After a few really enjoyable days along the Nebesna Road in Wrangell St. Elias National Park we continued our drive southwest toward Anchorage where we planned to meet up with our buddy Kaarle Strailey. Kaarle, a friend from Quincy, has been living in Alaska for the last 6 years mostly based in Fairbanks but within the last year moved to Anchorage to work as Energy Coordinator for the Alaska Center for the Environment. We were really glad to see a familiar face, to have a home base for a few days while we checked out the city and did some work on the van, and to get some tips from Kaarle about the Kenai Peninsula and surroundings.
The drive to Anchorage was stunning even in the clouds and rain. It was tough to drive by the turnoff for Valdez and Kennicott/McCarthy, two areas that sounded really intriguing. We put them on the “next time” list and kept moving on as we knew there was just too much to see. Past Glennallen the Glenn Highway leading to Anchorage offered rewarding views above tree line of the surrounding mountains, the Chugach to the South and Talkeetna to the North with large braided glacial river valleys and lakes below. We stopped to stretch our legs at the Matanuska Glacier and enjoyed a very informative nature trail that creatively outlined glacial processes. From here we dropped into the Mat-Su Valley, the “salad bowl” of Alaska. Palmer in 1935 became the site of an interesting experimental Federal New Deal Program that created the Matanuska Valley Colony. Social workers selected 203 hardy families mostly from northern counties of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota to settle in the area to develop an agricultural economy. While the failure rate was high, many descendents still live in the area. We were sorry to miss the record breaking vegetables showcased at the State Fair in Palmer at the end of August.
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| The Matanuska Glacier |
Arriving in Anchorage it was interesting to find the city, the largest in the state at ~ 300,000 people to remind us a bit of Reno, kind of a diamond in the rough. Some of the downtown area was slightly polished, but everything else was not. The city fell victim to urban sprawl as it developed, though does have some great biking/pedestrian corridors. The first night in town we enjoyed our first good taste of local food and beer at the Moose’s Tooth Brewery thanks to Kaarle! Kaarle lives really close to downtown within walking and biking distance to most things and had a perfect van parking spot in his back yard. We had a great time visiting with him and his housemates over the next few days and really enjoyed cooking in a full kitchen and taking showers!
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| Massive vegetables growing in the parks downtown Anchorage |
For the 4th of July we were glad to be in and around Anchorage especially as we witnessed the mass exodus of RVs leaving the city for the weekend. We did decide to venture out to the town of Girdwood about 30 minutes outside of Anchorage for an overnight to check out the music and craft festival that takes place there every 4th of July weekend. We were sad to miss the High Sierra Music Festival this year and had been doing a lot of reminiscing and so decided a little live music might do us good. The Girdwood Forest Fair was really a mellow little festival with great art and crafts, good music, and incredible scenic surroundings. And it was free!
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| Not quite High Sierra, but what a location! |
The next day we were back in Anchorage to catch some of the July 4th festivities and to begin tackling the van battery swap. We enjoyed a great halibut BBQ feast with Kaarle and friend Ama and fireworks at 11pm. It was just barely dusk enough to see the fireworks display. The next day was spent swapping out our poorly functioning auxiliary battery with a new deep cycle marine battery from Costco. So far it has been working really well…fingers crossed. By Wednesday we had washed clothes and stocked up on food. We had the next week and a half to spend on the Kenai Peninsula before heading back into Anchorage for a resupply, last visit with Kaarle, and to catch up with good Reno friend Mandy who would be passing through.
Our first stop on the Kenai was the southern Johnson Pass trailhead. The Johnson Pass trail was a great introduction to Alaskan backpacking. Being a bit intimidated by the bear and moose environment and unsure of how we would handle backpacking in the mosquito zone it was nice to know that we would be on a trail that was well travelled, fairly open, and had established camp sites, some even with bear-proof food containers. The 23-mile hike made for a great two night trip. We started off skirting the shores of Upper Trail Lake then climbed up along Johnson Creek where we joined the historic Iditarod Trail. At Johnson Pass the open views of Johnson and Bench lakes surrounded by wildflowers, and treeless peaks (some with hanging glaciers and waterfalls) was gorgeous. We lucked out with the weather - didn’t have any rain and the mosquitoes weren’t that bad. While there were lots of signs of bear and moose we didn’t see any. We attribute this to our effective loud calls alternating between “hey bear”, “hey moose”, and the alphabet game. We really had to shift our wilderness traveling modes from the norm of being fairly quiet and hoping to see wildlife to trying to be as loud as possible. That takes a lot of energy! We did get to see some Rock Ptarmigan and lots of wildflowers including: wild geranium, fireweed, dwarf dogwood, columbine, arctic lupine, western monkshood, chocolate lilies, and lots of cow parsnip.
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| Upper Trail Lake |
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| Western Monkshood |
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| Thank goodness for head nets! |
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| An amazing camp! |
Coming out at the northern end of the trail we easily caught a ride back to the van and met some great local folks in the process. We were able to bounce some sea kayaking ideas off of some local folks from Seward who had moved to the area in the 90s to become kayak guides. We had decided we wanted to try a multi-day sea kayak trip with our inflatable kayak and had been dreaming about a trip on Blackstone Bay outside of Whittier, a bay we thought would be fairly protected, had a cool looking island in the middle and was surrounded by glaciers, some likely calving into the water. Alas, they suggested we should do a shakedown trip before attempting Blackstone Bay and recommended kayaking from Lowell Point just beyond Seward in Resurrection Bay toward Caines Head State Recreation Area. The more we thought about it, the better that sounded and we decided to turn that trip into a 3-day trip as we realized we wouldn’t have enough time to try the Blackstone trip without taking a water taxi to get there, and that was a bit out of our buget. They also recommended good free camping along the Exit Glacier road on the way to Seward.
The free camping was excellent and provided a great starting point for checking out Exit Glacier the following day. We had read about a 6-mile roundtrip hike that climbs up alongside the glacier and provides stunning views of the Harding Icefield at the top. The hike turned out to be fantastic and we again lucked out with the weather! The views were absolutely mind blowing and breathtaking! The icefield stretched for miles and miles into the distance before us, a bitterly cold landscape of white ice and black rock extending to the farthest peaks that we could see. Below the icefield, Exit Glacier has been receding at a frightening rate in recent decades. We later learned the glacier receded 25 feet over this last winter and roughly 150 within the last year. It was truly a treat to observe the glacier and the ice field in its present state knowing it will likely experience considerable changes within our lifetime.
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| Exit Glacier |
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| Resurrection River Valley |
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| The Harding Icefield |
The next morning we departed from Lowell Point with a heavily loaded kayak on our maiden sea expedition to Caines Head State Recreation Area. While paddling it was comforting to see other sea kayakers out and to realize the popularity of the route. A stop was recommended at a small beach along the way to check out a waterfall that descends the rocky steep slopes. Beautiful! While there was a great camp there, we decided to keep paddling onto Derby Cove where we could access some hiking trails over the next couple days. Derby Cove was a perfectly protected spot with a great cobble beach, smooth tent pad, and good fresh water source. There was also a public use cabin there that folks had rented out, but other than that we were the only ones camped there for two days. The boat held up really well on our 4-mile paddle to Derby Cove. With a few minor adjustments we would have no problem doing a longer paddle. The only bummer is that some water comes into the boat from the seams when waves break over the bow. Definitely more of a fair weather boat.
That afternoon we hiked to Caines Head proper where there is an abandoned WWII Fort (Fort McGilvry). The fort was established to defend Resurrection Bay, the ice-free deep port, and railroad terminus from Japanese attack. You can take flashlights and walk through what remains of the underground artillery bunker. That was really creepy! You can also see the location of the two 6-inch guns that were mounted on top of the mountain. In the evening we enjoyed cooking on the beach as we watched a pair of sea otters and a juvenile bald eagle also enjoying dinner.
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| The main underground fortification |
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| You can explore what remains of the fort if you have a flashlight or headlamp |
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| Site of one of the 6-inch guns |
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| Cooks Cove |
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| Skunk cabbage |
From Derby Cove we picked up a loop trail the following day that took us to South Beach where there were additional fortification remains and then back up the mountain through beautiful mossy spruce forest, alongside bogs and lots of little waterfalls yelling “hey bear” all the way. We branched off on the Alpine Trail to get even higher and were rewarded with excellent panoramic views of the bay. In the morning we packed and loaded the boat for a return paddle to Lowell Point. The skies were absolutely clear and the wind had shifted which meant we would had a head wind going back as well L, but it was another great test paddle for the boat and it held up again really well minus the slight water seeping in along the seams. Excited now for future overnight expeditions! We stopped at Tonsina Creek hoping to see some Red Salmon spawning but didn’t have any luck. We did however see a harbor porpoise. We enjoyed walking around Seward in the afternoon, scored some great day-old baked goods, and got to meet up with Jen, a National Park Ranger in Seward (the daughter of my Moms co-worker). We also enjoyed eating some great smoked pork sandwiches and burritos at the highly recommended Smoke Shack.
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| Moss covered spruce forest |
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| Some fantastic views of Resurrection Bay...lucky with the weather! |
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| Landing at Tonsina Creek |
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| What a day! |
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| Seward is the starting point for the historic Iditarod Trail |
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| The Seward harbor |
That evening we left Seward and decided to try and find the mysterious “Waikiki Beach” on Kenai Lake that Kaarle had mentioned. He had stayed there with friends sometime ago but could quite remember where it was. We did find it and while there weren’t actually palm trees and pina colladas with umbrellas, it was a magical location – beautiful aqua water surrounded by lush green peaks and a small cascade draping down the opposite slope. There was even a little “beach”. The camp sites were glorious. We thought about boating here, but the winds were pretty wicked and the next day we decided to move onto try and see some spawning salmon in the Russian River.
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| Waikiki Beach |
We saw more fisher folks than salmon. It was amazing to see the hoards of fisher folks lined along the banks of the river. We had heard about the “combat fishing” that occurs this time of year on many of the rivers in the area. There had been very recent bear activity along the river. All the fisher folks carried bear spray or guns, and some even had both. We wondered which you would use first. A guy we met later jokingly stated some would probably throw the bear spray in the air and then try to shoot the can of spray hoping that would do the job. Sounded like a good cartoon image.
We drove from there toward the community of Hope on the west side of Turnagain Arm. We heard about a great camping spot at Mile 13 and also that there was an open mic night in town at the local bar/café. The camp spot was again dreamy - a little cove right on the water. Given the tidal flux that day we were able to witness the bore tide as it came in. Turnagain Arm has the second greatest tidal flux in the world. When the tidal flux is greatest and following an extremely low tide it is possible to see the high tide (tidal bore) come in as a solid wave. It looked to us more like a river suddenly rushing in all at once. It was fascinating. We caught a little bit on film. During this time the tide rises about 1 foot every 8-9 minutes.
In the evening we rode bikes into Hope to get some culture. The open mic featured local singer-songwriters and the venue was a cool old tavern that served as the local bar and restaurant. The event drew folks both locals and out of towners’ from miles around. Hope had great character. It was established first as a mining town and today is home to ~150 people. Riding back to camp we passed two moose and watched a great sunset at about 11:15pm.
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| Hope |
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| Open mic night at the local tavern |
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| Camping at mile 13 |
The following day we spent some time at the Portage Glacier visitor center and hiked up toward Byron Glacier. The visitors center had great exhibits including a nice film about glaciers. Portage Glacier too has receded at an accelerated rate and is not longer visible from the visitor’s center. You must board a private tour boat, hike, or, as we found out later, kayak. We had been told kayakers were not allowed on the lake and came to find out they had changed their rules just this year. That would have been something! Kayaking near ice bergs! It was a little late in the day to begin this expedition, so again we put this on the list for the next visit.
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| Byron Glacier |
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| Portage Lake with icebergs |
We returned to Anchorage by the evening just in time to stock up at Costco and Fred Meyer for the next weeks ahead. Knowing we’ll soon be back in the Canadian land of high food, booze, and gas prices, we definitely took advantage of a stopover in Anchorage. Today we enjoyed catching up with our friend Mandy from Reno who flew into Anchorage and had a layover on her way to Bethel. She’ll be flying out to her research field site to conduct field work over the next week in the Yukon River Delta. It was perfect timing to get to see her especially with news that she and Chet are expecting a baby! Tomorrow we head toward Denali with hopes of securing a backcountry camping permit for a couple night backpack trip this next week. From there we’ll soon be on our way back to Canada and homeward bound with plans to be landing home by mid-August. Time's a flyin’!
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