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Day 3 in Alaska
(Tim's Day 1)
May 29th, 1999
I picked up Tim Unsworth, a friend from Minnesota, the previous evening so on Day 3 the two of us did fun things!
It was a wet drizzly day in Anchorage and promised to be quite wet everywhere, but undaunted, we headed out on the Seward Highway south to Seward.
It was so wet and overcast there really was nothing worth stopping for all the way past Portage and up the pass. However, at the top of Turnagain Pass we stopped just to get some photos of the snow covered mountains.
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We descended back into drizzle and more rain, but that did not stop us from getting some nice photos of a river and a lake. I think this is the Kenai lake as we headed to Portage. In Portage it was pouring. We just stopped for lunch, some window shopping and then headed back north to Exit Glacier.
The glacier is so named because it was the glacier chosen to exit the Harding ice field when it was first explored. This ice field is HUGE and takes up much of the Kenai Peninsula. There is a trail which is only 3 miles or so and leads up to the ice field, but this
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Tim and I settled for the loupe trail which leads right up to the glacier. A woman was killed a couple years ago here when she stood against the glacier to have her photo taken and it calved on her. Since that time they pretty much keep it roped off, more as an insurance waiver than a real security measure since it is just a single rope that in many places was absent (small signs took its place) so we were able to get quite close.
A lot of people do not realize how blue glaciers are. This is caused by the compressed ice absorbing all colors and primarily reflecting blue. This color is enhanced by overcast skies. There was a really interesting arch on the top of the glacier. An interesting melt pattern which probably was only evident for a few days.
As we walked around the glacier, you could really get a good look at moraine formation as the advancement and retreat of the glacier resulted in it stalling in one place for a time which results in all the rocks it is carrying ending up in once place. I also got a good photo of a recently deposited glacial erratic. These are large rocks which are carried sometimes miles from where they were picked up and left sitting by themselves as though dumped by a large truck.
I got a photo of Tim posing in front of the glacier and then we started back to the car. Tim made the mistake of listening to my idea of taking the nature trail back. In theory this will return you to the parking lot. This is in theory only mind you... The trail started out with several inches of wet snow. The snow managed to deepen the further we got. This is not a long trail, less than a mile I think, but at some point we totally lost the trail and Tim got first hand experience with the wonderful world of Alders. These are pioneering trees which grow well in glacial deposits. They grow short, generally less than 10 feet tall, and they grow outward. They are a real pain to climb through, especially when they are covered in 2-3 feet of wet snow. We ended up soaked, tired and well, soaked, by the time we got back to the trail. As you can see, the trail itself is rather a snow covered adventure in itself. A nice warm car never felt quite so good...
