Tuesday, July 21, 2009

Up to Exit

After getting just a taste of Exit Glacier from yesterday’s short hike, we vowed to do the much longer Harding Icefield trail. This  trail basically parallels the glacier up to its source in the Harding Icefield, through forest, then meadow, then up steep switchbacks to subalpine meadow, then alpine, then to the edge of the miles-wide icefield itself. The National Park Service recommends “at least 6-8 hours”.

Naturally, we didn’t get started until almost noon :-/.

There’s an interesting aspect to the two-lane highway drive up to the Exit Glacier entrance of the park: signs by the side of the road with numbers on them – years, as it turns out. We finally read, or figured out, that each sign marks where the terminus of the glacier was for that year. In the late 1800’s it was so far down we still had a good 15-minute drive at 50 MPH to get to the entrance. it shows how much Exit Glacier has receded over the last century. It also shows how young the land is in this valley; nothing’s been growing there for more than 100 years because it’s been buried under countless tons of ice. And much of it is much, much younger.

As usual, Connor was strongly against going on the hike. As usual, Sharon prevailed on him to go with us for a little while before heading back to the RV for his real goal of the trip: watching the entire first season of “24” before we left for home.

It was buggy down in the forests, as usual. Not too bad if we kept moving, but god forbid you should have to stop and tie a shoelace. I counted five seconds before I had lots of flies at me. (Yes, I had on 100% DEET bug spray. They didn’t actually bite, mostly, but what an annoyance!) This is about where Connor abandoned.

We also heard about a fair amount of bear spottings on this trail,DSC_0429-1 but they were all in the morning and traffic was pretty high – sitting still you’d see someone about every 5 to 10 minutes – so I wasn’t too worried about it. Soon we were up higher into light brush and meadow, with lots of subalpine flowers.

We decided, reluctantly, to cut the hike short to rejoin the kid so we DSC_0441-1 wouldn’t spend the entire afternoon alone in the RV. (Not that he’d care.) Sharon turned around, and I headed up a bit farther to see if I could get some good photos of the icefield. I wasn’t able to reach the icefield unfortunately, but got to the top of the cliff we were switchbacking, and there was a magnificent view of Exit with the icefield at the top. It was just breathtaking (literally, with the katabatic wind you can hear in the video).

And there were a couple of leaders for a Backroads tour that went up to the icefield, running “sweep” to make sure all their clients got down. Late 20’s, perhaps? Kind of bored with it already. They got our their camera, so I offered to take a photo of the two of them. They declined and said their camera had a special setting for the arm’s length shot. Which they did, and then remarked on how it looked just like all their other arm’s length shots. I literally said, “GIVE me the damn thing!” and proceeded to take a decent photo for them. They headed down then, one ear in their ipods in this magnificent silence, nattering about the people they worked with the whole time. I certainly didn’t have to worry about the bears.

While up there, I shot some video with my little Canon:

…and scrambled back down in about 45 minutes, “Excuse me, excuse me…” so we could get to the beautiful Seward Sea Life Center before they closed. In total, we got about 2/3 of the distance and 75% of the elevation in four hours up and down.

I fell asleep waiting outside the Sea Life Center gift shop.

**********************

My trip photo album will be posted at http://picasaweb.google.com/sean.deuby; I’ll put my very best photos also on http://flickr.com/photos/shorinsean.

Sunday, July 19, 2009

Glacier Wind

Well settled in the oceanside RV park in central Seward, we putzed DSC_0003around on Saturday morning. I spent a lot of time trying to get our  AC generator working, but was never able to. Calling the rental place (Great Alaskan Holidays) and talking to a mechanic, we basically figured our generator has crapped out. Though we were in a “dry” site – no water or power – it wasn’t as much of a hardship as we first thought. We could run everything in the RV except

  • The 120V AC outlets – which means the coffeemaker and other devices that use them. Our main hardship: no recharging computer and camera batteries without bothering a neighbor. Connor was in serious withdrawal because he had no DC adapter to charge his phone and can’t text his friends. 
  • The microwave.
  • The coach air conditioner.

We realized it would have been nice to have unlimited water though; we figured that our showers, even the Navy shower style where you get wet, turn the shower off, soap, rinse off, still used about one-third of our fresh water  supply. So, because we were doing active things like hiking and biking, we’ve been showering and therefore visiting the fresh water station pretty much every day. It’s a bit of a pain, but we liked our small but clean shower over the campground showers. Plus it’s much closer to the bedroom.

Fortunately, we didn’t have a lot planned for the day; our main excursion was to the only driveable entrance to Kenai Fjords National Park: Exit Glacier. Exit Glacier is one of 35 glaciers that come out of the Harding Icefield. Its unromantic name comes from the fact that the party that first crossed the icefield used it to exit.

There are several hikes of different difficulties around Exit. We were coming up late in the day (well, at least by down southExit Glacier at Kenai Fjords National Park standards where the sun actually goes down) so we were looking for a short hike. We took the Glacier Edge trail, which is the longest of the trails at the glacier’s base and took us up alongside one edge (obviously). It was a buggy in the woods, but well worth it at the end! The glacier was beautiful, but there was a side benefit I hadn’t planned for. A katabatic wind blows down the glacier from the icefield, cooling off all the hikers with a fresh breeze. It was amazingly invigorating to me after the warm and fly-infested hike up to the edge. I literally had extra spring in my step.

We had an Alaska-style surprise this afternoon while getting water andAmazingly beautiful animal   gas. We’re standing at the pump at the local gas station, watching our 401K disappear into the tank, when we realize there are eagles literally across the street! Not just one, but five! We drove across the street to a park where we uh, parked, the RV and I ran over to take some more exposures. It looks like the eagles “commute” from these trees on one side of the road about 200 yards to the waterfront. I have to say I never expected to take wildlife photos bracing on top of a gas pump! I took a LOAD of photos; due to the grey skies and low light combined with a relatively slow zoom lens, unfortunately most of them didn’t turn out. But there are a few good ones.

We spent probably an hour and a half situating ourselves to a waterfront spot that opened up, but wasn’t level enough for us to be able to run the propane refrigerator. We ended up driving to theIMG_0376 only lumberyard in the area, only to find it just closing. A fellow that happened to be picking up his friend that worked there offered to   give us some scrap wood from his backyard, so we drove the RV up to his place, played with his dog (a stick-and-ball obsessed German Shepherd like our own) and left with a good assortment of wood. With this we were able to drive up onto about 8” of boards and get ourselves set up. It turns out our new Adam and Hanianext-door neighbors, Adam and Hania, are professional pianists from Canada and Poland respectively, living in Miami,  so we hit it off big time that evening! Among other things, we got to introduce them to their first campfire-cooked s’mores. You can judge their reaction for yourself :).

*******

My trip photo album will be posted at http://picasaweb.google.com/sean.deuby; I’ll put my very best photos also on http://flickr.com/photos/shorinsean.

Friday, July 17, 2009

Seward and Kenai Fjords

After spending the night in Talkeetna, we made the long drive down to Seward, ultimately spending three days and four nights there. Seward’s the largest08:30 rush hour in Seward town on the east side of the Kenai Peninsula. This actually isn’t  saying much, as there are only two other towns of any size – Whittier and Valdez – anywhere in the area, and it’s a long drive around the mountains to get to them.

Our RV park and its view Seward is situated at the head of Resurrection Bay, an amazingly fertile part of the ocean. It used to be one of the biggest commercial fishing ports in the world, and it still does pretty well. Now however, much of its income is provided by tourism for its beautiful surroundings. It’s a cruise ship transfer point, where ships touring the Inside Passage up from Seattle or Vancouver debark their passengers to ride trains to Anchorage or Fairbanks.

While they’re there, some cruise passengers take a side excursion to Kenai Fjords National Park. This park has only one section accessible from land, Exit Glacier (more on that later). For anything else you must go out into Resurrection Bay by boat. The dominant tour operator is Kenai Fjords Tours, and they do a really good job. Elizabeth and Connor We took a half-day kayak / half-day boat tour with them. We hopped on a KFT fast catamaran, the Aialic Voyager (look that word up), to get us to the kayaking area on Fox Island out in the bay. It was a low, overcast day in the Bay, but it was just fine for us. (Remember it was well into triple digits in Dallas.) Sunny Cove Kayaks actually did the tour, and we were a small group: Our three and a father and his two daughters, and our guide Tom. Sadly, Connor ended up with the cute high school senior. He manfully faced up to his fate.

DSC_0100 We saw lots of seabirds, but – perhaps fortunately – no encounters with the larger fauna of Resurrection Bay. Tom said that the local pod of orcas (killer whales) would occasionally beach themselves on the exact same gravel beach on Fox Island that we launch from to scratch themselves. Wouldn’t that be a sight! Part of me would have loved to have seen orcas out kayaking, but that primitive part of me, the back of my brain, would have been screaming bloody murder. We also saw LOTS of bald eagles; we became pretty good at spotting them by looking for those white heads in the green fir trees. We kayaked a total of about five miles in the bay, an easy excursion because to our (and the guide’s) surprise the water wasn’t even very cold.

As part of the excursion we had lunch back at Fox Island: freshThe solitude of coastal Alaska salmon or prime rib. Are you kidding? I took the salmon! It was good but just a little bit dry in places, as it was served in chafing dishes big-hotel-conference style to our little group…and about two hundred other people from other KF boats! Suddenly we were surrounded, swamped by people, 99% of which were from cruise ships. It was a rather jarring welcome back to civilization. It was at least an international crowd, so that was interesting.

On the boat trip back to Seward, we saw sea lions, humpbackDSC_0064 whales, Dall’s porpoise, and sea otters. It was pretty busy out there!

********

My trip photo album will be posted at http://picasaweb.google.com/sean.deuby; I’ll put my very best photos also on http://flickr.com/photos/shorinsean.

Thursday, July 16, 2009

Flightseeing Denali

Our big adventure on Wednesday was a flightseeing tour with Talkeetna Air Taxi (TAT) around Denali, including the summit and a glacier landing.

Talkeetna’s a pleasant little village, very tiny. Basically one main street and a couple of side streets with a few shops and restaurants. It was a pleasant change of pace from the touristy Denali park entrance. Talkeetna’s biggest claim to fame is that it’s the departure point (and hopefully, return) for almost all the Denali summit expeditions. They fly them in and drop them off on a glacier at 9,000 feet. As I said, Denali is BIG. The pilot said their saying is “A week’s walk or an hour’s flight”. Expeditions on foot run into logistical limitations too; they have to carry supplies for the trek up to base camp, and that limits how much they can carry for the actual climb. (Incidentally, this is also one of the big challenges for expeditions to K2. K2 is the world’s second highest mountain and almost without question the deadliest. It’s so far up into the Karakoram it’s more than a week’s trek up the Baltoro Glacier. The expeditions must use large teams of porters to carry all their stuff.)

In Talkeetna I was fond of the West Rib Bar and Grill, a casual place Ice Axe Strong Alewhere the food is pretty good, the climbers hang out, and the beer is excellent. This is where I had that Ice Axe Strong Ale at 9.2% ABV.  It was good, but not nearly as memorable as many Belgians I’ve had at 8%. I did taste the beer again in Anchorage at the Glacier Brewhouse, who make it for West Rib. They call it simply “Glacier Blonde”. They also sold really tasty caribou dogs (hmm, doesn’t sound quite right) on the street.

IMG_0327 I just heard today that there was trouble in Talkeetna for the annual Moose Droppings Festival. A large crew of rowdies came in and basically overwhelmed the town and filled the street with people. One person went into the Susitna river right next to town and was never found, and another fell from a railroad bridge. It’s quite a shock to imagine this happening in a sleepy little town just a couple of days after we left, whose population seems to normally be doubled only by gray-haired tourists debarking from cruise ship tour buses.

But – the flightseeing trip was fabulous. I sat in the back of theDSC_0061 plane and took photos and videos from both sides. Hundreds of photos; it will take me a while to get through all of them and cull the very very best. For example, as we passed the summit I simply hosed it down with the auto shutter in hopes of getting some climbers up there. I definitely got some nice ones of climbers enroute to the summit though!

What really made it special was a landing on the Ruth Glacier, high Landing on the Ruth Glacier up in the Denali massif. The landing and takeoff was exciting, certainly (even my son reluctantly acknowledged it was okay), but actually being out on the quiet glacier in the pulverizingly bright sunlight, mountains all around was, was really an experience.

When I was younger, I was captivated by a Galen Rowell photo of Concordia in the Karakoram. Concordia isn’t a town; it’s simply a place where the Baltoro and Godwin Austen glaciers meet and flow down to their terminus. But around you are like 10 or 12 of the highest mountains in the world including K2. It’s a stupendous photo, and landing on the glacier gives me a little bit of an idea what it must be like there – without the arduous trek and existence at 18,000 feet.

My trip photo album will be posted at http://picasaweb.google.com/sean.deuby; I’ll put my very best photos also on http://flickr.com/photos/shorinsean. I have over 1500 photos to choose a few from, so it’ll take a few days!

Wednesday, July 15, 2009

Into the Park

We had reservations for the 7 AM shuttle bus into the park, so even taking advantage of our three hour jet lag it was a bit of a scramble to get there on time. Fortunately, the bus was about 20 minutes late. No, they aren’t owned by an airline; the buses will stop for wildlife viewing. You’re encouraged to shout “STOP!” and the driver will screech to a halt. Then it sounds like the White House press room with all the cameras going off! So, the buses often run a bit behind.

It was a cool and pleasant – but dusty – drive to Eielson Visitor Caribou at Denali National Park Center, punctuated by our animal stops. Thanks to Mike Longfellow for letting me borrow his 70-300mm zoom with image stabilization, or 90% of my animal photos would have come to naught.

My favorite stop on the way in was Polychrome Pass, so named for Polychrome Pass. Note the bus on the narrow road. the type of rocks in that area. Very colorful, and exciting too – the pass is carved into the cliff face with no railings, and is just barely two buses wide. The mountains of the Alaska Range were visible across the valley, and in fact a stunning photo from this very place was featured on Bing’s home page not more than a few weeks ago.

To our delight, when we got to the Visitor Center the smoke from DSC_0154 much of the northern wildfires had cleared AND it was an otherwise clear day (it’s said that Denali is only visible about 30% of the time through the clouds that form around it). It was just terrific being out there, and a reminder of how BIG the mountain is and how small we are. There two peaks adjacent to Denali, and the most insignificant of them is the same height of the mighty Rainer.

As I mentioned, on the return trip we hopped off the bus at both the pass and a drainage just west of it that allowed us down into the valley a short distance. As I’ve always said it makes a HUGE difference to get out and away from the masses (though the masses were quite small in this case) to have a sense of what the place is really all about. Unlike any park in the lower 48, Denali really is Wilderness punctuated by little dots, little outposts of civilization.

If you are planning to take a shuttle bus into Denali, here are a few tips.

  • The better valley views are on the left side of the bus, as the road generally hugs the mountains to the right. But you might see animals upslope as well.
  • If you get a handicap-equipped bus, if you sit in the back row, you can move to the very back to shoot photos. It’s about a 5 foot area with big windows that probably won’t have anyone else, and you can move back and forth to both sides to shoot.
  • The drawback? The farther back in the bus you go, the dustier it gets. Protect your equipment.
  • No food or water on the bus, so be prepared!

My trip photo album will be posted at http://picasaweb.google.com/sean.deuby; I’ll put my very best photos also on http://flickr.com/photos/shorinsean.

Friday, July 10, 2009

Getting Acquainted with Denali

Since we’d given ourselves in this trip a little time to look around (rather than simply dash from place to place), Monday was a day to reconnoiter the Denali park entrance and its trails.

Alaska has two-thirds of all the national park land in the nation, and IMG_2664 most of it is deserted. Just chartering a plane to get to some of these places costs as much as most people spend on an entire vacation. Denali National Park is one of the most accessible, but it’s still vast: 7400 square miles. Other than the buildings at the park entrance, and the Eielson Visitor Center 62 miles into the park, there are only a few other buildings. No one is allowed far into the park in their own vehicles, only in buses. Even at that point, Mt. McKinley is still far, far away. And the park service shuttle buses will allow you to get off and on anywhere in the park, so you can go off and hike for 30 minutes or 30 days. Of course, 99% of the relatively few visitors that take a bus into the park actually get off at an unscheduled stop. So of course we got stares when we did it :).

After knocking around the Visitor Center and Wilderness Access Center, we – Sharon and I – hiked up to the Healy Mountain overlook, about 1600 feet in two and a half miles of trail. Great views, but there are wildfires burning free north of the park so it was hazy from the smoke.

Tomorrow is the bus into the park.

Thursday, July 09, 2009

Northward Ho!

In sort of an extreme measure to dodge Texas summer heat, we overcompensated and flew to Alaska for 10 days. It's a long story,DSC_0040 but add bonus Alaska Airline tickets, no Hawaii availability, fluid work schedules, and a dash of teenage angst, shake in a 31 foot RV...and here we are.

Because we left on the evening of the 4th, we missed the usual fireworks - and extreme fluid loss in the 3-digit temperatures - but we did get to see Seattle's fireworks from above as we started on the second leg up to Anchorage. Who knew there were so many local fireworks?

As we flew north to Anchorage, weirdly it actually grew lighter until IMG_2639 it was twilight. We were headed much more north than west. So, even though we arrived at 1 AM and didn't get to sleep until 2, it felt like about 9 PM. And the airport was active, shops and restaurants open, people milling about. We didn't explore the town any, but I got a little of the feeling I experienced in Norway: It's summer, get your living done NOW! You can sleep in the winter.

Of course, even though we'd gotten catnaps on the flights, the three hour jet lag ensured we all woke up after about 4 hours of sleep at 7 AM. This worked out fine as we had a busy day full of tripDowntown Bike Shop preparations: shuttling back to the airport, pickup there by the Great Alaska Holidays shuttle, check-in, intro video, paperwork, loading the RV and unpacking, hitting Best Buy for an emergency notebook AC adapter (my bad), $300 worth of groceries, bike shop rentals and fittings, then FINALLY the 4 1/2 hour drive to Denali. Good thing it never got dark!

The Denali Riverside RV campground is nothing more than a graded The only flattering view of the RV park - and the same one used for their website :-/ wide spot in the Parks Highway road. Not a scrap of vegetation, nothing but dirt and gravel. Its one saving grace is that you back right up to the Nenana River canyon, with the rushing, glacier-milk-colored river right below you. It's quite a contrast between looking out the front of the RV and the back.