Breathtaking images of ice-caves – PHOTOS

The sheer power of glaciers to carve out new landscapes is well documented.

But less so is their ability to produce stunningly intricate and beautiful scenes beneath deep their surface.

These caves were sculpted by melting ice which formed a stream running through glaciers at Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve in the U.S. state of Alaska.

One of the best known is the Muir Glacier, which is currently nearly half a mile wide.
In the mid-1980s, it was a tidewater glacier and calved icebergs from a wall of ice 200ft tall.
The glacier has gone through a rapid retreat since its maximum position at the mouth of Glacier Bay in 1780, scaling back more than 12km between 1941 and 2004 alone.

It is named after John Muir, a naturalist, who generated interest in the environment and in its preservation in the late 19th century. Since then, explorers have been fascinated and entranced by their beauty.

Glacier Bay National Park is a constantly changing landscape consisting of 3.3million acres of rugged mountains, dynamic glaciers, temperate rainforest, wild coastlines and deep, sheltered fjords.

It forms part of a 25-million acre World Heritage Site, one of the world’s largest international protected areas.