Hubbard Glacier
Interesting facts
- Hubbard has been advancing ever since its front was first mapped in 1895, while most glaciers in Alaska and around the world are thinning and retreating.
- Its growth is fed by an unusually large snow-collecting basin that reaches deep into the Saint Elias Mountains, far behind the visible ice front.
- The glacier bulldozes a moraine of sediment and rock ahead of its face, a platform that keeps the ice grounded and lets it advance even where it is thin.
- The 1986 closure of Russell Fjord was set off by a surge of the Valerie Glacier, a tributary that joins Hubbard only a few miles from its terminus.
- Over the summer of 1986 the trapped lake rose about 25 metres, and its water grew steadily fresher, threatening the marine life cut off inside.
- When the fjord was sealed again in 2002, the lake behind the dam climbed about a quarter of a metre per day until the moraine washed out in August.
- If the glacier ever dams the fjord permanently, the lake could spill south through the Situk River, threatening its trout habitat and a nearby airport.
- Because most of the ice at the front lies below the waterline, newly calved blocks can burst up from underwater, which is why ships keep their distance.
- An Alaska Marine Highway ferry, the MV Hubbard, carries the glacier's name, chosen through a statewide contest won by a local student's essay.
Why it is worth it
Hubbard Glacier is the largest tidewater glacier in North America, a river of ice about 122 km long that begins high in the Saint Elias Mountains of Canada's Yukon and ends in a wall of ice facing the sea in Alaska. Its main source lies at around 3,400 metres near Mount Walsh, and one of its tributaries starts on the easternmost summit of Mount Logan, Canada's highest mountain. The ice moves so slowly over that distance that it takes roughly four centuries to travel from the head of the glacier to the sea, so the ice that breaks off today fell as snow centuries ago. In the Tlingit language the glacier is Sít' Tlein; its English name honours Gardiner Greene Hubbard.
The terminus is the spectacle. The ice front stretches for around 10 km across the head of Disenchantment Bay, and it stands about 100 metres above the waterline, with some 75 metres more hidden below. Blue-white pinnacles lean out over the water and regularly collapse, sending off icebergs as big as a ten-storey building with a roar that carries across the bay, while the white peaks of the Saint Elias range stand behind.
Hubbard is an advancing glacier, and twice in recent decades it has pushed across the mouth of Russell Fjord and closed it off. In May 1986 the ice sealed the fjord and turned it into a lake whose level rose behind the dam; when the dam gave way that October, some 5.3 cubic kilometres of water burst out in what is described as the largest glacial lake outburst flood in recorded history. The glacier closed the fjord again in 2002, and again the ice dam broke. The glacier straddles two of the great protected wildernesses of the continent, Wrangell–St. Elias National Park in Alaska and Kluane National Park in the Yukon.
Getting there
The glacier's face is in Alaska, about 30 miles (roughly 50 km) north of the small town of Yakutat; the town is served by Yakutat Airport (YAK). From Yakutat, day trips by boat (about five hours out and back) and flightseeing planes visit the ice front. Most visitors see Hubbard from cruise ships sailing into Disenchantment Bay on Gulf of Alaska itineraries. Whitehorse, the capital of the Yukon, is about 240 km away over the mountains, with no road to the glacier.
On these lists
From the encyclopaedia
Hubbard Glacier is a glacier located in Wrangell–St. Elias National Park and Preserve in eastern Alaska and Kluane National Park and Reserve in Yukon, Canada, and named after Gardiner Hubbard.
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