Inside Harvard

The renowned Harriman Expedition discovered College Fjord in Prince William Sound in 1899. John Muir, the famous naturalist, was aboard, as well as a Harvard and Amherst professor who gave the name “Harvard” to the massive glacier at its head. More than a hundred years later, the world can now see a view Harriman and Muir could only dream of—from inside the glacier looking out. On a glisteningly clear spring day, I flew almost an hour to the glacier, then hovered slowly across its mile-and-a-half wide face for 45 minutes to find the perfect angle to show both the inside of the glacier as well as the stucco debris it had cast off into the fjord, 200 feet below. Maneuvering a helicopter in tight quarters with icy pinnacles is tense; the rotors are actually below the level of the ice upslope from us.