Category Archives: glacier moraine

Hanging Out

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This morning I am a little overwhelmed by forest greens. Aki and I are walking through a protected old growth forest that is not surrendering to fall. All life has already drained from the line of cow parsnips that buffer the forest from the sea. Atop their dead-brown stalks, the plants’ large flowers have been replaced with circles of seeds. But under the forest canopy blue berry bushes still display fruit on their summer-green branches.

3In a few weeks, scoters and ducks will work the waters just offshore from the beach. But now the sea is empty and only a brace of gulls walk the beach. Aki keeps her nose down, hunting for sign. But we only meet one dog on the walk.

1Around False Outer Point and across Gastineau Channel a remnant of Lemon Glacier hangs above Costco and the state jail. On most days it looks no more remarkable than a snowfield. But there is something about today’s light that turns its ice a pastel blue. In the Alps or even the Canadian Rockies, there would be a good trail leading to the hanging glacier. But here, its just another sign of the warming earth.

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Glacial Ice Cave

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This evening one of Aki’s other humans and I kayaked across Mendenhall Lake to the glacier’s face. Tourists in rented red kayaks meandered their way past us, struggling to get the boats back to the beach. I love being on lake on overcast evenings when the wind drops and the lake waters are gun metal gray.

2The roar of Nugget Falls blends with the complaints of gulls that appear to yell at us from nurseries formed on rock recently revealed by the retreating glacier. We have no problem finding a landing place near the glacier’s face—another sign of the retreat. A well-trod gravel path leads to the mouth of an ice cave. Last winter we needed ice cleats to walk on the cave floor. Today, it is ice-free gravel. Last winter we could wander down at least two tunnels. Today, one has collapsed and we have to duck under a low roof in the main chamber.3

Hatcher Pass

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The whole writing school changed venue for the day. A chartered bus delivered writers and professors to Hatcher Pass, an old mining zone a few miles north of Wasilla. We are above the tree zone in alpine pocked here and there by mining rubble. As if we are back in Aki’s rain forest, clouds fragment against sharp edged peaks.1

The writers and staff soon spread out. Some poke around the remains of an old gold mine. Others go to ground along mountain streams. Me, I follow some writers up to Gold Line Lake, a tern filing the depression left by a melted glacier. The writers are gone by the time I reach the lake, disappeared as if raptured into the clouds. But a family, complete with beagle, infant, and chocolate guzzling pre-teen taking blocks the trail. The baby cries. The daddy promises to bring food as soon as he has messaged off his selfie. The pre-teen whines because there is only trail mix. But the beagle isn’t barking.

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Tern Redoubt

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Information posted on a government sign made Aki and I cut short our planned visit to the moraine. It warned of the presence of a black bear sow with two cubs. The bear had lost its patience with dogs and their humans. No one had been hurt, but I didn’t want to put the bear in danger of assassination if it attacked my little dog or I. Instead we head over to the glacier visitor’s center and walk toward Nugget Falls. This turned out to be a good decision.1

The glacier this time of year is usually a place to be avoided. Industrial tourism buses rumble to and fro, picking up and dropping off cruise ship tourists. Seasonable government employees work crowd control. You can still see the big river of ice but somehow it seems diminished when viewed from within a crowd. This morning it is too early for the buses or the government minders. Even the wind is absent. Without it to ruffle the water, Mendenhall Lake is a giant mirror. Arctic terns temporality shatter the glacier’s reflection when they slam into the lake’s surface after salmon smolt.4

I’m surprised to see the sharp tailed birds. Last week a glacial dam broke, raising the lake to flood stage. In years past, similar floods have covered the tern’s sandy nesting area. But this morning, a half-a-dozen birds fish for young in the lake. The chitty conversation of the terns can be heard over the Nugget Falls’ roar, robin’s sweet song, and the off-key whistle of a territorial thrush.2

Laughton Glacier

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6It’s the last day of writer’s school in Skagway. Students and teachers, including Paul Theroux are in a White Pass narrow gauge railway carriage that rattles toward the Laughton Glacier trailhead. The conductor has stuffed all the writers into one carriage where the sound of thirty or forty conversations competes with the grumbles of the old carriage and the disembodied voice of a tour guide giving the railroad’s history.  5

Last night rain soaked the trailside forest but now we have to squint to the morning’s sunshine while disembarking. Conversations began on the train continue as teachers and students start up the trail, joined by a couple from Galway who decided to follow us to the glacier rather than continue on the train to it’s terminus at Fraiser, British Columbia.1

I hang back, letting everyone pass, until all conversation is being drowned out by a glacial river in a hurry to reach saltwater. The river also blocks out all birdsong. If a raven is scolding me, I can’t hear it. The forest plants aren’t steaming in the sun. That time has passed. But fat raindrops still cling to plantain plants and dead-brown foliage of last year’s bracken glows.2

After a mile the trail leaves the river and leads me up through wind-stunted spruce and cottonwood plants. Still alone, I follow it onto a flat valley formed by twin walls of naked moraine. Only tough plants grow here. Ahead the Laughton Glacier curves up into clouds that obscure a mountain ridge. The clouds also block my sun. Ahead one of the writers, in long skit and windblown hair, walks towards toward the glacier with the help of a tall trekking pole. She turns the scene into a black and white photo of a pilgrim approaching her ashram.

1I’ll pass the pilgrim and climb onto the shrinking toe of the glacier. The sun will return. I will hold sharp edged rocks just being released from glacial ice that carried them from mountaintop to my feet. “Look at these rocks,” I will shout to a much younger writer wearing heart-shaped sunglasses. But magic will be in their history, not their appearance so she will probably thinks me weird. Higher up the toe, I will fall into a conversation about wolverines: whether the grumpy loners are magic or just thugs. “Magic” will become my favorite word for the day.4

Soft Day on the Moraine

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Just minutes from the car, Aki and I are already soaked. Without interference from the wind, steady rain falls straight onto the glacial moraine. The Irish guide that once drove me around the Dingle Peninsula would call this a soft day, as if sunshine cuts like a knife. The description was accurate in one way: that day’s wet grayness softened away the visual contrasts that could have given the Irish farmland pop.2

Today’s rains falls from clouds low enough to hide surrounding mountains and the glacier. Later we will see a slice of mountains and ice as the clouds lift. But, when we pass it on our way onto the moraine, the Mendenhall River appears to come out of a cloud. Raindrops bead up on blueberry and poplar leaves as well as in the border of segments of horsetail shoots. But the robins still sing, the kingfisher scolds, beavers tail slap lake water, and the little dog manages to enjoy herself.3

Discriminating Goat

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Back in Juneau, back in the rain. Aki, her other human and I splash down the Nugget Falls Trail. Ahead, a mountain goat focuses on the emerging alder and cottonwood growth. Beneath him, the falls charge into Mendenhall Lake. Later, when I upload photographs of the day onto the computer, I’ll find one in which the goat is staring at the little dog and her family. He could be looking at the glacier or one of the many icebergs it calved since spring. He could be distracted by the hoards of dark-eyed juncos bouncing around the trailside brush. I’d understand it if he noticed the brilliant yellow-green of the leaves he had been eating. Why look at Aki?

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The photo that I uploaded next shows the goat head searching for food, turned so that his rear faces our fronts. Back to business. Don’t take it personal, little dog. 

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Soft Ice and Silence

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Aki dashes between her other human and me, finding good, firm footing on the snow-covered lake. The number of parked cars near the trailhead led me to expect a crowd on the lake. But all who used the cars to drive here are skiing in the campground. That trail, set by a snowmachine over a paved road, offers little danger and only one view of the glacier. If the wind isn’t blowing across it, we usually chose the lake. Its trail gives you an unobstructed view of the river of ice for more than a kilometer and a half. We have only enjoyed the view for a minute before finding a patch of open water, apparently made when the snowmachine groomer’s roller punched through the ice.

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We ski on toward the glacier, looking for soft spots and finding none. Torn cloud fragments wreath Mt. McGinnis and Thunder Mountain. If the lake is groaning under its twenty inch thick blanket of snow, we don’t hear it. We don’t hear anything but Aki’s panting and the scraping of our skis over the slightly icy track.

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The groomer’s snowmachine approaches after we make the turn back to the car. After it growls past. a trio of skiers slips onto the lake followed by several more. I am not surprised. Like I have many times in the past, the incomers have waited for the heavy machine to test the ice before venturing on to it.

Back to the Cave

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It’s a white day: white skies, white snow following on a lake ice covered with more of the same. I’m back on the pilgrimage trail to the glacial ice cave. But, this time the little dog and her other human are here.

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Aki bounces through the new snow. Her humans use skis on the irregular surface. They are tools, not sporting equipment. Without them, we’d be slogging through the heavy new snow.

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At the glacier, Aki’s humans switch to ice cleats and use a frozen creek for access to the ice cave. On this day of flat light, I don’t expect to find as much beauty as on Friday when strong sunlight muscled its way through the thick glacial ice. But the cave surprises. In the softer light, I find fairy ice fractures, crystal clear against a background of blue.

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Ice Cave Pilgrimage

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I am on a pilgrimage with a poet and a memoirist, but not Aki. As is required for any worthwhile pilgrimage, we endure pain. Winds gusting to 30 miles-an-hour chill our exposed skin and push obscuring wind over the lake ice. (Aki would not have liked the wind). Because it is shrinking, we must walk farther to reach the glacier than last year.

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We are not alone. A line of other pilgrims move with us on a long, flat trail to the glacial ice cave. Another line of walkers moves away from the glacier. With the wind at their backs, sun on their faces, and fresh memories of the cave’s beauty, they should appear happy, if not transformed. But most just look cold, ready for lunch.

I had hoped that the wind would have kept the selfie seekers away. But I should know to never to underestimate the need for Facebook affirmation. This dark thought is hypocritical. I am also on this walk to photograph beauty.

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After passing through a wind funnel and climbing a small moraine hump, we reach the cave. Water drips from the icicles that form a fringe over the opening. From inside comes the sound of teenagers expressing awe. We pass through a gentle curtain of ice melt and into an aquamarine tunnel. The cave is lined with the ancient ice, some hundreds of year old; ice that traps stones ripped long ago from the bedrock. In places it is crystal clear, others as green as aquarium glass or cobalt blue.

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We pass through the cave and climb onto the glacier itself. A week of strong wind has scoured the surface ice free of snow. Here the glacier is all undulation and soft edges. Less and half-a-kilometer down the river of ice, fissures have cut the glacier face into chunks that will soon calve into bergs. Next summer I will canoe around the new icebergs, knowing that they will melt to nothingness before the next winter, wondering whether the shrinking ice cave has finally collapsed.

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