Anchorage to Matanuska Glacier
(Updated with photos)
Once again, because of an unpowered campsite, I write as if I’m writing in the evening of the day in question, but in fact it’s a day later than that.
We didn’t sleep all that well in Anchorage. I’m not sure why. I don’t want to blame the trains, because there were only about three all night, although they did a lot of tooting because of crossings. Still, we made a prompt exit because we had an appointment.
We had a mental shopping list to get before our appointment. This included gloves for Debbie, a scouring pad, breakfast goods, and American priced beer and wine (before we return to Canada). We were both convinced there was a Fred Meyer (new favourite shop!) on the way out of Anchorage. Navigation onto the main road out turned out to be much easier than anticipated. However, if we’d seen Fred Meyer on our way in, we didn’t see it this time. We carried on regardless, on the Glenn Highway, thinking one of the settlements en route to our appointment would have a suitable shop.
In Palmer, we decided to take a 10 mile detour back to Wasilla, because there didn’t seem to be anything there, and it was the last dot on the map. Just before we took the turning towards Wasilla, we spotted a Fred Meyer. Phew.
The only gloves they had were gardening gloves and mechanic’s gloves, so we left those out.
Scouring pads are not very interesting things, and so they completely slipped both our minds, so we left those out too.
We kept our eye out for shops selling gloves, as we drove out of Palmer, but Palmer Glove Center wasn’t just around the corner, and we carried on our way gloveless.
The scenery along the Glenn Highway is gorgeous, and as we approached the site of our appointment, it became more dramatic. Perhaps the clear weather helped, but to me this was better than Denali.
In Chickaloon, we pulled into King’s Mountain State Recreation Area, to heat up a tin of soup for lunch. It was goldfish soup - but don’t worry, the goldfish were made of pasta. This was right opposite the place of our appointment, a word I have been emphasising in order to spark curiosity and suspense.
We were ten minutes early at Nova Tours’ office. Here, we were booked in for a glacier hike today, and some white water rafting tomorrow. How active of us! It turned out that the office was only for the administrative stuff — paying and signing release forms. We then drove 20 miles or so, through some rather tortuous roadworks. We often speculate on the sheer tedium of being a flag lady (they’re almost always ladies), holding a stop/slow sign at roadworks. Here, we speculated about whether the truly remarkable mountain view compensated.
Right after the roadworks, we drove down a steep gravel road, to Nova’s temporary base (their usual home having been occupied by the road workers). Along with a group of four women from San Francisco, we were equipped with boots and helmets. Our guide, Craig, a graduate in Wilderness Leadership (”Liberal arts colleges, they’ll teach you pretty much anything”) drove us ten minutes to the face of Matanuska Glacier, gave us crampons and walking sticks, and led us onto it.
At first, we were on moraine, piled up glacier silt, with ice underneath. It’s not too pretty. Nitrogen poor, not much grows on it, until it’s colonised by the few plants that fix nitrogen from the air. Once you’re off the moraine, though, it’s predominantly beautiful blue-white ice. Without crampons is would have been very difficult to balance, although a few foolhardy souls were trying their chances (”If you’re gonna be stupid, you’d better be tough.” said Craig).
Soon we were shown our first moulin. This is where water that’s melted off the glacier, and grit carried with it, has worn a hole into the ice. This one plunged down as far as the eye could see, as water poured down it in a spout. Its actual depth isn’t known — it’s not worth measuring since the glacier is dynamic, and moulins come and go. The ice is known to be 5,000 metres deep in places, though. We were treated to the story of a teenager a few years ago, coming to the end of a glacier safety course, who got cocky, slipped into a moulin and was never seen again. After that, we were careful.
We saw more moulins, some large, some small, one of which had appeared since this morning, and a huge crevasse. It was all fascinating, exciting and beautiful.
After that adventure, we wanted to find somewhere nearby to camp. At the office, we’d half listened to some advice about a fully serviced RV site further along the road. We went in search of it, but when we seemed to have gone a bit far and nothing suitable showed up, we turned back, and camped at the Matanuska Glacier State Recreation Area. This is divided into two areas - a day area with a panoramic view over the glacier, and a camping area, with no views at all. It’s very cosy though - we’re in the woods and each site has its own clearing with a picnic table and a fire pit.
As I was tending our fire, a voice called “Anyone home? It’s your neighbour!”. He was a dramatically mustachioed Texan, with a heightened sense of bear caution. He had already asked his other neighbours whether they’d seen a bear, and now he was asking us. When I said we hadn’t seen any, and that our tour guide today believed most of the bears in the area stayed on the other side of the river, he nodded seriously. “Good, good. We should all be safe then.”
We cooked reindeer burgers over the fire, then retired to the van to play Chrononauts (I keep winning - but I’m sure it’s 80% luck), then get some sleep. Tomorrow: rafting!