Valdez, approx. population 5,000, sits at the mouth of Prince William Sound and is home to the Alyeska Marine Terminal, where oil from Prudhoe Bay travels nearly 800 miles through the TransAlaska Oil Pipe Line and is loaded onto tankers—over a million barrels each day. The bay is surprisingly ice-free, but Valdez is billed as the snow capital of Alaska due to its record accumulations. The town, across the bay from the Marine Terminal, is surrounded by glacier-studded mountains which rise straight up from the water to about 7,000 feet. Waterfalls spill down the mountain sides, and clouds descend below the jagged peaks. While the town itself is rather ho-hum, the scenery surrounding it is quite lovely. The town of Valdez was actually moved from its original location after a massive 9.2 earthquake in 1964—the largest
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