Kenai Fjords National Park United States

Legendary

Named for its numerous fjords carved by glaciers over thousands of years.

Photo by Kenai Fjords National Park

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Along the trail to Exit Glacier, small signs are planted in the ground with years printed on them. Each one marks where the edge of the glacier used to be.

You pass 1899, then 1926, then more recent dates, and you keep walking. The ice has pulled back more than a mile since people started keeping track.

The glacier comes from the Harding Icefield, a vast sheet of ice sitting high in the mountains. It covers roughly 700 square miles and is the largest ice field entirely inside the United States.

It's left over from the last Ice Age, when ice sheets covered most of Alaska. Around 400 inches of snow fall on it every year, which keeps it going.

About 40 glaciers flow down from the icefield like slow rivers. The largest is Bear Glacier, which stretches about 20 kilometers and ends in a lake full of floating icebergs.

Those glaciers built the park's coastline. Over thousands of years, they ground deep U-shaped valleys down through the mountains toward the sea.

When the ice melted back, the ocean flooded in. Those drowned valleys are the fjords the park is named for.

Some glaciers still reach the water today. They're called tidewater glaciers, and chunks of ice regularly break off their faces and crash into the sea.

President Jimmy Carter first protected the area as a national monument in 1978. It became a full national park in 1980.

The park is mostly unreachable by road. Only the Exit Glacier area can be driven to, and everything else takes a boat, a plane, or a long hike.

Take a boat tour from Seward to watch tidewater glaciers calve into the ocean, and look for orcas, humpbacks, sea otters, and puffins along the way. Walk the easy trail to the edge of Exit Glacier. If you're up for a challenge, hike the Harding Icefield Trail for a view across an ice sheet that stretches to the horizon.