Tuesday, January 4, 2011

Glaciers Up Close

Still 1/2 mile from the glacier face!

I was putting together a new PDF for our upcoming Alaska cruises and came across this image.  The staff had never seen it and thought it was pretty cool.

I took the shot from a small zodiac-like boat as I headed to shore for some different vantage points.  The shot below is a quick pano I took from the bluffs overlooking this glacier and fjord.  I am sometimes prone to hyperbole but this experience was life changing.

The yacht isn't even in the image.

It seems as the boat is right next to the glacier in the background but is, in fact, about 1/2 mile away.  The face of the glacier is over 500', just an unbelievable scale up there.  As you might expect it is not at all safe to get any closer to the face.  There are huge calving events and also ice launching up from the depths as well.  We normally only think about the glacier calving above the water but it also splits below the water line.  When the submerged ice breaks free it shoots to the surface and sometimes launches airborne.

Fiat Lux!

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