Weekend Hiking Adventure

This weekend, Frank and I went to Portage Valley. The nature center is about an hour out of Anchorage on the way to Seward. This is a beautiful drive that winds around Turnagain arm.


Portage Glacier, from the Nature Center


Frank and some more glaciers from the nature center


Nature Center at Portage Valley


Glaciers from the Nature Center

On the advice of our books and the nature center employees, we decided to do the Portage Glacier hike in Whittier. Now, Whittier is connected to Anchorage by the longest contiguous tunnel in NA, and it costs 12 dollars for a round-trip ticket to get there. Once you get there, there is very, very, little to see and they have totally dug up the entire town, I assume to get it paved at some point. However, right out of the tunnel there is a gravel road going to the trailhead for Portage Glacier.

Now, this trail is about 2 miles long, but all of that is uphill on a gravel trail. It's hard -- maybe not as hard as Flattop, but pretty difficult.

Looking back down towards the water in Whittier from the trail.

The hiking book said that this was the biggest bang for your buck as far as scenery goes, and they were not kidding! Once over the ridge, you are looking at Portage Glacier from an incredible viewpoint, with all sorts of little glacial ponds. It was incredible.

Along the way, there are all sorts of strange plants to look at...

Pretty purple...lilly-leaf...plants

Here's the view I was telling you about:

Frank looking out towards the Portage Glacier


Frank and Portage


Another picture from the trail

To give you a perspective on how big this glacier is, here's a picture in relation to a sightseeing boat (left side of the lake)...


Perspective shot of Portage Glacier and a sightseeing boat


Frank pointing out the tiny boat

This is a picture looking back on the glacial pond from the highest viewpoint.

Pretty glacial lake

We did actually see wildlife...marmots! They look like little rat/taco-bell dogs from a distance and make a little whistling sound (at least I think that was what was making that sound, not really sure). Here's a picture...I dare you to spot the marmot in this picture:

Spot the marmot!

After going back down the trail and through the tunnel back to Portage Valley, we did the Byron Glacier trail. This is a relatively flat trail that takes you to the edge of the snowfall for Byron glacier. Apparently there are iceworms in the ice (they look like little black strings), but the only ones I saw were at the nature center.


Byron glacier


Byron Glacier


Lori and more Glaciers

The nature center touted that the salmon were in the williwaw creek, and that we should go there. When we got to the fish viewing platform, there were all sorts of fish there...but they were dying after doing the spawning thing. All of them were either dead or dying, so it wasn't a very fun thing. At the same point, some dummy decided to throw a five lb rock over towards the fishing plaform, managing to scare these dying fish and us as well. Some of the people on the fishing platform went to talk to the guy, but it was clear he was 1) not from around here and 2) really not very bright. It still points out there are some really sick people in the world. But here's a picture of one salmon.


Salmon in Williwaw creek

That's it for this weekend, thanks everyone for the comments and everything. As for the Towanda gang, I check theStatus.com every day to see how things are going.