Stranded Skyscraper

For years, I have photographed Strandline Lake, 70 miles west of Anchorage, one of the largest remaining ice-dammed lakes in North America. Little-explored rivers flowing out of the Tordrillo foothills fill the lake each summer, held back by the Triumvirate Glacier. It fills so deep that by fall, the water pressure regularly bursts a seal on a subglacial spillway, unleashing a flood of biblical proportions down valley. But when I returned in August 2020, I discovered the lake had not formed. To make this image of the melting Triumvirate Glacier, I set my tripod on exposed lakebed that would have been beneath at least 100 feet of water in previous years.