And sometimes that is what it takes for these two to bond together…

“Thanda legey jaabey re!!!”, they will yell…

Every year, a new layer of snow up in the mountains creates more pressure on the layers below till it starts solidifying as ice and then crystallize. 10 feet of snow gets compacted into 1 foot of ice. But it takes 20 years for that process to happen.

The face of this glacier is about 200 feet. Quite some of it is under water. This is a particularly slow moving glacier. At barely a couple of feet a day and at about seven to eight miles long … you do the math and you realize something…

Those dark blue patches at the bottom? Yeah, they were part of the glacier before I was even born!! In my defense, I have had a much more active life 🙂

The sheer scale of these things is staggering…

It is like somebody took a knife to the glacier and said – Henceforth, thou shall be water….

Once advantage of an helicopter over a ski plane is that I could ask the pilot to just hang tight in one spot as I took shots. This is an amazing view of the glacier from a thousand feet up right where its face is (where it melts into the lake).

While most of the glacier is very smooth upstream, right near the face, there is a a long stretch where there are these long deep fissures. The fissures go real real deep. I have to research why this is so. My guess is the shearing force from the top of the ice layer as it tips off into the lake is creating this?

But the other thing to note is the amount of rocks and gravel the glacier has scooped up and is carrying with it. Note all the dark brown colors among the deep white and blue formations!