Ice Caves of Spencer Glacier

The Spencer Glacier is named after a railroad employee by the name Bill Spencer who, like many Alaskans, disappeared "somewhere out there" in 1914. Today the glacier is a whistle stop on the railroad between Girdwood and Seward, but is otherwise not accessible by road or trail, sitting 10 miles up valley.

A "whistle stop" is something the Alaska Railroad developed in partnership with the U.S. Forest Service a couple of years ago. The railroad uses a single powered car with a fuel efficient engine called a diesel multiple unit that can carry passengers and stop over a much shorter distance than a typical train. Another way to get to the glacier is wait until the dead of winter when the world is frozen solid. Then you can take a snowmachine.

The light was flat in the blizzard. I couldn't see any trail details more than 40 feet away.

Skookum Creek filled our vision without warning. It was in a deep snow canyon. We estimated it must be 20 feet of snow. That's incredible for sea level. I couldn't get closer than this without sinking up over my waist. If you fell down there i don't know how you'd ever get out without help.

Patrick was tearing it up in deep powder.

Up valley the snow was much less deep. Here is an open crossing of the Placer River.

On St. Patrick's Day my friend Patrick invited me to go snowmachining with him. We decided we wanted to try and get to Spencer Glacier. The weather was questionable and impossible to judge. The forecast was useless, you could tell they were just pulling stuff out of their ass to cover all the bases. The drive down was great until we got to Placer Creek. There it was blizzard.

We went anyway, and in the flat light we somehow missed the trail up the valley. Instead we ended up going most of the way to Skookum Glacier, below Carpathian Peak. We turned around and eventually found the trail. The timing worked out great because by the time we got to Spencer Lake the storm had somehow evaporated and the sky opened up blue and bright. I wished i had remembered sunglasses. So did Patrick.

Spencer Glacier from the middle of the lake. The cool thing about Spencer Glacier is that it leads directly up into the same icefield that supplies Blackstone Glacier. If you are skilled you can ski up the glacier for 5 miles, cross the icefields, and descend into Blackstone Bay, where you could continue onward all the way to Whittier. If you are foolish enough you can try the same thing on a snowmachine.

The terminus of the glacier.

A cool texture on a serac.

The glacier is known for it's large icebergs at the terminus lake. I've seen really cool pictures of people riding snowmachine weaving between huge blocks of blue ice, so i had been looking forward to that. There were indeed some icebergs on the lake, but they were caked with thick snow from this years crazy winter. Some were completely buried.

A cool iceberg punching up through the lake.

This is the fakest looking entrance to an ice cave that i've ever seen. It looked like a set piece for Empire Strikes Back.

The front of the cave was shaped like a throat. It had a completely flat floor, in several steps. Patrick said it looked like a concert stage.

In the back of the cave there was a cool wall of thin ice that let the sunlight shine through.

On the way back The weather was fantastic and we were able to play around in the powder for a while. Great day overall, and i didn't hurt my post surgery shoulder.

BONUS: OLD PICTURES FROM LAST WINTER!!!!!

I never posted any of these pictures from the winter of 2010-2011, because i really didn't have enough for a blog entry. Then Patrick took me to Turnagain Pass, which is a snowmachine metropolis.

I think this is riding along the top of a twiste esker. An esker is a snaking pile of rubble that originally formed as part of a streambed underneath a glacier.