Portage Glacier

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The forecast still called for rain, but we were determined not to let that stop us. We decided to head south to the Portage Glacier. I checked the tunnel schedule. There is a 2.5 mile one-lane tunnel (shared by vehicles and trains) that runs to the town of Whittier that we needed to pass through to get to the trailhead of Portage Pass, which would give us great views of Portage Lake and Portage Glacier. The tunnel is open for 15 minutes on each side with 15 minutes for traffic (and trains) to get through. So if you time it wrong, you’ve got a 45 minute wait. We timed it to get to the tunnel about 10 minutes before our turn to go through. We were 3 minutes early and I obviously must have mis-read the schedule, because we ended up being 2 minutes late… So, we paid the $12 fare and decided to kill time at the Forest Service visitor center a mile back up the road. The Begich-Boggs Visitor Center was fantastic! Lots of hands on exhibits, video guides, sounds of the Prince William Sound, really worth stopping in for! We didn’t get through everything that we wanted to, but figured that we could stop by on our way back through if we had time.

We headed through the tunnel and found the trailhead. The drizzle wasn’t bad as we started the hike and there were some beautiful cascades and waterfalls coming off of the side of the mountains around us. We threw on our packs and headed up the trail. We picked some blueberries and salmonberries along the way (are you sensing a theme here??). As we got higher we really got into the clouds, we donned our rain gear and kept going through the fog. We reached what seemed like the pass, but couldn’t see more than about 20 feet in front of us. We ate our wraps (with fresh veggies from the farmers market) and decided to head down. We met some nice folks from Wisconsin on the hike down, then had to wait for the longest train I’ve ever seen to get across the tracks to the access road to the tunnel and the town of Whittier. We had about 20-minutes to kill so we drove the mile to downtown. Saw all of downtown in about 20 seconds and headed back to wait to go back through the tunnel. I’d read in a guidebook that there wasn’t much in Whittier, but that was an exaggeration….

We headed back to the visitor center to wring out our gloves, check out the movie that the Forest Service runs, and spend some more time with the exhibits. After the visitor center, we went to the trailhead for the Byron Glacier and Avalanche Snowfield. It was about a mile hike to the snowfield. We walked on the ice (as much as we were comfortable) and dug around for ice worms. We found some fairly quickly. They are thread-thin worms that live in glaciers and snowfields. They secrete a protein that acts as anti-freeze that keeps them from freezing and can’t survive in direct sunlight (good thing it was a rainy, miserable day!!). We wanted to have a snowball fight, but the snow was just too solid…. We got back to the car at about 6:45 and all agreed that we had had enough for one day. Forty-five minute ride back to Anchorage for dinner, stories and bed…

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Comments

[Rothstein Crew]

Looks like fun!
Hey, you can't have the corner on rainy weather, we thought we had that in Belgium!! Girls love seeing your girls on line; looks like you are having a ball...