Having escaped death-by-tsunami in Homer, we traveled to the other side of the Kenai Peninsula to the town of Seward. As the crow flies, it would seem to be a simple matter. However, the 700-square-mile Harding Ice Field stood between us and Seward! To get there we had to travel north, then east, then south.
Seward is a small town (population 2,770) and the gateway to Kenai Fjords National Park. While we visited, they were celebrating the Olympic medals of their hometown hero, Lydia Jacoby.
On the day of our arrival, we hiked to Exit Glacier, the only glacier in the national park accessible by car. It has receded dramatically in the past half-decade. Signs posted by the NPS tell you where the toe of the glacier was in various years. It was a dramatic reminder of how fast the glacier has been retreating due to climate change.
As you near the glacier itself, you can feel cold winds (called catabatic winds) coming off the glacier and the ice field.
We had a great dinner that evening at a local spot called the Salmon Bake, which advertises itself (tongue-in-cheek) as a place to find "cheap beer and lousy food." On the contrary, the food was great. We had an appetizer of fresh-from-the-bay Alaskan King Crab. It was super tasty, but expensive (a pound-and-a-half dinner portion of crab goes for $80). As you can see from the picture below it was a classy joint with both beer and wine served in mason jars.
The next morning, we boarded an eight-hour cruise into Kenai Fjords National Park. There were glaciers to be viewed along the way...
...some tidewater glaciers at the far point of our cruise, and lots of wildlife viewing in-between. As you can imagine, it was still hard for us to grasp the immense scale of the landscape, even after having spent more than a month in Alaska.
The coastline was beautiful and dramatic, with lots of rocky outcroppings.
Along the way, we saw sea lions…
…a kittiwake rookery…
…a bald eagle…
...a pod of Dall Porpoises that played in the ship's wake (click to watch the video)...
…and a number of sea otters, including one eating a red sea urchin and another carrying a pup on its belly.
One of the highlights of the trip was watching a young humpback slapping its fin and breaching (see movie below). If you look carefully, you can see that it’s accompanied by another whale (probably its mother). Humpbacks prefer to swim near the shore where the water is shallower, since that's where their food hangs out.
As we got closer to the glaciers, we pulled into a side bay where some small waterfalls were cascading down the cliffs and got close enough to feel the spray (see video below).
Finally, we arrived at the tidewater glaciers, deep in the national park. They were quite dramatic, although we were not able to see any calving. In some places, we could see waterfalls of glacier melt streaming down the cliffs.
Near the glacier, we saw a group of seals that were resting on ice floes.
On our return trip to Seward, we spotted a humpback whale that was feeding by blowing a bubble net to trap a school of fish, then coming up in the middle with its jaws wide open to rake in the catch.
The next day we pulled up stakes and travelled to the town of Whittier. Whittier is a cargo port and a ferry port and was our original final destination before the ferry issues during our Inside Passage cruise. The town was built by the army during World War II to serve as an ice-free alternative to Seward in case of Japanese attacks.
The only way to get to Whittier is to travel through a 2.5-mile tunnel (the longest in North America) cut by the Army during the war. It’s only one lane wide, and shared with the Alaska Railroad, so vehicles queue up in each direction to take turns going through. They change traffic directions every half hour – although, as you might imagine the train always has priority. We straddled the train tracks as we drove. We were warned before we entered the tunnel to “watch for rocks” (roughhewn rock lines the inside of the tunnel) - not a great confidence builder.
We camped for two nights at a city campground with a beautiful view of the bay (called Passage Canal).
The next day we traveled into town to the offices of Glacier JetSki Adventures for our four-hour excursion to Blackstone Glacier on JetSkis. We’d seen this experience on a YouTube video and… how could we not? Our kids would be so jealous!
Neither of us had ever been on JetSkis before, but our guides gave us thorough instructions at the beginning, and the JetSkis were pretty easy to control. The company also provided dry suits to wear over our clothing and helmets with radios, so we were both warm and informed during our trip.
The groups are deliberately kept small; ours was seven riders with two guides. One of our guides had an interesting off-season job as a “snow technician.” She works as part of the ski rescue team and one of her specialties is to trigger avalanches. Imagine being paid both to ski and to play with explosives!
On the way to Blackstone Bay, the wind picked up, so we had to navigate through 1-2’ waves and also some boat wakes. It was choppy, but we still maintained an average speed of about 20 knots. Once in the bay, the water was smoother, and we traveled in long snaking lines making speeds of between 30 and 40 knots.
Around every 20 minutes, we would pull together as a group and take a rest. This also provided some time to take photos.
We stopped by a dramatic waterfall coming down from the icefield in the mountains above.
As we came to Blackstone Glacier, we slowed down to avoid floating ice that had fallen off the glacier. We turned off our engines and sat for about 10 minutes listening to the glacier creak and boom as it moved downhill. We saw some small pieces of the glacier calving off.
On our return trip, we found the winds had picked up a bit more, and the final trip down Passage Canal was a bit hairy (at least for we inexperienced JetSki hands). However, we safely made it back to Whittier, just a bit worse for wear. NOTE: we were both pretty sore for the next couple of days, especially in the legs (from absorbing bumps) and hands (from working the controls while bouncing up and down).
On our way back to Anchorage the next day, we stopped in the town of Girdwood (home of Alyeska, Alaska’s only ski resort) and visited friends we had met when camping in Denali National Park.
We used an Anchorage stayover to resupply, pick up some prescriptions from CVS, and have a few lingering RV issues corrected. Then it was goodbye to that part of Alaska, and we headed north and east on the Glenn Highway. The Glenn Highway snakes its way between the Chugach and Talkeetna Mountain ranges. It’s a designated scenic highway and is seemed like every curve in the road revealed bigger and more breathtaking vistas. Since guard rails were absent along most of the way, Jeannette kept her eyes on the road while Doug turned his eyes and camera to the scenery. We had great views of the Matanuska Glacier, which we would be hiking the next day.
We stayed overnight at a campground called Grand View (it had a dramatic setting). A short hike to an overlook allowed us to see the rock formation called The Lion's Head rising from the river, with the glacier in the background.
The campground had a great café, and we dined on freshly made pizza with a gluten-free crust – a specialty of the house.
The next day we took part in a guided hike on the Matanuska Glacier, which is more than 30 miles long and is one of the more accessible glaciers in Alaska. Several companies offer guided hikes; we chose Nova Alaska Guides based on a recommendation from travelers we’d met on our JetSki tour.
After signing multiple waiver forms, we received helmets and crampons for our shoes. Our group was small – just the two of us and a family of three from South Carolina – so we were able to take a nice leisurely pace and ask lots of questions of our guide Drew.
Although you can see the white ice of the glacier in the distance, much of the grey gravel field in front of it is also glacier, just covered by a thin film of rock. As the glaciers move downhill they grind away at the mountains, and the ground rocks fall onto the sides and top of the glacier. By the way, when a glacier retreats or melts away, the rocks are dropped in place - that area is called a moraine.
Our guide poured some water on the moraine to wash away the thin layer of grey rock and exposed glistening black ice underneath.
We took a circuitous walking route, and were aware of more and more ice underneath our feet. We stopped and strapped on the crampons provided by the guide company.
We started seeing crevasses and holes where melt water was pouring down into the glacier.
All-in-all, we hiked for a couple of hours total, reaching the white face of the glacier, and stopping for pictures.
On the hike out, Drew talked to us about ice axes and ice screws which are used by ice climbers to secure themselves to the glacier. He had both with him and we were able to try them out. The ice screws are hollow and were particularly fun to play with.
We returned safely to our car and drove to dine at the nearby Sheep Mountain Lodge, which had been recommended by our glacier hike companions. It did not disappoint.
We’d been having adventure after adventure in short order, it seemed, and we decided to move to Valdez for a few days rest (plus a bit of adventure, we hoped, while we rested). More about that in our next blog post.
What a trip. Just amazing to see nature and animals/mammals. And look at you two on jet ski