Olympic Peninsula glaciers expected to disappear

KUOW Puget Sound Public Radio

Devoting your life to something that is disappearing can be tough.

Portland State University professor Andrew Fountain has been researching the dwindling glaciers of the American West since the 1980s. He said for years, he studied their retreat dispassionately – as an interesting phenomenon to try to understand. Then last year, he had an epiphany.

“It dawned on me that, ‘wait a minute, in 20 or 30 years, everything that I've studied is useless because there are no glaciers,’” Fountain said.

The Olympic Peninsula has lost 45% of its glacier coverage since 198...