Portage Glacier in Springtime

A few weeks ago something we thought would never happen, happened. Our friend Michi came to visit Alaska. Not only is that weird (she is pretty adamant about never every hiking anywhere) but she came up in winter, and without her husband Jimmy (Jimmy loves coming up to Alaska). So Maree and i freaked out. What would we do with someone who doesn't like to go hiking?

It turned out we didn't have much to worry about. On Sunday i didn't have to work so we drove down to Portage Lake and the weather was so spectacular you'd have to be a real jerk not to enjoy yourself. I had never walked across the lake and since it was perfectly flat i wondered if i could convince Michi to walk over to the glacier. After about 5 minutes i could tell that would never happen.

I thought Michi would die in the cold since she is so tiny, but somehow she got hot and threw off her coat.

She took a picture of a weird little ice obelisk then she became obsessed with the dogs.

It was a super nice day, the third day of spring i think.

We hung out on some little bergs and fed treats to the dogs.

Portage Glacier is no longer visible from the visitor center, or almost anywhere from the road. this is the first view you get as you round the mountainside (at least on the trail i was on).

It was so nice that day that i returned the following day with just Kona in order to go over to the glacier. I had thought it was only two miles but it turned out to be 2.8 miles one way, to the midpoint of the glacier. Good thing i didn't make Michi walk 5.6 miles.

The lake was perfectly flat, easy walking until we got near the toe of the glacier. At that point the lake became broken up with some icebergs anchored in shattered plates of surface ice. This was very interesting because just a week prior we had gotten over a foot of snow. The shattered ice plates were broken right through the fresh snow, and the icebergs were snow free, which led me to believe all the destruction had occurred within the past few days. The leads between the plates were clear ice and not too thick. The surface grew more chaotic the closer we got to the highest part of the ice wall, so i imagine that was where the calamity happened.

Something had busted up a large portion of the lake right through the fresh snow. The water in between the cracks was solid enough to step on, but it didn't look too thick. It got worse as you got closer with some plates of ice riding up over each other and the gaps between growing larger.

The side of the iceberg that shattered the lake when it fell over.

We backed off of that area and walked farther east where the lake still retained some form of stability. A guy came by on a dog sled and used Kona to motivate his own dogs. Someone ventured closer than i was willing to get amid the clattering ice for some pictures of, i assume, the sun making the thin blades glow.

Some really cool shapes along this area. These rocks weren't even visible when i first moved to Alaska. The ice came all the way down into the water, probably to where Kona is walking.

This is as close as we got to the big wall. I had just watched "The Summit" the night prior (about a bunch of climbers who died on K2 a few years ago), so i was super paranoid on this day about being killed by collapsing seracs. Also, the lake is 500 feet deep under the ice, so if any thing breaks through you are surely a 'gonner.