Michelle McAfee Photography

Nizina Glacier, 2011; Wrangell-St.Elias National Park

Crackatoa. That's what my sixteen year old nephew called it when we were setting up camp above the banks of the lake. We heard a loud crack, a gunshot echoing off the walls of the mountains, and turned to see a massive chunk of neon blue ice flipping over and bobbing in the water until it flipped back over and settled its mass under the surface. "Crackatoa!!!!" That chunk must've been the size of a skyscraper when it was fully lofted. A mini tsunami sloshed back and forth in the bowl of the lake until eventually, the water calmed down as the new iceberg acquainted itself with the crowd and slowly floated downstream.

If you walked up to the shore of that lake 30 minutes later, you would never have known that shortly before, everything was cracking, crashing, sloshing around discombobulated, and in complete disarray.