While on a helicopter tour in Ilulissat Greenland we were lucky enough to capture a major calving of the Ilulissat Glacier.
This video was sped up to capture the effects of this 20 minute calving in a 4 minute video.
The glacier is one of the biggest in Greenland and the world. It abuts the ice cap which covers 80% of Greenland’s landmass. It is a UNESCO site and can be visited by helicopter. There were only six of us who witnessed this event.
The edge of the glacier is 500-800 feet tall. Each of these ice bergs weighs hundreds to thousands of tons and are hundreds of thousands years old.
They are the size of skyscrapers and are even taller under the water (as can be seen a few times when they flip). The ice traveled about three miles in the course of the video. The icebergs will arrive in Ilulissat harbor in 6-24 months and eventually make it out into the ocean.