Dear Etienne, dear co-authors,

I carefully read the manuscript and your reply to the comments. The comments were mainly of minor nature. Most of them have been addressed, but I would have expected slightly more careful incorporation. Some sentences were added as a response to the comments, but they partly do not fit into the flow of the text, e.g. line 41: It is not clear to which statement you are referring to. Lemon Creek Glacier had a negative balance throughout while the balance for Taku Glacier was clearly positive for a period. L. 61: Be more specific about field observations. Which glacier(s) were observed? Entire Stikine icefield? L. 85 Images do not cover elevation data. One can guess what you mean, but it is not clear from the text. Please check once again all added statements and sentences carefully. In addition, I do not agree to not consider a comment because it is not easy to understand. You can at least provide a guess or better write an email to the reviewer who provided his name to ask for clarification. It is also a valid comment to mention that extensive thinning of some glaciers is due to calving events. In case you do not want to include a third study by the reviewer (which I would understand) you can refer the Larsen et al. (2015) as mention in the reply.

In addition, I have two more substantial comments and several minor specific comments:

1. I asked you to provide more information about the utilized glacier outlines. Years were added, but ask you to carefully check once again. As I understood (not entirely clear from Kienholz et al. 2015) for some regions outlines from Bolch et al. (2010) were used and some images were not acquired in 2004/05. In addition, and as a good example as your papers are highly recognized, you should cite the original source of the outlines if possible. But more important you are analysing the period 2000 – 2016, but the outlines are from 2004/05. Hence, a justification why you use outlines which do not match the investigation period is needed. Or were they adjusted?
2. I agree that the comparison of DEM differencing results to repeat laser altimetry is not straight forward as you mention in L. 170. However, this is not only because of the different time periods. This is also due to different coverage. I did not read the paper in detail, but as I understood from Larson et al. (2015), mainly glacier centrelines were measured. Hence, the mass loss might be overestimated when scaling to the entire glacier in case no correction is included as mentioned by Berthier et al. (2010), NatGeo. This issue needs to be tackled and discussed.

Specific comments:
L. 12/17. It is a matter of style, but I would not use abbreviations in the abstract, if not really needed to save words.
L. 16: remove “,”
L. 52: Where did you get the information about the mass balances from? Include a reference.
L. 62: I’d omit the word “further”.
L. 66-70. This statement with more or less similar wording is repeated in L. 239ff. You may once again refer to the problem of the x-band radar penetration but with a different wording. But more important, you need to be more specific about the x-band penetration (under which conditions can the penetration be so high?) and not just provide a general statement. In case you are at the word limit avoid the repetition but provide this relevant information instead.
L. 93: According to my knowledge the automatically generated ASTER DEMs which are available are called “AST14DEM”. The “AST14DMO” includes both the DEM and the orthoimage generated using this DEM.
L. 95: Co-registration is crucial. Hence include a short statement with reference regarding the co-registration.
L. 112: Include one/two sentences how the uncertainties where calculated and then refer to the reference for more details.
L. 192: Check sentence. Write glaciological mass balance (also L. 196), so that it fully clear that these are values are based on the glaciological method.
L. 196: write “was” instead of “is”.
Table 1: Add uncertainty rages.
L. 252: Repetition of “consider”
L. 294: I think you can make an even broader statement here as the penetration might also be underestimated in several other studies.
L. 297: I think it is very crucial to be more precise of the x-band penetration. The penetration depth depends also on the depth of the snow and firn layers
L. 301: I’d move this important statement to the discussion and put slightly more emphasis on it.

I am looking forward to your revised version. Please include a reply to each comment and highlight the changes made in to manuscript.
Do not hesitate to ask in case you have a question.

Best regards,

Tobias - Editor TC

Dear Etienne, dear co-authors,

Thank you very much for your carefull revisions. I am happy to accept the manuscript now as is.
A short remark regarding the citation of the original source of glacier outlines: I am indeed not fully in line with the citation recommendations of RGI and will bring this again to the table for the next RGI version. When downloading GLIMS data you will receive the info about the original source.
I also want to highlight, that both as a reviewer and editor I recommend always also to cite also the original source in case of a more local study. In this case it was a bit delicate as I am authoring one of the inventory papers and want to clealry state that I would also accepted the paper in case you would have decided not to include the Bolch et al. (2010) study.

Thank you very much for the excellent contribution to TC,

Tobias Bolch - Editor TC