Grasshopper Glacier

One of two glaciers in the range named for the tens of millions of locusts from hundreds to thousands of years ago, some species of which are now extinct, found frozen in the ice. As the glaciers, small already, have receded, more and more of the grasshoppers are "freed" and decompose. It is believed that the insects died in swarms after being trapped there by severe storms. Grasshopper Glacier is not the large snowfield below the saddle; the portion of the glacier visible here is below and right of that snowfield. The other Grasshopper Glacier in the Beartooths is larger and better known; it is near Cooke City and wedged up against Iceberg Peak and Mount Wilse. There is also a Hopper Glacier in the range, named for the same reason. In the Crazy Mountains, a smaller range north of the Beartooths, there is a third Grasshopper Glacier, and it, too, got its name because of the frozen locusts. From Thunder Mountain Beartooth Mountains, MT-- June 2010