Mushing and Paddling....

We have heard a lot about the Iditarod dog sled race as we have travelled in Alaska, on board ship we had Libby Riddles, the first woman winner in 1985. She brought along a couple of dogs and described her adventure. Then as we travelled up towards Fairbanks we met Bill Cotter, another winner of the more than 1000 mile race, held in the dead of winter over a course from Anchorage to Nome that includes some of the wildest and least inhabited country in the world.
This is one of the checkpoints north of Anchorage where the race starts, before it really goes off into the wild. We met some of the dogs there, while Bill himself took some of our party on a ride.

Later we were to meet the family of Susan Butcher, the four times winner of the race. Unfortunately she died of cancer in 2008 at the age of 50, but her family keeps up the tradition, and owns around 100 dogs on the side of the river in Fairbanks.

He lives for his dogs, and with them. They are all kept outside his log cabin, and he demonstrates his prowess for tourists at every opportunity, when there is no snow on the ground he uses a motor-less quad bike as his sled, running ten dogs at speeds up to 20 mph.
By the time we got up to Fairbanks we were pretty exhausted, after eight hours in a bus. Unfortunately one of our cases was soaking wet, so we had to spend time washing the clothes within. By the time we had done that and had dinner it was time for bed, and we were pretty b***ered.

It was an early start again the next morning, we had to pack and be out of our room by eight o'clock, as we were to go on a paddle boat up the river. As is very usual in Alaska we were dropped off at a gift shop in the harbour before we were allowed on the boat, in fact we were the first there, just four of us in a 44 seater bus! We thought the boat was just for us.
Anyway in this gift shop was a couple of stuffed moose who had locked antlers, so I couldn't resist snapping them for posterity:

Eventually we were allowed on the boat, along with at least 500 others, There were four decks, so it wasn't too crowded. But it was cold, we started off on the top open deck, but soon retreated to the lower deck when it started raining heavily.

There are some beautiful houses alongside the river, this was the first one we saw and it set the tone of the trip, most had beautifully manicured lawns: but with the climate here they probably only had to cut them for one month a year!

Others however were a little less well looked after, this one was only partly finished. We had heard that if a house was not completely finished they did not pay rates, even if they were living in them, so we saw many houses with one wall not yet clad, probably to qualify for rate relief. What a great idea.

During the trip we had a float plane take off and land over us, I presume just to give us a thrill. As we had sat for two or three hours in Vancouver watching them it was nothing new for us!!

We stopped off at an Inuit village where they smoked salmon, most of our party disembarked to be shown round the village and receive the usual advice on what to do if confronted by a bear......

This is a fish trap, it is turned by the fast flowing river, and as the salmon travel up stream to spawn they are lifted by the vanes and slid down into a box. Clever stuff eh?

They keep reindeer too, which is a close relation of the caribou. This lot were grazing on the riverbank, brought out specially for us to get a photo.......
After the trip we had a great lunch of Miner's Stew, (along with the other 500), then made our way back to the hotel where we sat about until it was time to make our way to the Airport.
Now we are in Toronto after a seven hour flight via Chicago, and a five hour time difference. So we are pretty exhausted, and the fact that it is over 30 Celsius here doesn't help!

The Denali "Express"

We had to move on again the next day, to Denali Lodge. This time by train, but not exactly express. It was however very comfortable, we sat upstairs with scenic windows, we had never been on a train quite like this.

As all of Alaska Railways are narrow gauge, 3ft, and as most of the lines have to follow the contours of mountains or the sides of lakes and rivers some of the bends are quite severe, meaning quite slow going most of the time.

It took about five hours to get up to Denali lodge, we were served lunch on the way, which was pleasant. Again the views were quite spectacular, bur there was a distinct lack of animals.

 At one point we passed over Hurricane Gulch, a bridge standing about 300ft high with a great view of a glacier fed river being joined by a clear one below us.

The bridge was a massive steel cantilever construction, with a wooden roadbed, the two rails in the middle were the running rails, and we could see through the sleepers to the gulch below.

Unfortunately it rained much of the way, making it difficult to take good pictures, but as you can see above, it was very comfortable. We were served drinks by the guy in blue, and although we could have had our meal at the table, we chose to go down into the dining room for ours, to be joined by two new lady friends or ours, Rosemary and Sue. They had been in the next cabin to us all the time on the ship, but we hadn't taken a lot of notice till we met them on the journey north.

Anyway, eventually we arrived at yet another one horse town called Denali, where our lodge was located. The town itself had a multitude of gift shops, and businesses promoting various recreational opportunities, but just one saving grace, a Subway!!!! I had felt very deprived since leaving Vancouver, so I took the opportunity of slaking my craving as soon as I could!

The lodge was literally across the road from the village, and was larger even than the McKinleylodge we had just left. This one had five or six restaurants, as well as other amenities, but unfortunately we were only there one night, so didn't get the chance to try them all out.
The following morning at 7 am we were scheduled to go into the park for a five hour trip, on a 'school bus'. A wee bit primitive it was, but reasonable, no loo though.

We did get to see a cow moose on the way in, grazing about 100 yards from the road. There was a young one nearby, but not near enough to catch with the camera.

We were stopped as we entered the park, we had to report the number of bodies on board, I think to make sure we didn't leave anyone behind! We had our usual lecture about what to do if we came across a bear, for about the tenth time, I am an expert now....

Anne and I are now officially thirty per centers - we are two of the very few who get to see Mount McKinley (Mount Denali, The big One, whatever you wish to call it but Obama has officially changed its name to Denali now) Most of the time it is swathed in cloud, at 20,000 feet it has to be a very clear day before you see it. If fact, before we left, and before the next crowd came along it had vanished again, So were we lucky?

In this area we are quite high up, above 2000 feet, and it is officially called Arctic Tundra. The trees here are squat, and fewer than below, much of the ground is covered by bush about three or four foot high. Quite different from the lower areas where the trees grow a little spindly but thick on the ground.
We had talks en route from the parks department and from an Inuit girl who spoke of the various tribes in the area, and their lifestyles before the western invasion.

On our way out of the park we came across this caribou sauntering up the road, his antlers were superb. They grow these in about ten weeks each year, before the rut, and their calcium becomes so depleted as a result of the massive growth that their other bones become brittle, and they are likely to break legs etc. This guy was still in velvet, but almost ready to shed it. He will be looking for his harem soon.
After lunch, (Subway of course!) we had to re-bus for the three hour trip up to Fairbanks, we seem to be forever on the move, never getting a chance to rest.

College Fiord

Another day- more glaciers. But some of these are huge. Each one is called after American colleges, and the biggest is Harvard Glacier, which is just adjacent to Yale, which is to the right of this photo.

Harvard is so big that my wide angle lens could not take it all in when we got closer, our captain took us to within half a mile. It is three miles wide, about 300 feet high, more than three times taller than our ship. We can see it running back for twenty miles, and it really runs much further.

We watched as Harvard calved, sometimes tons of ice disturbed the water below, then floated gently close to the base, as there is virtually no movement of the water in this end of the fiord.

This is the East end of Harvard, piles of ice which has fallen from the face have built up at the base of the ice cliff.

The powdered rock and boulders that the ice has picked up on its long journey to the ocean show well on this picture, from time to time sections trickle down into the water below.

Just a short distance away, separated by a small hill, lies Yale Glacier. With the same source as Harvard, it can be seen here stretching back many miles. All of these glaciers were named by geologists who visited the area many years ago, most after the colleges they attended.

This one is Smith Glacier, flowing from the same icefield, which has never been named. This one looks really decorative, with the rock stream down the centre.

All the time we were in the fiord looking at the glaciers, our naturalist/ geologist Jules was describing the scene from the bridge by the public address system,  and giving us details of the background to these phenomena. We have attended several of his lectures, which he always starts with "Good Morning, Class!"

This is an Alpine glacier, in that it does not reach the water below, and this photo clearly shows the bowl it has carved in the rock, from when it did. Meltwater from the glacier tumbles down the exposed rock, over the moraine below. It is some years since the ice receded, as witnessed by the green growth on the lover slopes.

Otters playing in the near freezing water of the fiord

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Ancient Ice

Glacier Bay: what is now an inlet some 65 miles long was a glacier itself some 250 years ago. Now it has retreated leaving behind a series of smaller glaciers.

This one is Margerie Glacier, arguably the most impressive of all, and one that has not retreated for many years.

It is some 20 miles long, what we see at this end is 250ft high and a mile wide.

It is constantly calving, it travels at a rate of 6 feet a day, and we witnessed a few of its smaller ice falls as we sat there for almost an hour.

This detail shows the rock and ground up rock that the glacier carries with it and deposits as a glacial moraine in the waters below. Just above the darker lines you may see that the ice is blue, this is caused by the filtering out of the other colours due to the pressure of the ice that is completely free from air.

This cave was made by a collapse that we just missed, you may see the floating ice in the water, a tiny proportion of that which has just come down.

Immediately adjacent to Margerie Glacier is the Grand Pacific Glacier, even larger than her sister, but carrying much more rocks and other detritus giving it the appearance of a cliff face. But it is all trapped in ice, and probably contributed more than other glaciers to the carving out of Glacier Bay over the millennia.

As I noted earlier, the whole of Glacier bay was itself a glacier as recently as 1780, perhaps this may will show you how it has retreated over the past few centuries. From time to time it comes a little further down, but generally it is retreating.

George Vancouver was the first to see this area in 1795, at that time he was only able to travel 5 miles up the bay.

The Lamplugh Glacier also protrudes into the Bay, and is one of those that is now longer than it was in the middle of the last century and still growing, but glaciers all depend on winter snowfall at their source so things can change over a century. This glacier comes from the Brady Icefield, some 50 miles inland. This field gives birth to at least eight glaciers, falling in all directions.

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One of these is the John Hopkins glacier at the end of the inlet of the same name. There are more than ten glaciers which reach Glacier Bay, with many more in the mountains above that send their melt water down.

As a result we can see changes in the water composition, here there is salt water alongside glacial silt water, quite a change in colour. Some of these glaciers, for example the Grand Pacific, deposit muddy water into the bay, which settles out in the calm waters.

The waters here are very deep, the glacier which formed the Bay was up to a mile high, and carved out the basin below us along with the mountains at either side. This stream appears to come all the way from the top of this mountain, probably from another glacier.

Our captain revolved the ship several times so that we could all get good views from our balconies, and this cheeky bird landed on the next door balcony and took a good look at us!