Lituya Glacier rises on the south flank of Mount Wilbur in the Fairweather Range and flows west for eight miles (13 km) to Desolation Valley, then turns southeast and continues for 2.6 miles (4 km) to Gilbert Inlet at the head of Lituya Bay, about 100 miles (162 km) southeast of Yakutat and 68 miles (110 km) northwest of Gustavus, Alaska. The name Lituya comes from Tlingit and means “lake within the point.”

Jean-François de Lapérouse became the first European to visit Lituya Bay, in 1786, naming it “Port des Français,” or “bay of the Frenchmen”; whalers later called it Frenchman’s Bay. In 1805 Captain Yuri Lisyansky of the Imperial Russian Navy recorded it as “L’tooa Bay.” The bay lies within Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve, and Gilbert Inlet sits on its north shore at the eastern end. The inlet was named in 1937 for Grove K. Gilbert, a U.S. Geological Survey geologist who visited the area during the 1899 Harriman Alaska Expedition. As Lituya Glacier retreated over the past century, it destabilized the slope above Gilbert Inlet; on July 9th 1958 an earthquake triggered a landslide there that generated a megatsunami, among the largest ever recorded.

Lituya Glacier also flows into Desolation Valley, where it dams meltwater from the Desolation and Fairweather glaciers to form Desolation Lake, which covers roughly four square miles (1,036 ha). This glacier dammed lake has repeatedly released massive volumes of water since 1972, but the August 2020 outburst flood ranks among the largest on record. Over a few days in mid-August the lake released about 17,657,000 cubic feet (499,991 cubic meters) of water, probably through channels eroded underneath the glacier, and the lake water level dropped 200 feet (61 m). This is roughly equal to an hour’s flow from the Amazon, the world’s most voluminous river. Read more here and here. Explore more of Lituya Glacier and Gilbert Inlet here: