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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.

NORTHWESTERN - SOUTHERN??? Northwestern Glacier is on Alaska's southern coast, make sense?  Actually, I am pretty sure it is named after the university, but I have not seen any document, blurb, or other literature that says so explicitly.  It is in Kenai Fjords National Park, which borders on Seward AK, but you can only get there by boat or plane.  I took a tour on a boat belonging to Kenai Fjords Tours.  On this map, look for Harris Bay and Northwestern Lagoon just below and to the right of center.  The glacier is at the head of the lagoon (also known as Northwestern Fjord.) Here is it from the boat, part in shade and part sunny.

This is a close up of part of the above picture.  Can you find the features shown on this one in the other picture?  It shows the two bare spots toward the lower right of the glacier in the top picture. Pay attention to that bare spot on the left of this picture. Down below on this page, there are some pictures of a big avalanche of ice coming down that bare spot.

Here is a zoom on that bare spot before the avalanche.  Technically, the avalanche is an example of calving, which is the term used when some ice drops off of a glacier.  For glaciers like Northwestern, which end in a body of water, calving is the main process that limits the glacier's size. Check out the section on Margerie Glacier for more calving.

And there she goes....  A big section of ice was just not nailed down enough, and it just slides on down to the water.

Just a few seconds later, the slide has moved on a bit.  By the way, these pictures were taken a little earlier in the day when the clouds were lower than in the two pictures at the top of this page.

In this last picture of the sequence, the slide has just about reached the bottom, but it did leave some debris up there on the rocks.

Nearby was this spot, which looks like it used to be filled up with a glacier.  I think I have this one spotted on the Mapqwest aerial image.  If you go there, you might have to select "aerial image" and zoom it out a few steps.  Then you will see the glacier at the top and an island at the bottom of the picture.  On the right side, closer to the island than to the glacier, there is a fan-shaped structure entering the fjord with a glacier way up the mountain from it.  I think that is the one.  In any case, a longer sequence of digital pictures that I took makes it clear that this ws on the right side of the boat as we approached Northwestern Glacier.

The island at the bottom of that map is called Striation Island and it is 2 or 3 miles from the glacier.  In the year 1900, Northwestern Glacier covered it and more.  On the park map (link at the top of this page) you can see where the terminus of this glacier was in the year 1900 -- about 9 miles away from its present position.  So it has been shrinking dramatically.  Here are several links with old pictures of Northwestern Glacier. 1. Several Videos switching back and forth between old and new pictures of this and other glaciers.  In the new pictures, the glacier has disappeared around the bend in the fjord, but it has obviously not entirely gone away. 2. Some pictures from the year 2000.  It does not seem to have changed much between these and my pictures from June, 2007. 3. A brief history of the glacier.  It seems that it was advancing during the medieval warm period when many glaciers were retreating.  It has, however been discovered that many (not all) glaciers that end in water and depend on calving for limiting their lengths can defy temperature conditions and advance when it is warm.  See the section on Hubbard Glacier for more on this (coming soon). 4. Pairs of "before and after" pictures of several glaciers along with a discussion of the findings.  Northwestern Glacier is Fig. 5 at this link. 5. A large number of glacier pictures from the 1980's.  The best thing to do here is to use the search box at the top of this link to search for "northwestern" or for whatever glacier you want.