Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Another Alaska shot - Mendenhall Glacier

It's hard to desribe how massive this glacier looks in person. I wish the image below had some reference point to give it a sense of scale.

Even harder is to imagine is that since 1910 the face of this glacier has receded 1.75 miles (see here: http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Mendenhall-Glacier).

On the trail from the parking lot to the glacier observation deck there were stone markers showing the location of the glacial face for a given year. It was pretty remarkable to count them off as we got closer and closer to the deck. I wish I had taken a few photos of them. I'll post images from the trail (as well as an image of a friendly local we encountered while on the trail) tomorrow. Until then, here's a shot of the glacier itself:

1 comments:

Michelle said...

Beautiful... I am so looking forward to exploring Alaska... we are hoping to take a cruise soon.. possibly this summer.. and then we want to take the motorhome up for a month or so in the next couple of years. Great photos I look forward to seeing more :)