MELISSA FARLOW_MM7258_1075058.jpg
LeConte Glacier issues from the air in the Stikine Icefield. It is one of the few remnants of the once-vast ice sheets that covered much of North America during the Pleistocene, or Ice Age, the epoch lasting from 2.5 million to 11,700 years ago.
LeConte covers 2,900 square miles along the crest of the Coastal Mountains that separate Canada and the U.S., extending 120 miles from the Whiting River to the Stikine River in Alaska’s Tongass National Forest.
There are over 100,000 glaciers in Alaska and LeConte is the southernmost active tidewater glacier in the northern hemisphere. Since first charted in 1887, it has retreated almost 2.5 miles but is considered stable.
- Copyright
- MELISSA FARLOW
- Image Size
- 3504x2336 / 3.4MB
- Keywords
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aerial views, alaska, coast mountains, coast mountains (alaska), color image, day, disasters, environmental damage, geography, glaciers, global warming, gulf of alaska, ice, ice fields, inside passage (alaska), le conte glacier, mountains, national forests (alaska), nobody, north america, outdoors, pacific ocean, photography, stikine icefield, tongass national forest, united states
- Contained in galleries
- Tongass_National Geographic magazine_7/2007
