After my ankle incident, I couldn’t go ice climbing so I went on a short air cruise into the numerous glaciers in the area. It was a little smoky because of the recent forest fires in the area. Here are the amazing photos.
Circular view of the mountains from the McCarthy airport.
Looking from the airport towards the glaciers.
That’s the Kennecott mine in the distance.
Kennecott mine in the distance. What looks like tailings is rock covered glacier.
That’s all glacier. The rocks on the top are 1” to 6’ thick with the ice up to 1,000’ thick underneath.
Camped there.
Ever changing sand barges in one of the surrounding glacier rivers.
This is a rock glacier = 80% rock 20% ice.
These are huge glacier blocks hundreds of feet thick. The white ones recently flipped over to show their clean bottom. When they flip in a small lake like this it can make a wave like a huge tsunami.
Going into that glacier.
This ice fall is 7,000 feet tall.
Heading into the glacier.
Each one of those blocks is 300 feet high.
Ice blocks are 200 – 400 feet high.
Each ring is the annual growth push of the glacier – just like tree rings.
Heading into another glacier.
Melted glacier water pools are blue because they are so dense that only the blue spectrum of the sun can’t penetrate the oxygen free water and ice and is reflected.
Low on the deck flying down the glacier flow.
More blue pools.
Each crevasse is several hundred feet deep.
Each block hundreds of feet high.
This was a lake last year until it finally broke through the ice wall and flooded creating I was told an amazing wall of water flowing over the ice.
One of the copper mines perched on a cliff overlooking the glacier. You would think how in the world did they get the copper to market? This mine was connected in the back with over 70 miles of tunnels to the main Kennecott mines miles away. It’s amazing to think they drilled this rabbit warren of tunnels throughout this mountain in search of copper to feed the need to electrically wire the east coast during 1911 – 38.
This riever eventually disappeared into a hole in the ice.
The hole.
All ice up to 1,000 feet thick.
Kennicott production facility. Mine is five miles up the mountain.
Flying with Bill in a Cessna 172.