This week, we’ll visit four locations where you can have close-up experiences with glaciers. Let’s grab our virtual binoculars, hiking boots, and/or crampons!
Hubbard Glacier, Disenchantment Bay, Alaska
Terminus of Hubbard Glacier
Hubbard Glacier is one of a few advancing glaciers in Alaska. Most are retreating in a warming world. Here are some other fun facts about it:
It is the longest tidewater glacier in North America at 76 miles long, 600 feet tall (350 exposed), and 7 feet wide.
Hubbard Glacier is located inside two national parks: Wrangell–St. Elias National Park and Preserve in eastern Alaska and Kluane National Park and Reserve in Yukon, Canada.
How to view it: My husband (who is also a retired geoscientist) and I visited in June. Seeing the glacier from a catamaran offered up-close views of the ice and its transformative processes.
Our boat bumped against blue-tinged ‘growlers’ of floating ice as several ice floes gave respite to resting seals.
About a half mile away from the turquoise terminus, we heard the deep crackling within the glacial ice and witnessed the natural process of calving, when ice breaks off the face of the glacier.
John Hopkins Glacier in Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve, Alaska
Not to be confused with Glacier National Park in Montana, which we will cover further down, the Alaska preserve covers 3.3 million acres of mountainous scenery, glaciers, and coastlines. There are more than 1,000 glaciers in its namesake, Glacier Bay.
How to view the glacier: Most visitors experience Glacier Bay from cruise ships. Park rangers board the ships to educate the public about the park.
In addition to the glaciers, visitors can see many erosional and depositional glacial landforms, such as aretes, horns, cirques, medial moraines, lateral moraines, terminal moraines, and hanging valleys.
Johns Hopkins Glacier is the park’s most-active tidewater glacier. It contains more than 50 medial moraines and has a unique stairstep appearance. The glacier is known for its submarine calving, “basal bergs” rising suddenly at the water’s surface.
Glacier Bay wildlife includes harbor seals, sea lions, sea otters, brown bears, black bears, humpback whales, orcas, and 281 species of birds.
Perito Moreno Glacier, Los Glaciares National Park, Argentina
Hiking up a crevasse, Perito Moreno Glacier, Argentina, photo by Ed Lyon
Perito Moreno Glacier is located in Argentina’s Austral Andes, near the border with Chile. I haven’t had the opportunity to visit, but my family has spoken highly of the experience, and the sheer vastness of this glacier definitely makes it a must-see.
How to view the glacier: I’m told trekking the glacier with crampons is a great way to do this!
The glacier is about 19 miles long, covering about 121 square miles. It is part of an ice field that is the third-largest freshwater reserve in the world.
A UNESCO World Heritage site, the glacier is currently advancing, although recently there have been signs of setback.
What they’re saying: “The ice was so blue, and the color of the meltwater shifted from blue to green depending on how the sun hit it. We strapped on crampons and hiked up the glacier, traversing through crevasses. It was spectacular,” Ed and Stephanie Lyon, my brother- and sister-in-law, told me.
Learn more about the park and glacierhere(the website is in Spanish, but Google translate can be your friend if you need).
Grinnell Glacier, Glacier National Park, Montana
Grinnell Glacier, photo by Brett Thomas
Grinnell Glacier is one of 26 named glaciers (remaining when last surveyed in 2015) in Glacier National Park. The park also hosts several unnamed glaciers and about a dozen rock glaciers: a glacier-like landform made up of angular rocks. Ice may fill the spaces between the rocks.
How to view the glacier: Visitors can hike the 11-mile Grinnell Glacier Trail, which traverses 1,600 feet in elevation change, for great views.
Geology highlights: During the trek, view the sedimentary and low-grade metamorphic rocks of the Belt Supergroup, deposited in an intercratonic basin during the Proterozoic Eon.
During the Laramide orogeny, these rocks were thrust over Cretaceous rocks along the Lewis Thrust Fault.
All overlying rocks younger than Proterozoic have been eroded away.
Grinnell Glacier is steadily melting, having shrunk to almost half its former size over the last 40 years.
Erosional features such as U-shaped valleys, hanging valleys, arêtes and horns, paternoster lakes, moraines, cirques and tarns are left as evidence of past glaciation.
What they’re saying: “We started the trek at Many Glacier Hotel… The scenery was rugged and awe-inspiring. I could see mountain goats on the high ledges. The glacial ice was covered with sediment and the meltwater lake had the bluest water I’d ever seen. This hike was the highlight of my trip to Glacier National Park,” commented my son-in-law, Brett Thomas.
In addition to its stunning ice formations, Glacier Bay is the spiritual home of the Native American tribe Huna Tlingit.
Their ancestors occupied the area of Glacier Bay long before an ice advance beginning around 1700 forced them to leave.
As the ice retreated, they returned to their ancestral homeland, now known as “the bay in place of the glacier.”
Anchorage Museum showcases a couple exhibits that shed light on Huna Tlingit and Alaska glacier history:
The largest loan made by the Smithsonian Institution, the Living Our Cultures Exhibition features ceremonial objects, clothing, tools, and art of Alaska Native people, including the Huna Tlingit. Recordings of Native storytellers preserve the region’s history.
Alaska From Above: The Art of Bradford Washburn presents a selection of black and white images of mountains and glaciers of the Coast Range, Alaska Range, the Chugach, and St. Elias Mountains.
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