Qualla: Comox Glacier

Comox Glacier: Introduction

Sat, 21 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit paulhami, CC BY-SA 2.0. The K'omoks First Nation call the mountain Kwenis, which means "whale." According to their traditional account of the Great Flood, a whale was stranded high on the summit when the waters receded, left behind as the world drained back to normal. Look at the Comox Glacier from the Comox Valley below on a clear day -- the broad, white hump of ice riding the ridgeline at 1,960 meters -- and the name makes intuitive sense. It does look like a whale breaching from the mountains of Vancouver Island.

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Image: paulhami | CC BY-SA 2.0

Comox Glacier: A Mountain by Many Names

Sat, 21 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit paulhami, CC BY-SA 2.0. Before it became the Comox Glacier, it was Dome Glacier -- the name used by early European climbers in the 1900s who saw in its rounded ice cap a simpler geometry. The Comox & District Mountaineering Club proposed the current name in 1939, drawing from the K'omoks First Nation wh...

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Image: paulhami | CC BY-SA 2.0

Comox Glacier: Routes to the Ice

Sat, 21 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit paulhami, CC BY-SA 2.0. Two main trails lead to the Comox Glacier, and neither is casual. The most direct is the Comox Glacier Trail, sometimes called the Frog's Pond Route, which begins where Datsio Creek meets Comox Creek. The route climbs quickly from the valley floor, gaining the ridge to the west a...

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Image: paulhami | CC BY-SA 2.0

Comox Glacier: The Whale on the Ridge

Sat, 21 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Fraser.harris, Public domain. At 1,960 meters, the glacier's highest point is technically an unnamed rocky outcrop on its north side, referred to simply as the Comox Glacier summit. The glacier itself is a remnant of the ice sheets that once covered much of Vancouver Island, and like glaciers worldwide, it is...

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Image: Fraser.harris | Public domain