On Ice and Distance

Anchorage sits at an unusual junction. The 4th Avenue outside the hotel looks like any mid-sized American city — coffee shops, a brewery, a parking structure — but look south and the Chugach Mountains rise in an unbroken wall above the rooftops. The city doesn't gradually give way to wilderness. The edge is immediate and total, and you feel it every time you get into a car heading anywhere interesting.

This guide visits five glaciers. That begins to feel like excess until you learn that Alaska contains roughly 27,000 glaciers covering about 5% of the state's area. The five here — Knik, Matanuska, Portage, Exit, and the Kenai Fjords icepack — represent the most accessible fraction of a system that stores more fresh water than most countries. All five are retreating. The marker stakes at Exit Glacier, planted decade by decade to chart the ice margin, are one of the clearest physical records of climate change anywhere in the world.