Kenai Fjords National Park

Kenai Fjords, just 130 miles south of Anchorage, is made of a range of coastal mountains which slowly sink into the ocean, transforming its former glacial valleys into long fjords with rocky and steep walls. More than half of the park is covered by the Harding ice field, a vestige of the huge ice sheet that covered Alaska during the last glacial age. The largest ice field in North America, it is at some places more than one mile thick. Like islands in a sea of ice, only the top of mountain peaks, called nunataks, emerge from the vast icy expense.

Only one small section of the park can be reached by the road, the Exit glacier. The short trail to the bottom of the glacier is one of the best places in the world to witness glacial retreat. On each of my four park visits spanning the years 2000 to 2016, the glacier's front occupied a significantly different position. Although I hiked the longer trail along the glacier to the Harding field from which it spills, I found that the best way to judge the immensity of that icefield is to see it from a scenic flight, which I have done from an airplane and from an helicopter. On the cruise up the fjords I got a glimpse of the abundant shorebirds and marine life, as well as a few tidewater glaciers.