Layered Centuries

Thirty miles up the Knik River Valley from the main paved highway, Grasshopper Valley nestles between two impassible glaciers: the Knik and the Marcus Baker. I fly here every year to run, explore, build campfires, and photograph moose. When I returned in 2021, I found a startling sight: The lower Grasshopper River had shifted course 90 degrees—and was boring a hundred-foot-deep canyon into the bowels of Knik Glacier itself. I descended the ice-laden gravel sidewall into the canyon to make this 30-second exposure. Like a laser cut across time, the river had exposed deep layers of glacial ice, centuries in formation. The icebergs in the foreground were my clue that the risk of falling ice was too great to spend much time here.