Denali, Anchorage, Seward and Valdez, AK

IS THIS MONTH'S JOURNEY

June 30, 2008

We were told by a native, just after arriving in Alaska, that, if we saw Mt. McKinley while visiting Denali National Park, we should count ourselves lucky. The mountain is so tall; that it creates its own weather conditions. Only 20 % of the time is it visible from anywhere in the state. This was certainly true on our first trip to the park; we didn’t see the “High One” as it was originally named by the Athabascan native people.



Doesn't your indoor cat also deserve a KITTY KAT KABANA?

This park is so large and so amazing; that I like to use the term, “A wilderness paradise of epic proportions.” In fact, it’s a 6 million acre paradise, nearly the size of the state of Massachusetts, with Grizzlies and Moose, Cariboo and Mountain Sheep, Bald Eagles and Ptarmigans, Ducks and Swans, Wolverines and Snowshoe Hares.
There are hundreds of species of flowering plants and trees, as well as dozens of species of mosses, lichens and algae gracing the slopes of this magnificent place. Only plants, birds and animals that have adapted to long, bitterly cold winters and short summers can survive in this subarctic wilderness. Deep beds of permafrost – ground frozen for thousands of years – underlie a great deal of the park. In the summertime, only the thinnest layer of soil thaws to support life.


On my second drive through Denali Park, I thought, today, we‘ll see Mt. McKinley. We’ve seen it in photographs and agree with those who have said its Alaska’s most impressive feature. It’s the highest mountain on the North American continent at 20,328 ft, above sea level. Temperatures at the summit are severe even in summer. Winter lows at 14,500 feet can plummet below -95 F! During storms, winds can gust to 150 miles an hour. The mountain’s core is made up of granite and slate and overlain by ice that is hundreds of feet thick in certain areas. This was our second trip to the park, in a matter of days and weather conditions at that elevation, still prevented us from viewing Mt. McKinley firsthand. However, we still have another opportunity; there’s an area near Anchorage where it can be seen on a clear day.

Anchorage is like any other city in North America, cosmopolitan in every respect from its museums and fine restaurants to its designer outlets. However, what makes this city different and unique is its natural beauty, its gigantic mountains, vast forests and icy glaciers right next door. But there’s something else here, something you don’t find in every city every day and thanks to the native peoples and their belief in leaving little imprint on the land, an untouched quality. By the way, even here in Anchorage, Mt. McKinley still wasn’t visible.

We took a side trip toward the town of Seward to visit a couple of glaciers. The first one was Portage Glacier, which is one of the largest in the Portage Valley. Where today, sits an interpretive center and boat dock, a mere 120 years ago, people stood, touched and walked on a thick bed of ice. However, by the 1890’s due to changing climate, the glacier began to retreat, leaving behind, what is now Portage Lake.

The air was cool standing on the open deck of the tour boat but everyone wanted to be outside, getting as close as possible to the mountains surrounding the lake. Mountains whose sides were once gouged and worn by the glacier, now left bare, except for a few Dall sheep feeding on new spring grass. Plying the water, in and around brash and growler ice, the captain brought the boat to within 300 yards of the glacier. From there we could see clearly this massive frozen blue river, approximately a mile wide by 5 miles deep. It also extended upward 200 feet from the surface of the lake and downward into milky-blue water another 400 feet. The milky-blue appearance of the water is due to glacial silt which is caused by the grinding of rock against bedrock, as the glacier moves forward. Every once in awhile, there’s a sound, not unlike the sound of thunder, as a section of ice breaks off and plunges to the ice cold water below. This process is referred to as “calving”.

We got even closer to another glacier later that same day; this one was Exit Glacier in Chugach National Forest. The hike took about an hour from the visitors centre to the side of the glacier and back again.

It was fascinating and at the same time sad, to stand in this valley beside this enormous ice sheet that’s literally thousands of years old, to listen to it creak as it slips and slides forever forward, towards extermination. All along the trail from the visitors centre and even along the road leading to the park itself are markers showing the position of the glacier at various times in history. It’s always been a natural occurrence, this melting process, as long as there have been recordings but never as fast as what has occurred in the last half century. Each winter hundreds of feet of snow falls high in the mountains and over time compacts and crystallizes adding to the glacier at its source but that’s still not enough. Even though, most glaciers are growing an average of 500 feet a year, in recent years they’re also melting an average of 520.

Our final stop in Alaska is the port of Valdez. An impressive entrance to the town is Keystone Canyon. This opening through the mountain was cut by the Lowe River as it forged a pathway to the ocean. Along this beautiful canyon drive, steep granite cliffs as tall as glass-city towers, guides you as the black-top winds along the river bank. At various points along the route, rivulets of white water from melting snow capped mountains, like flowing veils on brides, descend to the deep blue river below.










Valdez is better known to some as the “End of the Trans Alaska Pipeline, or by others as just a continuation of it.” High in the hills above Valdez harbour, huge storage tanks dominate the landscape, full of crude, still warm from deep in the ground, at Prudhoe Bay. With the aid of the harbour pilot, one supertanker a day on average is maneuvered into the oil terminal, filled to capacity and then led out to the deep ice free waters. There, the long journey begins, carrying oil safely down to Washington, California, and occasionally to Barber’s Point, Hawaii, where it will be refined. However, safe transportation of oil wasn’t always the case, as history can attest to.

At 9:12 on March 23, 1989, the oil tanker Exxon Valdez departed the Valdez oil terminal in Alaska with over approximately 53 million U.S. gallons of crude oil bound for Puget Sound. A harbour pilot guided the ship through the Valdez Narrows before departing the ship and returning control to Joseph Hazelwood, the ship’s master. The ship maneuvered out of the shipping lanes to avoid icebergs. Following the maneuver and sometime after 11pm, Hazelwood departed the wheel house and was in his stateroom at the time of the accident. With Third Mate, Alex John in charge of the wheel house and Able Seaman Robert Kagan at the helm instructions were to return to the shipping lane at a prearranged point. Exxon Valdez failed to return to the shipping lane and struck Bligh Reef at around 12:04 am March 24, 1989. Beginning three days after the vessel went aground, a storm pushed large quantities of oil onto the rocky shores of many beaches in the Knight Island Chain.

According to official reports, the ship was carrying 53,094,510 million U.S. gallons of oil, of which 10.8 million U.S. gallons were spilled into the Prince William Sound. Nearly two decades after the Exxon Valdez disaster, researchers have concluded that the ecosystem has fully recovered.

By the way, for those of you who have never seen Alaska, although it’s so much further north and so much colder than Newfoundland; it bears a striking resemblance in its beautiful wild-rich tapestry, from its grey-slate treeless hills and mountains to its evergreen valley floors, from its roving brooks and rivers to its marshes, ponds, lakes and mile upon mile of white capped seas.

Stay tuned as we take you on the road in British Columbia, Washington and Oregon

K&G, somewhere on the road.