The glacier-capped stratovolcano known as Snæfellsjökull skyrocketed in popularity after Jules Verne wrote about it in his 1864 novel “Journey to the Center of the Earth.” Though he relied on scientific research to shape his writing, Verne’s hypothesis that Snæfellsjökull’s volcanic tubes led to the Earth’s core has since been roundly rejected.

A trip along Grossglockner High Alpine Road (the highest mountain pass in Austria) will take visitors to the edge of the longest glacier in the Austrian Alps. Pasterze Glacier lies beneath the peak of the country’s tallest mountain, Grossglockner, located within Hohe Tauern National Park. The region is known for its hiking, skiing, and cable car rides to take in its beautiful scenery.

Also known as Pio XI Glacier, Brüggen Glacier is the longest glacier in the Southern Hemisphere (outside of Antarctica). Named after German-Chilean geologist Juan Brüggen Messtorff, the glacier covers 488 square miles and extends for around 41 miles from the ocean to the Southern Patagonian Ice Field.

With a name that translates to “Sea of Ice,” the Mer de Glace is France’s largest glacier, measuring over four miles long. The glacier is a major tourist attraction within the Chamonix Valley of the Alps, and features attractions such a manmade ice grotto and the Glaciorium, an exhibit dedicated to the education and history of glaciers.

Located in the Bernese Alps of Switzerland, the Aletsch Glacier covers 66 square miles of the region in ice that dates back approximately 12,000 years. The glacier is about 3,000 feet thick at its source but thins out greatly as it reaches the Rhone Valley. This glacial area is part of the Jungfrau-Aletsch, a UNESCO World Heritage Site renowned for its natural beauty.

Yulong Glacier is located on the snow-covered summit of Jade Dragon Snow Mountain in the Yunnan province of southwest China. The mountain is named for its peaks, which are said to resemble a dragon lying in the clouds. Tourists can visit the glacier via a thrilling cable car ride that carries passengers up 12,000 feet to an observation platform.

Alberta’s Athabasca Glacier is nestled in the Columbia Icefield of the Canadian Rockies, near the British Columbia border. Parts of this 3.7-mile-long glacier can be found in Jasper National Park, where it sits between Mount Columbia and Mount Athabasca. Though the Columbia Icefield is believed to have formed around 240,000 years ago, Athabasca Glacier wasn’t discovered until the 1800s.

George Bird Grinnell was an early advocate for the establishment of Glacier National Park in Montana, where the Grinnell Glacier currently stands. It’s one of the most photographed glaciers in the entire park, looming adjacent to the turquoise Grinnell Lake. The nearby Salamander Glacier is also a highlight of the park.

Located in the Juneau Icefield of Alaska, the Taku Glacier is considered the thickest of any glacier on Earth. Its ice layer measures 4,860 feet thick as of 2019. While being studied between 1946 and 1988, scientists found that Taku was gaining mass by about one foot per year, though its expansion finally came to a halt in 2018.

The Franz Josef and Fox glaciers are part of Westland Tai Poutini National Park on the west coast of New Zealand’s South Island. The park's diverse ecosystem features both lowland rainforests that stretch to the Tasman sea, as well as fast-moving glaciers that carve through ancient valleys. These glaciers flow around 10 times faster than valley glaciers in other parts of the world.

Fedchenko is a glacier located in the Pamir Mountains of Tajikistan that measures 47 miles long, making it the longest glacier located outside of Earth’s polar regions. The glacier also experiences a wide variance in its height — throughout its entire course, Fedchenko drops around 8,200 feet in elevation.

The largest glacier in mainland Europe, Jostedalsbreen Glacier covers almost half of Jostedalsbreen National Park in southern Norway. The park is known for its epic hikes that give visitors direct access to the 183-square-mile glacier. Jostedalsbreen also acts as a natural barrier between two of the longest fjords in the world — Sognefjord and the Nordfjord.

Furtwangler Glacier might be one of the most unique glaciers in the world thanks to its location overlooking the plains of the Serengeti in the East African country of Tanzania. Today, Furtwangler Glacier is just a small portion of a larger ice cap that once covered Kilimanjaro. What is left of the impressive glacier can be visited during a hike to Kilimajaro’s summit, Uhuru Peak.

Like Perito Moreno, Johns Hopkins University’s namesake glacier is one of the few glaciers in the world that’s still advancing rather than shrinking. The 12-mile-long glacier in Alaska’s Glacier Bay National Park was named for the Baltimore university researchers who studied it in the late 19th century. It can only be accessed by boat through the Johns Hopkins Inlet.

Located in southern Alaska near the capital city of Juneau, Glacier Bay National Park is home to a whopping 1,045 glaciers. Among its most famous is Margerie, a tidewater glacier that extends for 21 miles from the Fairweather Mountain Range to the ocean. It’s estimated that the glacier moves about six feet per day, breaking into icebergs as it reaches the sea.

Located in Los Glaciares National Park of Patagonia, the Perito Moreno Glacier covers 121 square miles and is still growing — one of Earth’s few glaciers to do so. It is part of an ice field in Argentina and Chile that makes up the world’s third-largest reserve of fresh water. Visitors can experience the 121-square-mile glacier from viewing platforms throughout the park or up-close on glacier hikes.

Continental glaciers are only found in the extreme polar regions where they’re known to cover vast swaths of land. The other main type of glacier, alpine glaciers, originate high up in the mountains in both polar and more tropical regions, such as the Andes Mountains in South America. The flow of alpine glaciers is reliant on gravity and dependent on slope.

No trip to Iceland’s south coast is complete without a visit to Vatnajökull National Park and its namesake glacier. Due to its accessibility, the glacier is a top hiking spot in Iceland, as well as a popular filming location. Fans might recognize the area from “Batman Begins,” “Game of Thrones,” or the James Bond films "A View To Kill" and "Die Another Day."

Lambert Glacier is both the world's longest glacier and the fastest-moving one. The 250-mile-long glacier is known as an ice stream, a section of an ice sheet that moves faster than the whole. Discovered in the 1950s in the Australian Antarctic Territory, Lambert Glacier flows from central Antarctica toward the Amery ice shelf on the eastern side of the continent.

Alaska is home to more glaciers than any other state in the U.S. — according to the National Park Service, there are 616 officially named glaciers in the state and an estimated 100,000 glaciers in total. The largest of these, the Bering Glacier, is located south of Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and measures 126 miles long and covers 1,900 square miles.