Nature
Great Nunatak is a remote, elongated mountain in Alaska’s Chugach Mountains near the terminus of the Columbia Glacier west of Valdez. Geologist Grove Karl Gilbert of the United States Geological Survey used the name in 1902 after visiting on the 1899 Harriman Alaska expedition, believing it to be Alaska’s largest nunatak, and the U.S. Board on Geographic Names made it official in 1975. The name reflects an earlier landscape, when arms of the Columbia Glacier nearly surrounded the mountain. Glacier retreat has since left it no longer fully encircled by ice, with Columbia Bay now bordering part of it.
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Tatitlek, Alaska · United States
