Iceberg Lake with floating bergs
— — a lake that keeps its winter into July.
Not only on a wall.
“A cirque lake in the Many Glacier valley of Glacier National Park, walled on three sides by the cliffs of Iceberg Peak and the Continental Divide. The shaded basin keeps so much snow into summer that bergs calve off the back wall and drift across the water through July and into August. The trail in from Many Glacier is about 9.6 miles round trip and gains roughly 1,200 feet. The water reads pale green from the rock flour underneath. from the studio
Iceberg Lake with floating bergs, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Iceberg Lake sits at about 6,094 feet in a north-facing cirque in the Many Glacier region of Glacier National Park, in northwestern Montana. The basin is closed on three sides by cliffs that rise nearly 3,000 feet to Iceberg Peak and the ridge of the Continental Divide. The cliffs cast the lake into shade for most of the day, which keeps snow and ice in the basin long after the surrounding country has melted out. Access is by foot only, from the Iceberg / Ptarmigan trailhead near the Many Glacier Hotel.
The pale green colour is rock flour — fine particles of limestone and argillite ground out of the cliffs above and suspended in the meltwater. The same scattering effect colours the other Many Glacier lakes (Grinnell, Cracker, Josephine). Bergs calve off the snowpack on the back wall and float across the surface from late June through early August in most years; in heavy snow years they can persist later. The water is cold enough that even strong swimmers do not stay in long. Cutthroat trout live in the lake.
The hike to Iceberg Lake is roughly 9.6 miles round trip from the Iceberg / Ptarmigan trailhead in Many Glacier, with about 1,200 feet of climb. The trail is open from roughly mid-July through September, depending on snowpack and any seasonal grizzly closures — Many Glacier is core grizzly country and rangers close the trail when bear activity is high. Going-to-the-Sun Road and the Many Glacier road in to the trailhead require advance vehicle reservations in summer under the park's current entry system.