Rock glaciers (RGs) are unusual high elevation cold rocky areas where melt from buried glaciers form emerging springbrook habitats whose biology has not been well explored. As climate warms, surface glaciers disappear, and drought threaten headwaters, these kinds of environments may become important refugia. Besides documenting the benthic invertebrate fauna of RGs, this study asks whether community patterns are local and stable with downstream distance from the source over years of varied snowpack. Midges prevail in these underground outflows from within rock jumbles and always dominated in the areas nearest the RG. EPT (mayfly, stonefly, caddisfly taxa) were most common and diverse downstream where RG waters mixed with surface tributary sources. These sites are all within ~1 km of each other. In years of high snowpack, with later melt and colder temperatures, the community across sites sustain the greatest population densities of midges including Diamesa, the ice fly, along with Paratrichocladius and triclad flatworms. In years of low snowpack drought conditions with earlier snowmelt and warmer conditions, Hydrobaenus and Diplocladius came to dominate and the others all but disappeared. The golden algae Hydrurus foetidus also was most common upstream in cold years and diminished under drought flows. If droughts and warming become more prevalent in alpine zones, some species of RG midges seem likely to become displaced while others become more prominent. These taxa along with a possibly endemic caddis and stonefly are being barcoded.