Yakutat City and Borough

The Hubbard glacier is another one of those spectacular geological formations in Alaska that beggars language. Superlatives creak and groan under the weight of unfathomable age, size and beauty. Just now I saw ice made of snowflakes that fell when Moses was arguing with Pharaoh in Egypt. While we were watching, chunks of ice the size of skyscrapers ripped themselves from the side of the glacier, roared like thunder and crashed into the ocean, making a tsunami that could capsize our ship, were we closer. Six miles across, the part of this behemoth we can see from our ship is larger than the City of New York. And it extends back into the mountains for 76 miles. Unless it is calving, this glacier is silent. It sits enthroned in frozen grandeur, as it has done for millennia. It is massive. It is powerful. It is dangerous. It is wonderful.

Beyond the glacier we see its parent, Mount Logan, whose snows gave birth to the monster. Fifty-four miles away, it looks close enough to touch. Yeah, I know—it’s only the second highest mountain in North America behind Denali. Denali’s crest is roughly 800 feet farther from the earth’s center than Logan’s. But Denali’s crest at 20,310 feet is only a few thousand feet above the average surrounding terrain. When you stand at its base (we were actually in an airplane) it doesn’t look all that high. On the other hand, you can see Logan’s base at sea level from where the mountain shoots straight up from the roots of the earth nearly four miles into the sky. It is breathtaking. Logan is the mountain you saw in storybooks as a child. Logan is the mountain you see in both your dreams and your nightmares. Mt. Logan is the iconic mountain.Les mer