Now this isn’t a sight one sees every day.
Have you ever heard of a snow mushroom? I hadn’t, until I stumbled upon this recent piece from the website Atlas Obscura about Vaughan Cornish, a geographer who discovered the odd natural wonders.
The British explorer and his wife, Ellen, left Britain in December 1900 to study Canada’s waves of wintry snow. When they reached Glacier Natural Park, they happened upon a unique class of natural snow formations.
What they discovered appeared to be snow mushrooms, giant balls of suspended snow on what seemed to be stems. The reality was that the mushroom-like objects were actually unique snow sculptures of sorts; sculptures formed when wide tree stumps accumulated wet and heavy snow at a fast pace during calm winter winds (though I’d like to think they were created in a more magical manner, let’s say with the assistance of the snow faeries!).
The snow continued to gather on the top of the stumps to form the massive snowballs — it was reported that Cornish found some snow mushrooms as wide as 12 feet in diameter. The snow mushrooms were also said to be very sturdy and tough, not easily disturbed.
At that time in Glacier National Park, there were allegedly fields of snow mushrooms and Cornish only found the mysterious creations there, though there were several reports the natural wonders could be found elsewhere in Canada.
Snow mushrooms are a rare sight in the park today, but you may be able to find one if you’re lucky!
