Lake George: the self-emptying lake

Alaska photographer Howard C. Robinson presented these scenes of the outburst flood created by Alaska's Lake George breaking through the Knik Glacier. This once-annual natural event has not recurred since 1967. Includes aerial views and footage of cleaving glaciers. (Color/Silent/16mm film).

In notes accompanying the film, Robinson wrote: "One of the most outstanding of Nature's phenomena is Lake George, the self-emptying lake. This has been spoken of and written about as the eighth wonder of the world. Here we bring you a complete year's cycle, with Lake George in the early spring. This is the face of Knik Glacier, looking down the gorge. Each year this glacier slowly moves forward against the rock bluff, forming dams ... As the season goes on, these dams gradually choke off the Lake George watershed drainage ... Now Lake George begins to fill up. As these dams choke off the water, a lake is formed 14 miles long, 2 miles wide, and two to three hundred feet deep ... During the late summer, Knik Glacier starts to recede a few inches a day and this lets the water from above start to cut through the dams ... And there it goes -- Lake George break-up is on, and this tremendous volume of water empties through this gorge in a short period of several days."

This sequence contains excerpts from AAF-11895 -- AAF-11896 from the Michael Wilson - Florence and Charles Van Clark collection, held by the Alaska Film Archives, a unit of the Alaska and Polar Regions Collections & Archives Department in the Elmer E. Rasmuson Library, University of Alaska Fairbanks. See also the Howard C. Robinson collection. For more information please contact the Alaska Film Archives.

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Видео Lake George: the self-emptying lake канала Alaska Film Archives - UAF