Revealed: The Secret of the World's Most Mysterious Glacier

The Great Gorge of Alaska is completely filled with ice. Scientists have finally measured its depth. How did they do it?

When researchers discovered the massive Ruth Glacier in Alaska's Great Gorge in 1937, they were astonished by the enormous volumes of ice that had accumulated over millennia. Water turned into snow, which compressed under its own weight, filling the mountain gorges for many kilometers. Scientists couldn't measure the depth of this massive ice block but suspected it could conceal one of the deepest gorges in the U.S., and possibly the world. The glacier has since become a subject of study for many passionate explorers.

Today, Hells Canyon, on the border between Oregon and Idaho, is considered the deepest gorge in North America, with a depth of 2,412 meters (7,913 feet). However, scientists have suggested that Ruth Gorge extends to a depth of 2,465 meters (8,087 feet) or even more. These dimensions would make the Great Gorge as deep as Hells Canyon, if not deeper.

It is estimated that the ice in the gorge is between 610 and 960 meters thick (2,000-3,150 feet) along the glacier's central line. In recent years, several expeditions attempted to measure the glacier's depth using special radars mounted on snowmobiles. However, the radar signals were noisy, and the data gathered was inaccurate. Now, at last, there has been a significant breakthrough in this research!

The scientists were helped by recent measurements of the glacier taken by NASA. By comparing this data with radar scan results, they obtained a fairly accurate depth of the gorge. According to the study, published in the Journal of Glaciology, Ruth Gorge is 2,464 meters deep, making it slightly deeper than Hells Canyon. However, it is not the deepest gorge in the world, as several valleys in the Himalayas and Andes are even deeper.

Ruth Glacier is not exempt from the global melting of glaciers due to climate change. As the planet warms, Ruth Glacier is thinning at a rate of over one meter (3.3 feet) per year. Still, this ice block is so large that it's impossible to reach the bottom, and the only way to measure its depth is through radar and space based measurements.