Prince William Sound Glaciers

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June 25th 2007

Published: June 25th 2007

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furino and jono

Anton Anderson Tunnel

At 2.5 miles, this one lane bi-directional tunnel runs through the Chugach Mountains and is the longest highway tunnel in NA, has six jet turbine fans for ventilation, was designed for -40 F and 150mph winds and can withstand an avalanche. The Alaska Railroad runs through it as well. Neat.

alright, the glacier cruise. we drove down to whittier, about an hour south of Anchorage to catch the boat. the population of Whittier is about 200 or so. Most of the residents live in one of two condo buildings that are connected to the school and downtown by a system of tunnels since they get such an enormous amount of snowfall every year. unfortunately the kidddies don't get snow days but they did get a bear day when one busted into the school cafeteria - i guess you take what you can get up here 😉
we left port in whittier and headed out into port wells and then college fjord. College Fjord was discovered during the Harrmian expedition (circa 1899) and the Harvard and Amherst professors on board named and all the glaciers in the fjord after New England Colleges. Apparently they purposely overlooked Princeton. Also, College Fjord was the epicenter of the 1964 earthquake.
Then we rolled through the Harriman Fjord and got within 700 ft of Surprise Glacier, named so because it surprised them by calving all the time. We saw it calve and that was something! At first you just see small bits of snow and

"downtown"

One of the many, many gift shops in this town and almost any other town we visited, really. And suprisingly (or maybe not) they all sell the same things! Having said that, I'll admit I've gone into every one of them :)

ice trickling down the side and then a huge piece just lets go and slides off into the ocean. It's sooooo loud, way more impressive than thunder and displaces a serious amount of water. Again, perspective is very difficult here as it is in most of Alaska. Things are so big you just don't realize it until you've been motoring towards a piece of ice almost 4000ft wide and hundreds of feet high at 40 mph for almost twenty minutes and you're still not there. These glaciers have retreated about 3.5 miles since the Harriman expedition, pretty scary.
We saw tons of sea otters and some harbour seals (no whales) bald eagles, and a tens of thousands of black-legged kittiwakes (a bird) - apparently it is not uncommon to see a flock of a million of these birds.
Feeling slightly disappointed at the lack of big-ticket wildlife, we swung by the Alaska Wildlife Conservation Area on the way home. I gotta say, if I have to see a bear in Alaska I'm glad I saw them here - they are HUGE, and someone was mauled by a sow with her cubs near just yesterday of the Sterling highway. It's pretty

Whittier Condos

The tall building with the blue top in the background are the condos where most residents live, the school is behind it.

likely we'll see them on the glacier hike but we'll be with a guide then and (most importantly) bear spray. One quick stop on the way home at Mary-Lou's liquor store - couldn't resist!- proved to be a great idea. Mary Lou is this crazy character, almost albino with the reddest lipstick, I'd say in her sixties at least that runs a gift shop and booze store near Bird Point. One day in the 80's she outran a bear, no joke, she's got the newspaper article pinned up in the store and a mural of a much younger her running from a bear on the storefront outside.
We were exhausted when we got home, I don't know if it's the air or the insane amount of light but neither of us are sleeping well so we welcomed today's (Thursday) sleep-in and free day to relax. Tomorrow it's off to Seward to hike Exit Glacier! I'm so behind with this - we have the Denali pics and dogmushing still to post! Later!

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