August 2, 2019

Glaciers

The definition of a glacier is "a slowly moving river of ice formed by the accumulation and compaction of snow on a mountain".  Iceland has several large ice caps on the mountains that spawn some 269 named glaciers.  In fact, 11% of the land mass is covered by glaciers.   On this trip, even though our group did not actually hike on a glacier, we saw plenty of them, mainly near the southeast coast. Note--People assume that glaciers are colored snow white.  In reality, they are actually quite dirty looking, as they are coated with dirt, and in Iceland, ground up lava.  Below are a few.

Below you can see the dirt on the glacier, and the stream coming out of the bottom from the glacier from the heat of the ground melting the glacier from the underneath.


The blue color is caused by all of the oxygen being squeezed out of the ice by the weight of the glacier.


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