Mt Baker Glacier
In September 2006, Mr Boyd travelled to Mt Baker in Washington State to visit one of Mt Baker's glacier along with his classmates in University. The University class was entirely on how glaciers have affected the landscape in the past 20,000 years.
On this walk on the glacier, no one had crampons (spikes on the bottom of your shoes), so we had to be extra careful when we took every step. If you slipped and fell you might end up going down a crevasse. If you end up going into one, you come out at the end of the glacier a few years later :S.
A glacier is a huge mass of ice slowly flowing over a land mass, formed from compacted snow in an area where snow accumulation exceeds melting. The snow can melt, turn into water, and then re-freeze to make ice crystals.
WOW, Mr Boyd sees a big rock, that could eventually become an erratic when it is transported and deposited far from the mountains. He points to it with enthusiasm.
Since it was September and late in the summer, most of the fresh snow from the winter had melted. The result is a very dirty looking glacier. Glaciers are not all ice/snow. They are filled with lots of rocks, pebbles, sand, clay, and other material. That's worth two thumbs up!
This glacier has been retreating in the most recent decades. Glaciers do not actually move backwards. They always move forwards. When a glacier "retreats" it just appears to move backwards because more of the glacier is melting than moving forward. When a glacier is retreating it tends to create more depositional glacial features like moraines, outwash as opposed to erosional features.
Glaciers are HUGE. Even the alpine glaciers. It is not until you are on one that you realize the scale. Notice how high the glacier is with respect to the people in the bottom of the picture. The glacier has some steep ice walls, and there were several people ice-climbing the walls on that day.
Here is someone else's video of a glacier on Mt Baker. It shows the tremendous size and amazing view of the glacier.