Exit Glacier, Mountain glacier in Kenai Fjords National Park, Alaska.
Exit Glacier is a 6.4 km (4 mi) long valley glacier fed by the Harding Icefield in the Kenai Mountains, about 15 km northwest of Seward. Its surface shows white snow and ice at the top, gray and dark debris lower down, and deep parallel crevasses and ridges. The ice ends on dark, uneven sediment where meltwater flows in front.
In spring 1968 a ten-person party made the first documented crossing of the Harding Icefield, from Chernof Glacier east to Resurrection Glacier. They left Homer on April 17, climbed Truuli Peak (2,015 m) en route, and descended this glacier eight days later into Seward. A newspaper reported the group would come down the "Exit Glacier", and the name stuck.
Signs along the path mark where the ice stood in earlier decades, and visitors can read this retreat for themselves. The glacier takes its name from mountaineers who used it as a descent route from the Harding Icefield.
Several trails lead from the Nature Center to the glacier, including a wheelchair-accessible loop of about 1.6 kilometers (one mile) with views of the ice. Longer routes bring hikers closer to the glacier front or up to viewpoints at the edge of the icefield.
The glacier is named for the exit of the first recorded crossing of the Harding Icefield in 1968. Ten mountaineers left Homer on April 17; eight days later they descended here into Seward, and four of them had crossed the whole icefield. On the way they made the first ascent of Truuli Peak, 2,015 m.
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