering on tone deaf. But the health of glaciers doesn't just affect snowboarders. Longer, colder winters, and in effect healthier glaciers, aren’t simply for our benefit.

It’s hard to make a true call to action here. What can we do? Unfortunately, that question isn’t rhetorical. Because I truly don’t know. The planet is warming, glaciers are melting, and winter everywhere is not what it once was. Not to mention that scientific skepticism, environmental or otherwise, seems to be compounding. And I hate to stand on a soapbox here, but to do nothing, to admit defeat, almost seems too painful a reality to accept. So, if you’re looking for things to do, then support the people who support working to fix this problem. Go vote this November and support climate-focused candidates. Support climate organizations like Protect Our Winters. Because snowboarders won’t be the only ones who lose if the glaciers go away.