Superlative · glaciers & ice
The 11 Most Beautiful Glaciers & Ice Landscapes on Earth
11 places · every one real, mapped, and worth the trip
Ice is the great sculptor of the planet — grinding valleys, calving icebergs into still fjords, and glowing an impossible blue where the light sinks deep into ancient, compressed snow. The world's glaciers and ice fields are among its most awe-inspiring and fastest-changing landscapes.
This is our editors' pick of the most beautiful glaciers and ice landscapes on Earth, from the Andes and the Alps to the Arctic and Antarctic. It isn't a strict ranking, but each entry is a real, mapped place with an honest guide to seeing it — while it lasts.
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Perito Moreno Glacier The calving giant
Los Glaciares National Park, Santa Cruz, Argentina
A vast, advancing glacier in Argentine Patagonia whose blue wall crashes into a lake before your eyes, watched from boardwalks a stone's throw away.
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Jökulsárlón Glacier Lagoon The iceberg lagoon
Vatnajökull National Park, Southeast Iceland
A glacial lagoon in Iceland where luminous icebergs drift toward the sea and wash up like jewels on a black-sand beach.
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Aletsch Glacier The Alps' longest
Valais, Switzerland
The greatest glacier in the Alps, a 20-kilometre river of ice curving beneath Switzerland's high peaks, a UNESCO World Heritage site.
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Ilulissat Icefjord
Ilulissat, western Greenland
A UNESCO fjord in Greenland choked with colossal icebergs calved from one of the fastest-moving glaciers on Earth.
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Vatnajökull Ice Caves
Southeast Iceland
Electric-blue ice caves carved beneath Europe's largest ice cap in Iceland, accessible only in the deep of winter.
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Jostedalsbreen
Vestland, Western Norway
Mainland Europe's largest glacier, spilling blue arms down into the green valleys of western Norway.
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Columbia Icefield
Alberta & British Columbia, Canada
The largest ice field in the Rockies, feeding glaciers you can walk onto along Canada's Icefields Parkway.
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Karakoram & Baltoro Glacier
Gilgit-Baltistan, northern Pakistan
A 63-kilometre glacier highway through the greatest concentration of high peaks on Earth, the route to K2.
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Pasterze Glacier
Hohe Tauern, Carinthia, Austria
Austria's longest glacier, curling beneath the Grossglockner at the end of a spectacular high alpine road.
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Antarctic Peninsula
Antarctic Peninsula
The most accessible corner of Antarctica — a coastline of tidewater glaciers, blue icebergs, and penguin colonies.
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Churchill Waiting for the ice
Churchill, Manitoba, western Hudson Bay, Canada
Hudson Bay freezes and thaws completely each year, and on that annual sea ice the polar bears of its western shore depend entirely.
Glaciers reward patience and good light — many glow bluest under overcast skies, and the ice caves and calving fronts change by the season and even the hour. Several of these are also retreating fast; each guide notes the best time to go and how to see them responsibly.
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