He admits that it bothers 'probably no one else that comes here.' Many people who hike, ski or work on these mountains have never seen an ice worm despite their abundance, partly because the beasts only come to the surface at certain times of the year, at certain times of day.

And it is a source of frustration for me.' The National Park Service's visitors center near Paradise Glacier, for example, has a nice display on alpine wildlife, Hotaling says, 'and there is somehow nothing about ice worms.

'If you were going to put a biological mascot on glaciers of the Northwest,' Hotaling says, 'it's an ice worm.'Īnd yet, with the possible exception of the annual Cordova Iceworm Festival in Alaska, these bizarre worms have generally been either ignored or treated as a mere curiosity. Ice worms, however, show that this fragile environment - where the glaciers are vulnerable to climate change and are retreating - is potentially far more complicated.

Scott Hotaling, glacier biologist, Washington State Universityįor a long time, he says, biologists have written off high-altitude glaciers such as these as basically sterile, lifeless places. There are more mysteries than there are solved things with ice worms.

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