Crowfoot Glacier is located in Banff National Park

Banff National Park

Banff National Park is Canada's oldest national park, established in 1885 in the Rocky Mountains. The park, located 110–180 kilometres west of Calgary in the province of Alberta, encompasses of mountainous terrain, with numerous glaciers and ice fields, dense coniferous forest, and alpine...

, Alberta

Alberta

Alberta is a province of Canada. It had an estimated population of 3.7 million in 2010 making it the most populous of Canada's three prairie provinces...

, Canada

Canada

Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...

, 32 km (19.9 mi) northwest of Lake Louise

Lake Louise, Alberta

Lake Louise is a hamlet in Alberta, Canada within Improvement District No. 9 Banff . It is named for the nearby Lake Louise, which in turn was named after the Princess Louise Caroline Alberta , the fourth daughter of Queen Victoria, and the wife of John Campbell, the 9th Duke of Argyll, who was the...

, and can be viewed from the Icefields Parkway

Icefields Parkway

The Icefields Parkway , also known as Highway 93 north, is a scenic road in Alberta, Canada. It parallels the Continental Divide, traversing the rugged landscape of the Canadian Rockies, travelling through Banff National Park and Jasper National Park. It links Lake Louise with Jasper to the north....

. The glacier is situated on the northeastern flank of Crowfoot Mountain

Crowfoot Mountain (Alberta)

Crowfoot Mountain is a mountain within Banff National Park in Alberta, Canada. The Crowfoot Glacier sits on the northeastern flank of the mountain. The mountain was named in 1959 after the glacier....

.

Crowfoot Glacier is east of the Continental divide

Continental divide

A continental divide is a drainage divide on a continent such that the drainage basin on one side of the divide feeds into one ocean or sea, and the basin on the other side either feeds into a different ocean or sea, or else is endorheic, not connected to the open sea...

, and runoff from the glacier supplies water to the Bow River

Bow River

The Bow River is a river in the Canadian province of Alberta. It is a tributary of the South Saskatchewan River, and is considered the headwater of the Nelson River....

. The glacier has retreated since the end of the Little ice age

Little Ice Age

The Little Ice Age was a period of cooling that occurred after the Medieval Warm Period . While not a true ice age, the term was introduced into the scientific literature by François E. Matthes in 1939...

 and now has lost one entire lobe; it therefore no longer resembles the glacier which early explorers named. The glacier was measured to be 1.5 km² (0.58 miles²). The Crowfoot glacier was once connected to the Wapta Icefield

Wapta Icefield

The Wapta Icefield is located on the Continental Divide in the Canadian Rockies, in the provinces of British Columbia and Alberta. The icefield is shared by Banff and Yoho National Parks and numerous outlet glaciers extend from the icefield, including the Vulture, Bow and Peyto Glaciers...

, and in the 1980s and was considered to be part of a smaller icefield of 5 km² (1.9 mi²).