Nature’s Scalpel

I’ve sometimes found rivers flowing over the surfaces of melting glaciers, and I’ve often seen streams gushing along their lateral moraines. Water takes the path of least resistance, so you wouldn’t expect to find a river cutting straight across a glacier. But on one hot July day, during a period with 18 hours of intense sunlight. I landed my helicopter on the ice near Lake George and discovered exactly that. Over the lip of a cliff, a brown torrent had sliced a channel through the glacier itself, surging though a canyon between ice walls 75 to 100 feet high. I crept to the edge and carefully positioned my tripod to capture this shot. When I returned a week later, the perch where I had taken the photo was gone, consumed by the river. By September, all of the ice in the left of the image had collapsed and been flushed away. I learned you should never underestimate the immense power of water in its ability to change the landscape. Still, I’ve returned many times to the area and never again witnessed a river bisecting a glacier like this. It may be a scene I never see again.