Sunday, August 16, 2009

Alaksa - About Hubbard (from wiki)



Hubbard Glacier is a tidewater glacier in the U.S. state of Alaska and the Yukon Territory of Canada. From its source in the Yukon, the glacier stretches 122 km (76 mi) to the sea at Yakutat Bay and Disenchantment Bay. Named in 1890 after Gardiner G. Hubbard (regent of the Smithsonian Institution and first president of the National Geographic Society), it is the longest tidewater glacier in Alaska, with an open calving face over ten kilometers (6 mi) wide.

The Hubbard Glacier ice margin has continued to advance for about a century. It takes about 400 years for ice to traverse the length of the glacier, meaning that the ice at the foot of the glacier is about 400 years old. The glacier routinely calves off icebergs the size of a ten-story building. Where the glacier meets the shore, most of the ice is below the waterline, and newly calved icebergs can shoot up quite dramatically, so that ships must keep their distance from it as they ply their way up and down the coast.

I recommend that you youtube "Hubbard Glacier calving"... pretty awesome

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