Glacier Tours
Glaciers, which are basically slow rivers of ice, have scoured and shaped Cook Inlet and Kachemak Bay. Unlike their dynamic sidekicks, the violent and unpredictable earthquakes and volcanoes, glaciers are patient earthmovers. These blue giants begin with the fall of snowflakes. Winter upon winter, ice age cold prevented melting. Under pressure, snowflakes compacted to become millions of interlocking ice crystals. Over time their own weight causes glaciers to flow downhill, bulldozing as they go. As glaciers retreat, they shrink in size because more ice is melting, but the ice continues to flow downhill.
Since the first ice mass crept southward several million years ago, the waltzing advance and retreat of glaciers have sculpted Kachemak Bay. Their movement contoured mountains, set the course of rivers, left bench lands, deposited the Homer Spit, and gouged U-shaped valleys, such as Tutka Bay and Sadie Cove.
Short scenic flights out of Homer provide great glacier viewing, as well as hiking, fishing and beach combing.
|