A huge ice field forms in southeast Alaska’s coastal mountains due to an immense amount of precipitation coming in off the Pacific Ocean. This prolific snowfall produces the southernmost tidewater glaciers in North America. Le Conte Glacier is located near Petersburg, Alaska. Due to its high level of calving events the twelve and a half mile fjord heading back to the glacier’s face is often too choked with icebergs for vessels to reach it. However, reaching the glacier’s face was not our goal this trip.
What drew us to this area is an area I like to call Le Conte Ice Garden. The terminal moraine left behind when the glacier retreated creates a very shallow bar that often traps big pieces of ice inside the bay for months at a time. Here ice of all sizes floats around and is sometimes left high and dry on the shoreline when the large tidal drops occur. Walking along the shore at low tide can be like walking through an ice sculpture garden, only this artist was nature herself.
The forms of the slowly melting ice are endless. The guests and I wondered about them in awe. Watching them drip makes you realize that what you are seeing is just a fleeting moment in time, that no one else will see quite the same ever again. We skiffed and walked around the ice garden until it was time to head north towards whales and bears, but the images of the melting ice stay with us even now.
Luckily I brought my tripod this time to capture some of me enjoying the ice at low tide.
Being able to capture the ocean, mountains, ice, rocks, and rainforest all at once is a photographers dream. This old snag was somewhere in between. Talk about art in nature...
It is like you are traveling through an ice sculpture garden, but on a grand scale.
We can have a 20 ft tidal range in Alaska. At extreme low tide we were able to go and walk amongst the grounded ice bergs.
One of our skiffs absolutely dwarfed by a massive ice berg.
I do love that blue color.
How can this scene be possible. Only in Alaska.
You can see some of the grounded ice in the background, with floating bergs in the foreground.
Having a little fun with my group at the ice garden.
Check out the location here on pinmapple.com
[//]:# (!pinmapple 56.767587 lat -132.510226 long LeConte Ice Garden d3scr)
Keep Exploring and Keep Shooting,
Dai Mar