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You can click in each picture to get a larger version.  Use the "back" button to return from the larger version.  If the picture snaps down to fit your screen, put the mouse pointer in it, wait for an icon to appear in the lower right, and click the icon to see the large version.

A HELICOPTER TRIP Here comes Meade Glacier slipping its way down its valley.  Those dark lines are medial moraines, and we are going to see one up real close down below.  Also compare these with the ones in the section on Kahiltna Glacier. This is located approximately across the fjord from Haines, AK and not far from Skagway. Look very carefully just below and to the left of the center of the picture.  Do you see the helicopters down there?  I took the picture from another helicopter.

Here is a link to a mapqwest image of this glacier.  When you get there, click it over to the aerial image if it is not already there; the map is nearly blank.  You might need to zoom out a bit, too.  It is kind of fun to use this image to scroll up the glacier and watch the medial moraines (you know, the dark lines on it).  They consist of rocks, dirt and junk that the glacier scrapes off of the walls of the valley that it is in.  This forms a dark line along the edge of the glacier called a lateral moraine.  When two glaciers meet and merge, two laterial moraines merge and end up somewhere in the middle.  Then they turn into a medial moraine. Go on.  Scroll along this one and watch it happen. (Then don't forget to come back here!)

Glaciers are dirty, and so are these two pictures.  On the left is the valley below Meade Glacier where the glacier apparently used to be.  There might still be some ice down there, hidden  below all that dirt.  But this mostly seems to be runoff meltwater from the glacier, which is farther up the valley.  The red stuff at the lower right is a reflection in the helicopter's window (I think).  On the right is the dirty, silt-filled water running off from Meade Glacier and entering the Fjord below.  That is Haines, AK on the neck of land in the background.

A little farther up the valley, there was this spot where the ice had recently broken showing at least that glacier ice can really be very dirty. It is also blue, although it tends to turn white after being exposed to the air.  Well, white sometimes unless it is as dirty as this surface. The pilot was very good at navigating around this glacier and hovering here for a minute while we took pictures.  This tour originated in Skagway, and I just made it under the 250 pound weight limit at which they charge you more.

OK, here is the landing zone.  They had the glacier well-scouted and picked a smooth spot.  Such glaciers can be dangerous places to run around on considering all the cracks, crevasses, holes, rough surfaces, and so on.  But we had good guides. Notice that medial moraine off to the right.  There are two more on the left, a thin one and a thick one.  You can also see them in the picture at the top of the page..

There.  I told you it had cracks.  This was a very small one though, at least on the day I was there, as you can see from the hands and feet nearby.  Also notice that the glacier ice really is blue if you go deep enough.  The surface becomes white and/or dirty, though.

Liquid water running over the surface is a sure sign of melting!  After all, it was June.   This water is going to eventually make it to the bottom of the glacier, although it will probably have to flow through a complicated series of buried channels to get there.  It should join other meltwater to become the dirty stuff in the pictures above. There has been much publicity about how most (but not quite all) of the world's glaciers have been shrinking for a couple of hundred years with, in most cases, accelerated shrinking since about the middle of the 20th century.  See my section on global warming for more about this.

The meltwater generally seems to find a way to eat into the glacier.  A hole like this, which has been worn into the glacier by a stream of water, is called a "moulin".  They can be several meters across, but we just saw little ones.  I suspect that they wouldn't take tourists to a very big one.  You would not want to fall in; they are very deep. And look how dirty even the top of the glacier is. The water looks blue because it has melted its way into the blue ice.  It is this ice that you are seeing through the water.

And speaking of deep holes, here is another one but without running water this time.  It is just a small but deep pool of still water (I knew that kind of water ran deep).  Again, we are seeing blue ice through the water and a little bit of it above the water.  Compare this with the glacial lakes in the section on Kahiltna Glacier.

Finally, here is that medial moraine up close -- in fact I was standing right in it when I took the picture.  The glacier moves a lot of dirt and rock and eventually deposits the stuff a long distance from where it picked it up.  That was one of the first clues that the earth once had glaciers the size of continents (the maxima of the ice ages).  Many rocks were found that didn't match any other rock in the region but which did match the rocks far to the north.  A rock like that is called an "erratic".