Holyoke Glacier

Holyoke Glacier is a hanging glacier on the west side of College Fjord in Alaska, about one and a half miles long and flowing southeast above the fjord rather than into it. Named in 1908 by U.S. Grant and D.F. Higgins of the U.S. Geological Survey, it follows College Fjord’s pattern of honoring American colleges and takes its name from Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts. The glacier begins in a large cirque and is fed by two smaller southern tributaries, whose spurs create two faint medial moraines. Early twentieth-century observations found no clear evidence of recent advance, and the spruce forest below suggested it had remained within its terminal barren zone for a century or more.

Whittier, Alaska · United States