Snow, ice and glacial meltwater turn mountains, lakes and even buildings into some of the most striking winter scenes on Earth. These twelve photographs travel from the turquoise water of Lake Louise and the glaciers of the Karakoram to an Antarctic iceberg, Patagonia’s Perito Moreno Glacier and the Alpine summit of the Schilthorn.
Lakes and glaciers of the Americas
Lake Louise, Canada
Lake Louise lies at 1,750 m in Banff National Park, Alberta, and stretches for about 2 km, overlooked by glaciers. Its famous turquoise colour comes from rock flour, fine silt ground by glaciers and carried in by meltwater, mainly from the Lefroy Glacier. The Stoney Nakoda people called it Ho-run-num-nay, “Lake of the Little Fishes”. In winter it freezes hard enough for ice skating and ice fishing.
An ice arch in Utah
Photo: source
Warm light turns this curved arch of ice gold against the cold blue of its surroundings and shows how much colour ice can hold in the right light.
A glacier cave in Alaska
Glacier caves change constantly as the glacier moves and melts. Visit them only with a licensed glacier guide, who checks that the ice is stable.
Perito Moreno Glacier, Argentina
Perito Moreno, in Los Glaciares National Park in Argentina’s Santa Cruz province, is 30 km long and covers 250 km². Its front rises about 74 m above the water of Lake Argentino. At irregular intervals the advancing ice dams the Brazo Rico arm of the lake, the water behind rises by up to 30 m, and eventually the ice barrier ruptures in a spectacular collapse. The glacier is named after the explorer Francisco “Perito” Moreno and lies about 78 km from the town of El Calafate.
Asia, Iceland and Antarctica
A glacier stream in the Karakoram, northern Pakistan
The 500 km Karakoram range, mostly in Pakistan’s Gilgit-Baltistan, is the most heavily glaciated place on Earth outside the polar regions, with more than 15,000 km² of ice. It includes K2 (8,611 m), the world’s second-highest mountain, and the Siachen (76 km) and Biafo (63 km) glaciers, the second- and third-longest outside the poles. Unlike most Himalayan glaciers, many here are barely retreating, a puzzle scientists call the Karakoram Anomaly.
Hyaku Yonjo Waterfall, Ishikawa, Japan
Hyaku Yonjo Falls in Ishikawa Prefecture, on Japan’s Sea of Japan side, seen here in winter, when ice builds up around the falling water.
Svínafellsjökull ice cave, Skaftafell, Iceland
Svínafellsjökull is one of the glacier tongues of Skaftafell, a former national park that became part of Vatnajökull National Park in 2008. The area is one of Iceland’s main centres for glacier walks; tours ran on Svínafellsjökull until 2018 and have since moved to the neighbouring Falljökull. Nearby is Svartifoss, a 20 m waterfall framed by black basalt columns.
A spiral iceberg in Antarctica
Only about a tenth of an iceberg shows above the surface. As icebergs melt and fracture, their centre of gravity shifts and they can roll over, exposing freshly sculpted ice. Antarctic ice shelves usually calve flat-topped tabular bergs; irregular shapes like this come from later melting, fracturing and erosion.
Switzerland in winter
Kandersteg
Kandersteg sits at 1,174 m in the canton of Bern, at the northern end of the Lötschberg rail tunnel, where car-shuttle trains run through to Goppenstein in Valais. In winter it offers more than 50 km of cross-country ski trails, small ski areas at Oeschinensee and Sunnbüel, ice climbing, skating and curling. The village is also home to the Kandersteg International Scout Centre, opened in 1923.
The Alps
Layer after layer of snowy ridges fade into the distance, the classic view of the Alps in deep winter.
Tschuggen Grand Hotel, Arosa
The Tschuggen Grand Hotel stands in Arosa, a resort in the canton of Graubünden whose railway station sits at 1,775 m. Since 2013 a cable car has linked Arosa with Lenzerheide, creating the combined Arosa Lenzerheide ski area.
Piz Gloria, Schilthorn
The Schilthorn (2,970 m) rises above the Lauterbrunnen valley in the Bernese Oberland, reached by cable car from Mürren on what is billed as the world’s steepest cable car route. Its summit restaurant, Piz Gloria, turns a full circle in about 45 minutes and appeared in the 1969 James Bond film On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. On a clear day the panorama runs from the Eiger, Mönch and Jungfrau to the Titlis, the Jura and even Mont Blanc.
Explore more: a related collection of winter waterscapes; Titlis’s clearly identified viewing structure.
Related reading
- Ten Ways to Understand Snow: Crystals, Records and Winter Landscapes
- Ten Ice and Snow Designs: Hotels, Sculptures and Experimental Spaces
- Twenty-Three Waterfall Scenes: Winter Ice and a Mineral Lookalike
- Twenty-Five Ski Towns and Mountain Destinations Around the World
- Seven Mountain Pools and the Landscapes Around Them
Sources
- Lake Louise – Wikipedia
- Perito Moreno Glacier – Wikipedia
- Karakoram – Wikipedia
- Skaftafell – Wikipedia
- Iceberg – Wikipedia
- Kandersteg – Wikipedia
- Arosa – Wikipedia
- Schilthorn – Wikipedia
- Photo credits are linked in each caption; collection via Your Amazing Places.
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