~ Tell me about
Alaska's glaciers ~

GLACIER - slowly flowing mass or river of ice. Wow! Doesn't that sound amazing - a slowly flowing river of ice. And they are amazing whether you're viewing from the deck of a sightseeing cruise ship or the window of a flightseeing airplane or helicopter. Just be sure you have the benefit of a naturalist who will explain some interesting facts & point out things you might not notice otherwise.

If you're lucky, you might see a glacier calve (that's when a large chunk of ice breaks from a glacier and falls into the ocean). Remember, a glacier is a slowly flowing mass, a river of ice, and as it moves, pressure builds causing the ice to crack and topple into the sea at the foot of the glacier. These chunks of ice aren't your normal chunks of ice. Some weigh thousands of pounds and can be as big as a touring motorcoach and they appear to be blue. Glacial ice is a different color than ice we're used to seeing. It's blue because the dense ice, compacted over hundreds of years, of the glacier absorbs every other color of the spectrum except blue--so blue is what we see!

The glaciers of Prince William Sound & Southeast Alaska's Inside the Passage are accessible from sightseeing cruise ships as well as flightseeing operators. In the town of Talkeetna there are several operators offering flightseeing trips into the Alaska Range.

Here are some Glacier Did-You-Knows:
·Alaska has more active glaciers than the rest of the world combined - almost 100,000.
·The largest congregation of tidewater glaciers in the world is in Prince William Sound.
·Southeast Alaska has 60 major glaciers.
·It can take hundreds of years to compress snow into glacial ice.
·90 percent of an iceberg is below the surface.
·There really are Ice Worms & they live on the pollens, insects, minerals and bacteria blown onto the glacier.

Common Glacier Terms
Alpine Glacier: A glacier confined by the topography around it. Usually originating in a cirque and may flow down into a valley.

Cirque glaciers are classified as confined glaciers because they form in basins & are confined by the rock walls surrounding them.

Crevass: A deep open fracture on the surface of a glacier. Ice Field: A sheet of glacier ice that collects in a mountain range or between adjoining ranges.

Ice sheets: continental-scale ice masses which are not constrained by topography

Moraine: a landform of glacially deposited material left by a receding glacier.

Piedmont Glacier: A glacier that ends on land, not in the ocean.

Striations: Straight scrapes or scratches on a rock surface caused by the debris carried by a glacier.

Tide Water Glacier: A glacier that ends in the sea.

Do you have comments or experiences you'd like to add on this subject after your visit to Alaska? Drop me a note and I'll add it here if it seems appropriate.

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