Icy Bay, Alaska
Encyclopedia
Icy Bay is a body of water in southeast Alaska
Alaska
Alaska is the largest state in the United States by area. It is situated in the northwest extremity of the North American continent, with Canada to the east, the Arctic Ocean to the north, and the Pacific Ocean to the west and south, with Russia further west across the Bering Strait...

, formed in the last 100 years by the rapid retreat of the Guyot
Guyot Glacier
Guyot Glacier is a long and wide glacier located in the east end of the Robinson Mountains in the U.S. state of Alaska. It begins north of Yaga Peak and heads east-southeast to Icy Bay, south of the Guyot Hills and northwest of Yakutat. It borders Yahtse Glacier on the northeast. The glacier...

, Yahtse
Yahtse Glacier
Yahtse Glacier is a 40-mile-long glacier in the U.S. state of Alaska. It begins on the southeast slope of Mount Miller and trends southeast along the north border of Guyot Glacier to Icy Bay, just east of Guyot Hills and 70 miles northwest of Yakutat. The western extent is an icefield....

, and Tyndall Glacier
Tyndall
Tyndall is the name of an English family taken from the land they held as tenants in chief of the Kings of England and Scotland in the 11th, 12th and 13th centuries: Tynedale, or the valley of the Tyne, in Northumberland...

 Glaciers. It is part of the Wrangell-Saint Elias Wilderness
Wrangell-Saint Elias Wilderness
Wrangell-Saint Elias Wilderness is a wilderness area in Alaska, United States. At , it is the largest designated U.S. Wilderness Area, and lies within Wrangell-Saint Elias National Park and Preserve, the largest national park in the United States...

.

At the beginning of the 20th century, the bay entrance was permanently blocked by a giant tidewater glacier face that calved
Ice calving
Ice calving, also known as glacier calving or iceberg calving, is a form of ice ablation or ice disruption. It is the sudden release and breaking away of a mass of ice from a glacier, iceberg, ice front, ice shelf, or crevasse...

 icebergs directly into the Gulf of Alaska
Gulf of Alaska
The Gulf of Alaska is an arm of the Pacific Ocean defined by the curve of the southern coast of Alaska, stretching from the Alaska Peninsula and Kodiak Island in the west to the Alexander Archipelago in the east, where Glacier Bay and the Inside Passage are found.The entire shoreline of the Gulf is...

. A century-long glacial retreat has opened a multi-armed bay more than 30 miles long.

Icy Bay is popular destination for sea kayakers, and is reachable by bush plane
Bush plane
A bush airplane is a general aviation aircraft serving remote, undeveloped areas of a country, usually the African bush, Alaskan and Canadian tundra or the Australian Outback...

 from Yakutat
Yakutat
Yakutat may refer to:Geography*Yakutat Airport, a state-owned public-use airport in Alaska in the United States*Yakutat Bay, a bay on the coast of Alaska*Yakutat City and Borough, Alaska, a unified city-borough in AlaskaGeology...

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