INTRODUCTION BY MICHELLE THEALL
Few places on Earth offer the luminous frozen exploration of ice caves like Alaska. An otherworldly blue playground awaits discovery by bundled up hikers, skiers, ice climbers, and paddlers across the Great Land. Melting sculptures formed from the inside out, carved by movement and pressure and changing temperatures, provide caverns of impermanence. Caves collapse, sink, and form anew. Icy rivers lead visitors into cathedrals where celestial light reveals patterns and textures found only in this natural world and only truly frozen for a moment in time. Though images of ice caves might seem similar, no photograph is identical, because each cave was formed under different conditions inside an ever-changing landscape. The color blue is a trick of the eye, caused from dense ice squeezing out bubbles, leaving the blue wavelength of light as the most visible to humans—and creating an artistry of ice for us to witness.