During antiquity, the summit was always covered with snow. Glacial ice is still found on the northwestern slope of Erciyes, in the Aksu Valley at altitudes of . It has a volume of about at a minimum. A report from 1905 says that the glacier was long. In 2009 the glacier was long, and it is actively retreating; assuming that the pace of retreat does not change, it will be gone by 2070. This is the westernmost glacier in Turkey today; other glaciers are found in the Kaçkar Mountains at the Black Sea, Mount Cilo in southeastern Turkey, and on Ararat. The valley hosts a rock glacier with a surface area of .