Cloud Peak Glacier is located in the Bighorn Mountains in the northcentral section of the U.S. state

U.S. state

A U.S. state is any one of the 50 federated states of the United States of America that share sovereignty with the federal government. Because of this shared sovereignty, an American is a citizen both of the federal entity and of his or her state of domicile. Four states use the official title of...

 of Wyoming

Wyoming

Wyoming is a state in the mountain region of the Western United States. The western two thirds of the state is covered mostly with the mountain ranges and rangelands in the foothills of the Eastern Rocky Mountains, while the eastern third of the state is high elevation prairie known as the High...

. Centered within the Cloud Peak Wilderness

Cloud Peak Wilderness

The Cloud Peak Wilderness is located in north central Wyoming in the United States. Entirely within Bighorn National Forest, the wilderness was established in 1984 in an effort to preserve the wildest section of the Bighorn Mountains...

 of Bighorn National Forest

Bighorn National Forest

Bighorn National Forest is located in northern Wyoming, United States and consists of over 1.1 million acres . Created as a US Forest Reserve in 1897, it is one of the oldest government-protected forest lands in the U.S...

, Cloud Peak Glacier is the only active glacier in the Bighorn Mountains. The glacier is in a deep cirque

Cirque (landform)

thumb|250 px|Two cirques with semi-permanent snowpatches in [[Abisko National Park]], [[Sweden]].A cirque or corrie is an amphitheatre-like valley head, formed at the head of a valley glacier by erosion...

 immediately northeast of Cloud Peak

Cloud Peak

Cloud Peak is the highest peak within the Big Horn Mountains in the U.S. state of Wyoming. It rises to an elevation of and provides onlookers with dramatic views and vistas. The mountain can be climbed most easily from the western side. The peak is located in the 189,000 acre Cloud Peak...

, the highest peak in the Bighorn Mountains.

Cloud Peak Glacier is retreating rapidly and is expected to disappear entirely sometime between the years 2020 and 2034. Photographs taken in 1905 and again in 2005 demonstrated an obvious reduction in the area the glacier, and more ominously, a huge loss of thickness. Between 1905 and 2005, the glacier has been reduced in size from an estimated 506000000 ft3 to 78000000 ft3.