Beneath the icy face of Alaska, a long-standing “conductive fault” may be exposed in the wake of a major earthquake

Scientists at the Alaska Earthquake Center created this graph in which the red dots represent the Dec. 6, 2025, Hubbard earthquake and its numerous aftershocks. The dotted line connecting the Tochunda and Fairweather fault systems represents a potential “conducting fault,” which scientists have theorized about for years. (Photo courtesy of the Alaska Earthquake Center)

A few days ago, the forces beneath Alaska shook people within a 500-mile radius: a 7.0 magnitude earthquake struck beneath the Hubbard Glacier.

The earthquake's main shock and aftershocks revealed something else: a possible fissure across the face of Alaska that had long been buried by glacial ice, a feature that professionals had speculated about for decades.

Before we get to that, here's a review from state seismologist Michael West on the significance of an earthquake of this size:

“We're very numb to the scale in this state,” he said at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, where he works at the Geophysical Institute. “A magnitude 7 earthquake is one hell of an earthquake. If we put that in Afghanistan, it would kill 10,000 people.”

There have been no reports yet of any casualties in the volatile corner of Alaska near the fishing town of Yakutat. Nor in the high country adjacent to the western Yukon or British Columbia.

But some glaciers are now wearing a new layer of fallen rock.

“This is violent,” West said. “Landslides have rocked all over the area.”

The earthquake and more than 2,000 of its aftershocks have caught the attention of scientists who over the years have connected the dots between massive fault systems separated by some of the largest ice fields on Earth.

All these individual shocks are the scientific version of pointillism. This painting technique, developed by two French artists in the late 19th century, features the individual application of dots on a canvas that over time reveals a larger image.

The Dec. 6 Hubbard Glacier earthquake has drawn a jagged line beneath the ice. Some researchers believe it may trace a “conductive fault” between pieces of the planet's thick crust.

These slices in the ground are visible in some cases. For example, the Denali Fault appears across central Alaska as a linear, sometimes ice-filled trench between mountains. and the Fairweather Fault, a northern extension of the San Andreas that cuts through the back of Lituya Gulf. Fairweather was responsible for an earthquake that shook a mountaintop in that bay in 1958, causing a 1,700-foot wave — still the highest wave ever recorded.

A 1958 earthquake on the Fairweather Fault that runs through Lituya Bay shook the mountaintop into the water and produced a wave that reached 1,740 feet on the hillside in the background, felling spruce trees in the rainforest. (Photo by Ned Rozelle)

Looking at records of large and small tremors from the December 6 quake, scientists see a pattern that intrigues them.

“This jagged feature, I like to call it the Mosul Fault,” said Peter Hausler, a recently retired USGS scientist emeritus.

Hossler was so excited about this development that he answered an inquiry while sailing on his 45-foot sailboat in Mexico's Sea of ​​Cortez.

He talked about famous geologists including Don Richter and George Plafker who speculated many years ago that two of Alaska's major fault systems must be invisibly connected beneath large ice fields where southeast Alaska connects to the rest of the state. They had an inconvenience but couldn't get there to check.

“There's all this area between the Tochunda (a specific branch of the Denali fault that ruptured in November 2002) and the Fairweather fault. But it's under the ice, it's high up, and it's dangerous,” Hausler said.

Julie Elliott, a research professor from Michigan State University, was a graduate student at the University of Alaska Fairbanks in 2011 when she studied creeping movement in the area using several high-resolution GPS observations.

In a paper she wrote as part of her doctoral dissertation, Elliott included a model of a subglacial conductive fault, tracing the straight lines of glaciers that scientists had speculated were the likely path of a hidden fault.

“I've seen some initial transmissions of aftershocks and they fit well with my model fault location,” Elliott said. “The geologists' idea that the fault could lie beneath the ice fields was a good idea.”

As more aftershocks emerge, mapping Alaska one point at a time, West is reluctant to declare the latest quake the definitive proof that exposed the Mosul fault.

He – as well as other scientists interviewed – described that part of Alaska as a “geological train wreck.” There, the Yakutat microplate, a thick piece of Earth's crust, slides and collides with Alaska.

Born from tectonic forces beneath the turbulent corner of Alaska near the Hubbard Glacier, Mount St. Elias is 18,008 feet high and rises near sea level. (Photo by Ned Rozelle)

This causes earthquakes along strike-slip faults — ones where energy flows in both directions, like trucks approaching each other on a two-lane highway — such as Fairweather. Over the years, tectonic movement has pushed up some of the greatest coastal mountains on the planet, among them the 18,008-foot Mount St. Elias and the 15,300-foot Mount Fairweather.

“This area must be very complex,” West said.

West believed that the Hubbard Glacier earthquake had already exposed the southern end of a conductive fault, but scattered earthquake signals to the northwest told him there was another, smaller fault.

“This might be a little dirtier than a 50-kilometre-long fault rupturing cleanly.”

Geologists would love nothing better than to shoehorn in the site of the Hubbard Glacier Earthquake right now. Once in that cold, quiet country, they were looking for the same tears along the surface of ice and rock that appeared 200 miles away after the 2002 Denali earthquake.

There are some complications: The Hubbard Glacier quake occurred in fleeting December light beneath a cracked ice field located 67 miles from the nearest fishing town.

“I'm a little disappointed that the earthquake happened during the winter,” Elliott said.

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