"Don't take another step!" I said to Tyler as we started to advance on the Glacier...
Thursday night I went camping out by Portage with Tyler Willis, a guy I met the night before. Funny how things work out. We had a ton of fun so I thought I'd tell you about it! The drive to Portage is a little under an hour. We really didn't pack much, not even wood or an ax to get some; we just roughed it. When we got there we walked over to the river and the water was completely clear all the way to the bottom. Not only was that amazing, but there were hundreds of Sockeye Salmon swimming up stream, some a vibrant, bright red color. Sadly, they were all swimming upstream to their death because that's a part of their life cycle.
We had to find wood though for the fire because like I said we had none. We scrounged up some wood left over by previous campers at the nearby campsites and managed to get enough to last until we decided to hit the sack. Or... the sleeping bag that is. All the camping gear I had was lent to me by a very friendly person who also let me borrow her Expedition. Lucky me! She even had an air mattress in her gear. I'm typically not one to use those as I prefer getting the "full experience", but this particular night I was very grateful to have one.The areas between all the trees weren't big enough to put the 16x16 foot tent in so we had to set up his tent on the gravel. First time I was ever glad to have an air mattress.
We waited for the sky to get completely dark - which it did about 12:30 or so. The stars were so bright and it was the first time I could really see the stars in Alaska! It has been such a cloudy summer and if it wasn't cloudy I was either working or still in the city and had no way to get far enough out to really see the sky the way I saw it that night. We suspect we even saw Jupiter or some planet - it was way too bright to be a star.
The next morning we got up about 8:45am, ate, packed up and left around 9. We drove to a trail about 20-30 minutes down the road. I had no idea what I was about to see at the end...
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I know the video quality isn't the greatest, but it was amazing. There aren't any words to describe it. You can see the huge amount of snow/ice that was over the river and the river actually dug through the ice, creating a cave. We walked across the creek and went underneath it. The wall of ice was easily 10 feet high if not higher. It was a humbling experience.
We then continued past the end of the trail, onto the rocks and boulders. We climbed/hiked up through the rock field and watching in amazement as the scenery behind and in front of us became more and more clear. On three sides of us, mountains jetted into the sky and waterfalls spewed out of them feeding into the river below us. While we were hiking, Tyler said to me "You know, I enjoy going to cities and seeing the amazing things man has done, but I enjoy more going out and seeing what God has done. God kicked our butt!" I laughed, but it got me thinking how true that is. We really do have something quite amazing to appreciate and there are places like this all over the world.
There were several levels to the hike. First you had just the rock, then rock on top of snow and then pure snow, then... glacier! That's right, we walked right up to ice that was millions of years old. Such an awesome experience. Then, I realized where those waterfalls were originating from! I bent down and touched the melting glacier emitting small little trickles of water. These small trickles were fusing together to make something bigger than themselves. I don't have any pictures of the large glacier in front of us as both of our phones died on the hike and we didn't have a camera. We were very unprepared. However, I saw that the enormous glacier in front of us was slowly melting, sending water downhill and continuing the flow of the river that creating the ice cave. It really was a "waterfall effect"! We hung out at a particular spot on the glacier for a bit, looked at some scenery through binoculars and caught up on our H2O intake. Then I asked if he wanted to continue on up towards more of the glacier. Tyler agreed and I took about five steps and then stopped. "Don't take another step!" I said. Something caused me to stop - the sound of running water beneath my feet. I looked down and saw that I was right on top of a glacial crevass and that the only thing keeping me from falling in was a piece of ice, I estimated at a foot deep, if that. Tyler and I slowly stepped away and then went backed and looked at how deep it was at a little safer angle, which still probably wasn't very safe. I couldn't believe how close I was. Had I not heard the water, what would have happened? Would I even be writing this right now? It was scary, but such a cool feeling at the same time. We have to respect nature and the fact that nothing is 100% safe and to always approach it with caution, but just enough to still enjoy it. On the way back down, I heard another sound of running water beneath us! This time we were at a much safer location. The water was rushing underneath all the rocks we were climbing over, feeding into the river. It was really neat. This is a picture of me with my back to the lake that the Portage Glacier rests by. This was a different glacier all together. The one we were by was right behind Tyler as he was taking this picture. Unfortunately, right after this one his phone died and we didn't get a single picture of the glacier we walked on.
Hope you enjoyed the post and pictures. I plan to post more pictures once I get them from Tyler.
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