We landed in the small "village" of McCarthy, AK and took a lodge shuttle bus up the mountain to Kennicott Lodge and Mine. Not wasting any time we checked in and hiked out to the toe of the Root Glacier:
The trail was in very good condition and paralleled the edge of the moraine. The moraine is a large field of ice that is covered in grit and rock dust that may be 800 feet deep below what we see. There are voids and rivers running through and under what we see:
We took a side trail that scaled down to the edge of the glacier:
When we got to the edge of the "toe", which is the part of the glacier that is the top layer of glacial ice, we decided to climb on to the ice:
Jim