Glacier calving – how big are those splashes?

When you’re standing in front of a glacier, it’s usually all but impossible to get a sense of scale – there’s just nothing close to it that you can compare it to. If you get lucky and see the glacier calving, just how big is that splash??

On my last cruise on the Radiance of the Seas, the captain allowed 2 of our large tenders to get closer to the glacier and that gave some degree of scale, as seen in the photo below (keeping in mind that the boat is still about 1/4 mile from the face).

This morning I used my photo editor to get a better idea of how big the splashes can be. The photo below shows what the Anchorage Sheraton hotel would look like at the face of the Hubbard Glacier.