With the launch of Landsat 7 a new band was added to the Landsat Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus (ETM+). The new panchromatic band 8 covers wavelengths of 0.52–0.92μm and extends over band 2 (0.525–0.605 μm), band 3 (0.630–0.690 μm) and band 4 (0.750–0.900 μm). Its high resolution, with a pixel length of 15 m, is of interest for high-spatial-resolution analysis. This project focused on using Landsat 7 band 8 as a precise tool to obtain remotely the size and shape of permanent snowpatches in the mountainous area west of Abisko, Sweden. In the supervised classification employed, shadowed and non-shadowed areas were classified separately. Supervision of the classification was based on ground-truthing consisting of photographic mapping of the snow cover in the study area. The results from this single-band classification were compared to the results from the normalized- difference snow index (NDSI) and false-color images using bands 2, 4 and 5. This comparison showed similar estimates of the total amount of snow-covered area, with the additional advantage that the Landsat 7 band 8 (LB8) classification detects details in the extent of individual snowfields. This new application and the insights documented here support the use of Landsat 7 band 8 for snow-cover investigations in the future.