Tsaa Glacier flows about 8 miles (13 km) southeast from the northeastern flank of the Robinson Mountains and terminates in Tsaa Fjord, on the western shore of Icy Bay, some 147 miles (237 km) east-southeast of Cordova and 75 miles (121 km) northwest of Yakutat, Alaska. Its name derives from the northern Tlingit word for hair seal. The Robinson Mountains themselves commemorate Lieutenant of the U.S. Revenue Cutter Service, who drowned while landing at Icy Bay in 1891 while serving on the USRC Bear; the geologist Israel C. Russell named the range in his honor that same year.
At the start of the 20th century Icy Bay was filled by a tidewater glacier that calved directly into the Gulf of Alaska, leaving the coastline nearly straight. A century of retreat has since opened a multi-armed bay more than 30 miles (48 km) long. The original glacier split into three: Yahtse, Tsaa, and Guyot glaciers, all within Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve.
Tidewater glaciers terminate in the ocean either at a grounded terminus or as a floating ice tongue. Over the tidewater glacier cycle, a glacier advances slowly for centuries until thinning near its terminus triggers a rapid retreat, which unfolds within decades and stabilizes once the glacier reaches shallow water. Climate change can initiate this retreat, but once under way the process is only weakly influenced by climate; glacier geometry instead becomes the primary driver of ice flow. Read more here and here. Explore more of Tsaa Glacier and Icy Bay here: