In this article, experimental tests were conducted to study the characteristics of the surge wave and its effects on the failure process of a glacier dam. The results indicated that two obvious surges were monitored by pore pressure transducers (PPTs) when the blockage slid into water. The surge wave attenuated exponentially near the plunging location and then attenuated slowly when it propagated downstream. When the surge wave reached the glacier dam it climbed up along the dam and flew over. Sequential propagating surges exerting on the dam were one of the main factors causing the failure of the glacier dam. The failure mechanism of glacier dam triggered by the surge waves under different initial water supply conditions was primarily analyzed in this article.