Keyhole

Glaciers hide away some of the most fascinating visual experiences. The play of light inside desert stone slot canyons is startling enough, but in the ice caves and crevasses of ice worlds, the light bouncing and refracting on and inside the translucent walls is divine. The blue color is even more unique due to the filtered sunlight and plunging subzero temperatures. Sometimes this is referred to as glacier blue because it is so unique.



On this day, the temperature was hovering around zero degrees Fahrenheit. As you approach the keyhole shaped ice cave, your feet feel the crunching snow and your sense of adventure is on fire. You can psychologically feel the mega-tons of ice walls around you, especially as you squeeze through the tight passages. And then, as you stand there, you hear the occasional creaking of the moving glacier around you - reminding yourself that this environment is actually more like a liquid, albeit the slowest flowing liquid you can think of. And this can take hundreds of years to gouge and carve the valleys corralling them. In fact, the ice I was standing in began its journey around the time Columbus explored the new world. However, climate change is so obvious to the scientists as they describe how the edge of the Matanuska Glacier among others is receding noticeably every year.