Aialik: An Active Tidewater Glacier

Tuesday, 24 August: Part II

Without a doubt, the highlight of our day in Kenai Fjords was the hour we spent at Aialik Glacier.

Like Exit Glacier, Aialik is also born of the Harding Icefield. Unlike Exit Glacier, however, Aialik flows into the sea and it has a terminal ice cliff. This makes it a tidewater glacier. I have to admit I have a soft spot for tidewater glaciers over any other type.

Aialik’s name originates from an “Eskimo name obtained by the Russians and recorded as Bukh[ta] Ayalikskaya” [Dictionary of Alaska Place Names]. Four miles (6.5 km) in length, the glacier is 1 mile (1.6 km) wide and 1,600 feet (488 m) high. Pretty impressive by anyone’s standards.

We usually think of ice as being either clear or white. After all, ice is made of compressed snow, isn’t it? Yes, but the glacier ice that results from layer upon layer of compression absorbs all the colors of light except blue; which is reflected … hence the color.

In fact, the denser the ice becomes, the less air there’s left in it. This results in the blue color becoming darker and more translucent.

You want another factoid about glaciers? Approximately 75% of the world’s freshwater is locked up in these rivers of ice. That makes them the largest source of freshwater on earth. I shudder to think what would happen to the planet were these glaciers to melt at an even faster rate than they are currently. One website I came across estimated that the sea level would rise about 230 feet (70 m) worldwide if all the land ice were to melt. Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that. (If you would like to learn more about glaciers, click here.)

Glaciers grow; glaciers recede. And along the way they make sounds. There’s a constant snap, crackle, and pop as the air is being squeezed out. The sounds are sometimes so soft that you have to strain to hear them. At other times, they are loud enough to remind us that a glacier is a living thing.

And sometimes a glacier speaks with a loud, thundering crack, followed by a discharge of chunks of ice crashing into the water. This is called calving. It is one of the most exciting things one can experience during a visit to a tidewater glacier. Aialik gifted us with not one, not two, not three, but at least five good sized calvings today; I lost track of how many times small avalanches dropped chunks of ice into the water. The last calving discharged what some might describe as a bus-sized piece from the terminus.

Here are some images from one of the smaller calvings ...

And here are some images from one of the larger calvings ...

But photographs can't do justice to the calving spectacle. Keep an eye out for the video I’ll be posting in the next blog entry to show the “action” as we experienced it.

In the meantime, here’s the aftermath. We watched as, caught in the currents, the chunks of ice moved away from the terminus and into the bay. There were no big pieces to form bergy bits or icebergs that might survive a day or two or more. These small pieces won’t last long and soon there won’t be any sign of the calvings we saw today.

We were far from ready to leave Aialik behind and resume the rest of the day's itinerary, but resume we did. After all, the captain had a schedule to keep.

Aialik was awesome, amazing, awe-inspiring, breathtaking, incredible, magnificent, spectacular … all those words that are so overused that they have become clichés. The descriptions hold true nonetheless.