Early in the morning we passed a large cruise ship sitting in clear water three miles from the face of Harvard Glacier. That was as close as the large ship would get. We continued on until we were surrounded by chunks of ice.

We would hear the crunching and grinding as we pushed the larger bergs out of the way.  We finally stopped only 1/4 mile from the face of the glacier. It was a  much better view than from 3 miles away, the reason we chose a small ship.

Several glaciers flow together to make Harvard glacier. Each glacier acts like a giant plow, pushing earth before it. When two glaciers meet, the rocks and earth form dark bands at the place of merger.

The face of the glacier rose 175 feet above the water line.  We watched for quite a while as chunks of ice fell off of the face of the glacier, a process called calving.  The air was punctuated by sounds that were similar to thunder or distant canon fire. It was the noise of the glacier bumping and grinding against itself and the channel it flows through. At one point we saw a 120 foot tower of ice fall away from the front of the glacier.

In this distant view a couple of miles from the face of the glacier, you can see several glaciers coming down out of the mountains to merge together. From the air, the dark bands of rock resulting from the merger of glaciers look like giant dark tracks on the ice.

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