As the team hiked along the Russell Glacier, they marveled at its immensity and beauty, and the marble-like veins across its body caused by glacial erosion, transportation and deposition.

Glaciers are large, thick masses of slowly moving ice, or “moving rivers of ice,” that form on land when fallen snow gets compressed into ice and move slowly downward from the pull of gravity.

About three-quarters of earth’s freshwater is stored in glaciers, making glacier ice the second largest reservoir of water and the largest reservoir of freshwater on earth! If the volume of glaciers is converted into water, it will account for 97.8% of the world’s water (minus seawater).