In High Mountain Alaska, a Glacier’s Deep Secret Is Revealed at Last
A famed explorer was sure the ice hid something profound. Ninety years later, scientists have put forth the strongest evidence yet that he was right.
A famed explorer was sure the ice hid something profound. Ninety years later, scientists have put forth the strongest evidence yet that he was right.
As his bush plane circled the craggy peaks of the Alaska Range, the explorer Bradford Washburn peered down and had a burning thought.
Coursing down the southern slopes of Denali and Mount Silverthrone were the accumulated snows of thousands of winters, compacted under their own weight into colossal rivers of ice that filled the valleys for miles in every direction. At one particular spot in the white wilderness, Washburn noticed from above, all this glacial mass was somehow squeezing through a granite-walled corridor just a mile wide.
Washburn became convinced, he wrote, that beneath the ice lay a secret: The corridor was deep. Deeper, perhaps, than any other gorge on the continent, and maybe even the planet.
