Black Rapids Glacier

Well now, this is supposed to be a blog about Alaska, but it seems like ages since i've had any posts about what goes on when i'm up here. I've got two Alaskan summers of postings to catch up on. The summer of 2009 was spectacular, but in my typical fashion, i'm just going to mention that it was fantastic, and point out that i did tons of cool, spectacular stuff, but i'm not going to talk about it again for months. No, instead, i'm going to start off 3 YEARS ago. Sorry.

This was  really nice campground. Here we were in a miles wide braided river bed covered in flowers. The tents were in the forest directly behind us, and there were only two other sets of campers.

So, one day i decided to take Fisher on a camping trip to the Alaska Range. I had this idea that i wanted to go see the Black Rapids Glacier. It's a huge, long glacier (27 miles) that terminates near the Richardson Highway. It's also called the Black Rapids Glacier, which is way more macho than something like, say, the Anderson Glacier. It became famous in 1937 when it advanced three miles in three months, threatening to destroy the road. It became famous again just a few years ago when a large 7.9 earthquake hit the Alaska Range. The quake split the massive glacier in half where it crossed the fault line, moving the one half 20 feet. The earthquake caused mountains to crumble, creating numerous landslides that buried miles of the ice. Yep, another area of incredible destruction, so i wanted to go there. You can see some pictures from the earthquake here. On that page, the photos labeled "printer friendly" work a lot better than the others.

I  think this is a really cool looking mountain. It looks like two mountains embedded in a great wall. Mt. Hayes is much more prominent when viewed from the north. For a nifty picture story of just what it takes to walk over to and climb a mountain like Hayes, click here.

It's kind of a long drive from Anchorage (7 hours that particular day), but then, it often seems that everything is a long way in Alaska. During this time in my Ranger i discovered that i HATE taking Fisher on a long road trip. I had a bunch of camping stuff in the back and so i had let him sit in the front, but he gets scared at high speeds and he was driving me nuts with his panting and constant movement. I also discovered during this drive that Guava flavored Rockstar poured down the arm will summon bees from thin air causing an instant swarm around you. Next time they can't figure out where all the bees are just pour that stuff out on the ground.

At Summit Lake i took the dog down to the shore so he could get a drink. He worked out a few metric tons of pent up anxiety, going nuts with the open air and all the available sticks. The bottom picture he has dropped his stick and then remembered that he hates to get his nose underwater. A perplexing problem, getting the stick again without using his mouth.

A few more miles down the road and i was sorely disappointed when i saw the glacier. It had receded far from the road, and what was visible was completely buried in rock debris. I wouldn't have been able to go over to it anyway due to a sizable river that was in the way. So i stayed at a nifty campground on the edge of the river and the next day picked a random glacial valley to hike up from the road. There were many to choose from and i picked one that had a short rocky road you could drive up. From there it looked like in the distance there was an ice arch on the top of the glacier that sat back in the valley. We followed a raging river to the mouth of the glacier and sure enough, above the gaping mouth was an ice arch that resembled a natural bridge.

The Gulkana Glacier, maybe the site of a future expedition?

The glacier ended in a huge gaping hole large enough to easily drive a  couple of firetrucks into. The cavern had a half circle shape to it and was cut into the side of a large flat sloping wall. The ice was melting at an incredible rate, you could almost see it moving back, and rocks fell so continuously down the front face that it made entry into the cavern dangerous. Fisher stood right in front of it not understanding where all the splashes were coming from. I had to yell at him to get away from it. I also had to yell just because it was so loud.

 

After looking it up on maps weeks later, i determined that this is the Castner Glacier, with aptly named Triangle Peak up in the smokey air. According to maps the glacier is covered in debris for at least 6 or 7 miles. The ice bridge is visible in both images.

The rocks in the area were very peculiar. They all had a metallic sheen and some large boulders looked like solid metal, with radiator coolant colored pools of water surrounding them. It looked like something from Myst. There was also ice quicksand. I'd heard of ice quicksand existing in Baffin and Ellesmere island, but i'd never encountered it in Alaska. Close to the cave entrance i fell into it, with my brand new hiking boots on. Seriously, i had literally just bought some new boots that week, and this was the first trip i used them on. I hadn't yet decided if i would return them. Filling the insides with metallic sand was going to make it a bit harder to get my money back. Fortunately they turned out to be some of the best boots i've ever owned.

Here Fisher is realizing that the current is stronger than he reckoned. Kind of a large river to be emerging from underground just a few hundred yards away.

You could drive a firetruck in here with plenty of room overhead to spare.

I  convinced the dog to climb up the rubble with me and try to get to open ice. We walked and walked and every time i came up to the top of a crumbling hill, i'd see another about a tenth of a mile away. We walked by big empty mudbowls where clearly a pond or small lake had suddenly drained through hole in the bottom. Eventually we came to what looked like two plates of obisdian lying on mudbank. On closer inspection they were ice windows looking directly in to the body of the glacier. The windows were perfectly smooth and crystal clear. Because they were in the shade i could see detail in the form of tiny cracks and bubbles for several feet down before things faded into blackness. It delivered the weird sensation of looking into a bottomless pit, and made me feel like i was walking on a thin layer of loose mud and rocks covering a giant empty void.

I don't know why this is the only picture of it that i took, but here you can see one of the ice windows. You can also see how all the young Alder trees are growing on top of the glacier, which is apparently covered by 4 feet of loose soil and rock. The ice windows were revealed when a large section of the top soil slid off the underlying ice, probably due to the hot summer. The rocks and mud were actively sliding away while i was there.

Oh yeah, did i mention that the glacier looked like it had beds of gold trapped in the ice? See, i don't just make stuff up. Pretty cool and very crazy looking. If that's really gold then i'm the biggest idiot in the world for posting this. These are the minerals that were responsible for that metallic sheen on the boulders in the area. The quicksand in by boots was the same stuff and trying to get it out of the fabric it didn't really look like gold.

Looking up at the ice bridge from underneath made it clear that i didn't want to climb on top.

After our exploration of the glacier i continued on down the road. Half the purpose of the trip had been to travel down the Denali Highway, a 90 mile dirt road that connects to the paved Parks Highway and parallels the Alaska Range. I completed the trip but conditions seriously deteriorated that day into thunderstorms and thick smoke from fires. So i'll have to make that trip again some day....