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Kenai Fjords National Park
Harding Icefield glaciers spilling into the Gulf of Alaska
More than half of Kenai Fjords National Park lies under ice. The Harding Icefield, about 700 square miles (1,800 km²) of snow and ice thousands of feet thick, caps the Kenai Mountains and feeds more than 30 glaciers that flow outward in every direction, some ending in forests and others breaking off into the sea. Only the summits of buried peaks, called nunataks, poke through its surface. The fjords below are drowned glacial valleys, carved by ice and then flooded as the land subsided and the glaciers retreated.
Exit Glacier, at the end of the park's only road a few miles from Seward, is the one place most visitors can walk close to the ice, and signs along the trail mark how far its terminus has pulled back over the past two centuries. A strenuous trail climbs from there to the edge of the icefield. Most people see the coast by tour boat out of Resurrection Bay, watching for humpback whales, orcas, Steller sea lions, sea otters and puffins. Sugpiaq (Alutiiq) people lived along these shores for centuries. The area became a national monument in 1978 and a national park in 1980.