A Regular Cruise Stop at an Alaskan Fjord. Glacial Retreat Triggered a Landslide, Then a 1,580-Foot Wave.
A cruise ship full of people sailed into Tracy Arm fjord on August 9, 2025, took in the glacier, took some photos, and sailed back out. Routine stop. Nice views. Twelve hours later, a mountain fell into the water behind them and triggered the second-highest tsunami run-up in recorded history.
The wave sent water and debris 1,580 feet up the opposite fjord wall, higher than the top floor of the Taipei 101 skyscraper, and stripped it down to bare rock. The landslide dumped 64 million cubic meters of material into the water. The only recorded event with a higher run-up was the 1958 Lituya Bay tsunami, caused by an earthquake. Tracy Arm had no earthquake. The mountainside collapsed because the glacier that had been holding it in place for thousands of years had retreated far enough that the rock ran out of structural support, and then it rained heavily, and then gravity did what gravity does.
Researchers find one of these events roughly every 20 years across the last two centuries. In the decade before last, there were two. In the last decade, six. In the days before this collapse, there was microseismicity. Small movements, undetectable without instruments. There were no instruments.
The glacier wasn't the view. It was the thing keeping the mountain attached to the fjord wall.
Read the full story at Phys.org, May 9, 2026
Hot Take: The Gilligan's Island theme is playing and nobody asked it to. Cruise ship, scenic fjord, routine stop — and then the mountain fell into the water twelve hours after the last passenger went to bed. The planet did not get the itinerary.
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