Explorer Reveals What the Insides of a Glacier Sound Like — It’s Unlike Anything We’ve Heard
Jutting from dense forests and ravishing mountains, the glacial ice caves of Alaska are giant, jagged pockets of stories trapped in time and sculpted in otherworldly formations of ice that glows and shimmers blue in the sunlight. These caves emit sounds of shifting ice, of all those rains that fell upon this ice and dribbled away, carving meltwater tunnels, creasy fissures, and zigzagged crevices. During a cave diving expedition, fashion model Lillian Thorington (@lillianthorington) recorded the soundscape unfolding within a glacial ice cave. The footage she shared left people gaping their mouth in astonishment.
“Do you want to hear what the inside of a glacier sounds like?” Thorington screamed while standing at the entrance of a glacial ice cave as part of an expedition with Above and Beyond Alaska (@beyond.ak). With a small-sized backpack strapped around her chest, she adjusted her camera roved inside the surreal cavern carved in a palette of chalky whites and frosty arctic blues. As the camera rolled within the narrow wall-lined boundaries of the cavern, it illuminated the craggy interiors frozen in a turquoise blue color, dripping here and there with meltwater. Referring to the movie Avatar, @_kileighnicole commented, “Please tell me you found the Avatar.” @faithjaggernaut said, “Sounds crispy and fresh!”
The camera delved deeper and deeper into the glacial hollow. And as it passed by the narrow, undulating tunnels, the whittling ice hissed and popped and boomed and crackled. Viewers pointed out that the sounds were emanating from the ice where air bubbles were trapped and were now being liberated by Thorington’s movements. The tapering curves of the cavern, together with the low ceiling, stirred up instant claustrophobia in the viewers, who swore never to go inside a cave like this. “This is the closest I've ever been to being inside a glacier,” commented @alabaya.
For Thorington, however, the exploration wasn’t over, not just yet. She kept walking through the thinning stretch, her camera recording the bizarre screams and fizzles erupting from its clawing walls. The ice, many people said, was groaning at the persistent threat it feels from global warming. It is crying for help. According to Gray Line Alaska, these caves in Alaska are carved out by a combination of freezing and melting processes. As the meltwater streams move through the intricate tunnels and chambers, they sculpt fissures and crevices, bestowing a unique geometrical texture to the cave. The dynamics continue to shift the ice, and the cave keeps on shapeshifting its form season after season.
Several viewers reflected that although snaking through the cave seemed breathtaking, it could be dangerous given that the ice cladding is vulnerable to collapse and crumble. “This looks so cool, but is it dangerous going into something like that? Like if it collapses or there’s a gap like that beneath it you didn’t know about,” commented @kpeif03. @dhruvranjan_ echoed the same message, “With the global climatic crisis, I could never. The last good time to enter it was yesterday.”
You can follow Lillian Thorington (@lillianthorington) on Instagram to stay tuned with her diving and nature adventures.
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