Timeless Echoes: Capturing the Essence of Sperry Glacier

The year was 1988. Lisa McKeon stepped onto the ice while holding her mother’s hand. Other trekkers were also dispersed throughout, capturing images and investigating the glacier. Her family paused for their own photograph, her beaming smile preserved in the image alongside Grinnell Glacier in the backdrop.

Unbeknownst to her at that moment, she would embark on numerous hikes to many of the park’s glaciers over the subsequent thirty years. McKeon would ultimately dedicate her career to examining the park’s glaciers for the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS).

McKeon played a crucial role in establishing the USGS’s repeat photography initiative. This endeavor led her into both the park’s archives and its rugged terrains. In the archives, she retrieved older photographs of glaciers—images captured by early Euro-American scientists such as George Bird Grinnell and her predecessor at USGS, William Alden.

With historical images in hand, she then trekked into Glacier’s elevated areas, searching for the precise locations where the original photographs were taken. By snapping new photos from identical viewpoints, she could observe the alterations in the landscape.

By positioning herself in the same sites as an earlier photographer and taking a new picture, we can assess how the landscape has, or has not, evolved. This method is known as repeat photography or rephotography.