The Columbia Glacier

If you want to see the beautiful Columbia Glacier, you may want to plan your trip for the near future. This glacier is located in Prince William Sound on the southern coast of Alaska, and is now being called the worlds speediest glacier. While it might seem slow to us, this glaciers movement (disintegration through calving) of 35 meters per day, is amazing to those who study glaciers.

Discovered by Captain Cook in 1890 this glacier is currently about 5 kilometers wide, about 50 kilometers in length and over 1000 meters thick in places. Its supported in the water partly by its own buoyancy and partly by the bedrock over 500 feet below sea level. It is calving icebergs faster than it is accumulating ice and snow and is the last of Alaska's 51 tidewater glaciers to begin it's retreat.

Being only about an hour's boat ride from Valdez Alaska, the Columbia is at present, a major tourist attraction. A number of cruise tours depart daily through Prince William Sound offering great views of the Columbia Glacier and the wildlife of that area. Whales, sea lions, sea otters, seals, bears, and eagles, are a just a few of the many types of wildlife you are likely to see while cruising Prince William Sound.

Spectacular icebergs hundreds of feet tall and weighing as much as a million tons are often seen calving (or breaking off) the glacier and crashing into the sea below. Many of the larger icebergs drift out to the gulf of Alaska and cause problems for the ships there. The Columbia Glacier may well be transformed into a large and spectacular  fjord within 50 years and perhaps in less than a decade. The experts will be following the behavior of the Columbia Glacier closely as it will be a dramatic and historical transformation.