Seward's Day Begins With Fire Trucks

Before the fire trucks, in fact yesterday, Sunday, we were at the Anchorage Botanical Garden Spring Conference downtown at the Dena'ina Center.  I'd never been to one of these before.  I was a bit underwhelmed, but I did get some ideas and tips and inspiration.  In this session (on the right) we learned how to make a liquid to spray on plants to get them the calcium, and boron they need to flourish.  

Most useful, I think, was meeting someone from the Anchorage Soil and Water Conservation District who will come to my house next fall and test the soil and make suggestions.  We've got some areas where only the hardiest plants survive.  I'm hoping that can be changed.  

But today I woke up to see two fire trucks across the street.  I was worried that a neighbor was having an health emergency, since there didn't seem to be a fire anywhere.  When I went out, I saw there were actually four AFD vehicles.  

Since I was out, I decided to walk around the neighborhood and get some blood moving in my veins. I kept wondering about why they needed so many vehicles for a paramedic call.  When I got back, the firefighters/paramedics (there are far more paramedic calls than fire calls) were walking back to the vehicles.  Not from the building across the street, but from around the corner.  

I asked one of them what was happening and he told me they had been viewing the house around the corner that had burned.  Which was when I realized that I'd read about a fire nearby while we were visiting out granddaughter Outside, but had forgotten about it.  And I was reminded again that it's always good to ask rather than assume.  

I also found out today that my very low carb diet, of the last four months, did indeed make a difference on my A1c blood test.  That was gratifying.  I'd thought that it hadn't made a difference based on another test result I got last week.  But this test wasn't in among the results until today.  

I also went to pick up a book on hold at the library.  The door I normally go in was locked, so I went over to the main entrance where I saw the sign that said the library was closed for Seward's Day.  I had gone to the library website to see how long they were going to hold the book, but there was nothing there that I saw to say the library was closed.  Oh well.  

This evening I walked over to see which house had burned.  It was an apartment building.  What is odd is that another house almost next door, burned down in  March 2016.  The red circle is the recently burned house.  The purple circle is the new house built where the 2016 house burned.  

Here's the building a little closer up.  Another neighbor came out to see what I was doing near the

burnt house.  He said he'd called the fire department that night and helped to get another family out.  There was a man who went back in to get his wife.  Both died. It was arson he said.  

I noticed that both news articles were written by the same reporter.  I'm guessing that he didn't visit the site this time because he should have noticed that it was practically next door to the previous fire.  

Hope you had a good Seward's Day and thought about the man who negotiated the purchase of Alaska from the Russians - who actually only occupied a relatively small portion of the land.  

"The solution was clear, Wendell said: Buy the votes of Senators" - Being Better Citizens Today By Knowing The Past

Alaskans are likely aware of William Seward more than the rest of the country.  After all, he was the man who arranged to buy Alaska from the Russians, and we even have a state holiday honoring Seward.  But that doesn't mean know much about him.  A local journalist, Mike The Man Who Bought Alaska:  William H. Seward.  He also wrote companion book - The Man Who Sold Alaska: Tsar Alexander II of Russia.  The books came out in 2017, to celebrate Alaska's 150th year as part of the United States.
Dunham, made an effort to educate us when he wrote the book

I read the Seward volume flying down to LA.  It's short and easy to read.

I learned that Seward did a lot of other things besides buy Alaska.  And I already did a post on some of that.

This post is to remind us that history is worth studying so that we understand more about the present.  I've got a few quotes that don't need much comment from me.

Immigration Fights

"Prejudice against Catholics,  especially Irish, was perhaps more intense in New York than prejudice against blacks.  Religious instruction was part of every elementary school curriculum and the doctrine taught would be Protestant, with a good measure of virulent anti-Catholicism thrown in.
Irish immigrants balked at sending their children to such schools and, as a result, many children of Irish parents didn't attend school at all.  Seward's efforts to see that educational funding was shared with Catholic schools raised the ire of the anti-immigrant party that took the name "Know-Nothings."  (p. 26)

Ignorant Voters

"To win the big Northern states of New York and Pennsylvania, Clay positioned himself as the pro-immigration candidate, hoping to obtain the support of German and Irish newcomers who tended to vote Democratic.  It backfired.  Anti-immigrant riots broke out in Philadelphia, the City of Brotherly Love.  The Know-Nothings backed Martin Van Buren, an unabashed nativist.  Clay lost New York and Polk won the election.
The Know-Nothing movement was to me a source of apprehension,"  Seward said.  "When I saw not only individuals but whole communities and parties swept away by an impulse contradicting the very fundamental idea on which the Government rests, I began to doubt whether the American people had such wisdom as I had always given them credit for."  (p. 30)]

Congressional Relationships I

"The first blows of he Civil War came in May of 1856.  Sumner gave a two-day speech dripping with pornographic innuendo and pillorying South Carolina Senator Andrew Butler, comparing him to Don Quixote, infatuated by a harlot.
Two days later, Butler's cousin, Representative Preston Books, stalked into the Senate, found Sumner at his desk and demanded an apology.  Sumner refused, not even looking up from the paper he was writing on.  Brooks used his cane to pummel the Massachusetts Senator nearly to death.
Brooks was exonerated by the House of Representatives. . ." (pp. 39-40)

Bad Supreme Court Decisions

"In March 1858 the Supreme Court gave its verdict in the case of Dred Schott, a slave whose master brought him to a free state.  Scott argued that, as an American citizen in a state that did not allow slavery, he ought to be free.  The court, however, declared that under the Constitution blacks were not and could never be citizens.
Seward denounced the Dred Scott decision in terms that would be considered impolitic if applied to a Supreme Court decision today. "Judicial usurpation is more odious and intolerable than any other among the manifold practices of tyranny," he said, and argued that it was time to reorganize the judicial branch to bring it 'into harmony with the Constitution.'"  (p.  40)

Congressional Relationships II

"Through all the bitterness of the Kansas-Nebraska debates, the attacks in the press and even from friends, Seward remained personally on good terms with members of the other side, dining, drinking, joking and playing whist with them when they weren't in verbal combat on the floor of the Senate.
He closely cooperated with pro-slave Democrat Texas Senator Thomas Rust and even planned a trip around the world with him.  When Rust killed himself in 1857 after being diagnosed with cancer, Seward called it a tragedy for both himself and the country.
In the following year, Mississippi's Jefferson Davis spent weeks in a darkened sickroom because of an eye infection.  Seward visited almost every day, reading the newspapers to him and filling him in on the gossip of the capital."

Impeachment

"Seward took the lead in preparing Johnson's defense.  Working with Democrats and the few moderate Republicans still speaking to him, he obtained a top defense team and raised funds to cover their costs.  He turned to the most powerful lobbyist in Washington, Cornelius Wendell, a man who knew the minds - and the price - of every member of Congress better than they knew themselves.
The solution was clear, Wendell said:  Buy the votes of Senators.  The cost:  a quarter of a million dollars.  Seward raised the money.  Wendell got it to the right people."

The Man Who Bought Alaska Checking Some Claims

As occasionally happens, this post began with one destination in mind and ended up somewhere else.  I'll make this Part I and do a second post to cover my original intention - some historical references that give a little more perspective on our present day situation.

[Actually, it's ending up with yet a different ending.  I'm putting the sentences of the second revision in [brackets] so you'll know what was in the original post and the revised post.  The original post was really just going to be quotes putting today's politics into some context.  And that's still coming.]


I read Mike Dunham's The Man Who Bought Alaska on the plane down here.  It was a gift for a friend who couldn't find it in LA.  He also wanted The Man Who Sold Alaska but Title Wave didn't have it.

Alaskans probably can figure out that it's about William Seward, Lincoln's Secretary of State.  It's just over 100 pages and written at about a high school level (intended reader level, not writing level.)  So a lot of things were mentioned about Seward, but there wasn't much back up other than a bibliography in the back.

But I learned a lot in a short time about someone important to Alaska.  It also highlights Alaska's first governor - the military man first put in charge of the state after it was purchased from Russia.  His name was Jef Davis.

Some things I learned about Seward.  Again these are things that Dunham claims.

• As Governor of New York he started the practice of giving books to prisoners.
• As Secretary of State he initiated the transatlantic telegraph cable because he was frustrated by how long it took to communicate with Europe.*
• He initiated the cross continent railroad system.**  
• The plot to assassinate Lincoln include assassinating Vice President Johnson AND Secretary of State Seward.  And a knife wielding intruder, according to Dunhan, did gain access and did stab Seward several times.  Johnson's assassin, Dunham tells us, chickened out.  (A Smithsonian story confirms that Johnson and Seward were targets.  And also Grant.)

[The second revision comes because when I tried to find quotes to support my characterizations of what Dunham wrote, I couldn't.  I had marked page numbers for some quotes (and I have those), but I also thought these actions were also noteworthy.  I did find the assertion about the books to prisoners, and that doesn't seem totally unreasonable.  I was more concerned about the transatlantic telegraph wire and the transcontinental railroad.  The best I could find on a quick perusal (I gave the book to a friend and I didn't have much time to check carefully when we met again) were much more limited than I remember.  Like he played an important role in . . .   So, I'll keep this post in as a lesson on the need to actually check and document what you're asserting and point out that I couldn't do that here.]

*These seemed like outlandish claims.  When I googled who initiated the Transatlantic Telegraph Cable, I got the name Cyrus West Field.  When I added William Seward to the search terms I got a CIA Library document that said, in part:

"Seward had first discussed the new transatlantic cable with the parent company, the New York, Newfoundland, and London Telegraph Company, at a celebration in New York on 29 August 1866 honoring President Andrew Johnson. At the conclusion of the evening's festivities, one of the directors of the company, Mr. Wilson G. Hunt, asked Seward why the federal government did not use the new Atlantic cable. It was a question that would eventually lead to a $32,000 claim against the State Department. Seward told Hunt that the tariff was too costly and that 'the Government of the United States was not rich enough to use the telegraph.'"2

**About the Railroad, Wikipedia says:

In 1852, Judah was chief engineer for the newly formed Sacramento Valley Railroad, the first railroad built west of the Mississippi River.  .   .
In 1856, Judah wrote a 13,000-word proposal in support of a Pacific railroad and distributed it to Cabinet secretaries, congressmen and other influential people. In September 1859, Judah was chosen to be the accredited lobbyist for the Pacific Railroad Convention, which indeed approved his plan to survey, finance and engineer the road. Judah returned to Washington in December 1859. He had a lobbying office in the United States Capitol, received an audience with President James Buchanan, and represented the Convention before Congress.[30] . . .
In February 1860, Iowa Representative Samuel Curtis introduced a bill to fund the railroad. It passed the House but died when it could not be reconciled with the Senate version due to opposition from southern states who wanted a southern route near the 42nd parallel.[30] Curtis tried and failed again in 1861. After the southern states seceded from the Union, the House of Representatives approved the bill on May 6, 1862, and the Senate on June 20. Lincoln signed the Pacific Railroad Act of 1862 into law on July 1."

There's no mention of Seward.  Now, Seward may have persuaded Lincoln to sign the bill, but Dunham's claim gave Seward a much greater responsibility for the creation of the Transcontinental Railroad.
This is a very different slant than what Dunham offered.  [And, it seems I can't actually find the words in Dunham's book that made believe he'd made such claims.  So when I wrote the title - Checking Some Claims - I meant I was going to check whether the claims were accurate.  But it turns out Checking Some Claims means checking whether he actually made such claims.  And I couldn't find that he did.]

AIFF2016: Full House For Opening Night North American Premiere of Sugar Mountain

Blackwater Railroad Company

Seats were getting scarce 40 minutes before things were schedule to start.  Anchorage International Film Festival director Rebecca Pottebaum enthusiastically welcomed everyone to the festival, thanked all the sponsors, and introduced the Seward based Alaska band Blackwater Railroad Company, whose music is in the film.

I'd note that another Alaskan - Portugal the Man - came up on one of the characters iPod in the movie as well.

Shot in and around Seward, Sugar Mountain was a respectable and interesting film, with very recognizable scenery for most of the audience.  I was impressed that it was made, in part, when there was snow and ice on the ground.  The main characters, facing debt and the loss of their boat, concoct a plot to have one of them get lost in the mountains and then sell their story to the media when he's found.  Things don't go quite as planned but the dig at the media's willingness to pay for such stories is clear.  The acting was good, the story had twists and turns and surprises.  The scenery was spectacular, but the grittiness of Alaska winter also comes through.

Two of the actors - Drew Roy and Haley Webb - were there to answer questions after the movie.  They talked about coming to Alaska (which they loved) to meet co-stars they didn't know, and their relief to find each other to be serious and talented actors.  Haley agreed with a questioner that her character was the antagonist - like a submarine, below the surface, but powerful in directing things.

The film opens in theaters next week, Dec. 9.

After the Q&A, there was champagne and dessert and a time to meet and talk with folks.  I got to talk to some of the programmers for features, documentaries, and shorts.  I asked the features guys for tips on movies that didn't get into competition, but were must sees.  Some suggestions:  Money, The 6th Friend, The Holly Kane Experiment, and Hunky Dory.  I also was assured the film I've been excited about from the descriptions I found on line - Planet Ottakring (Saturday at 3:15) - is a good one.  And, my assumption that Demimonde, the film by Atilla Szász who directed the festival's 2014 Best Feature, The Ambassador To Bern, is spectacular was confirmed.  It plays Saturday at 8pm at the Bear Tooth.

Alex Myung

Among the people I got to talk to was Alex Myung, whose animated film Arrival plays Tuesday night along with the feature Gayla film Real Boy.

Shot from Alex Myung's Arrival

AIFF2016: Sugar Mountain Opens Festival Friday At Bear Tooth

I don't know much about this film, but it takes place in Alaska and looks like it was filmed here.  [Festival description says in Seward and other Kenai Peninsula spots.]

Opening nights used to spotlight one of the films in the festival.  That seemed unfair to competing films and for the last three or four years (maybe longer) opening night has featured a film not in the competition, but having something to do with Alaska.  Some have been very powerful - I'm thinking particularly of documentaries - and others have been movies that simply took place in Alaska, but otherwise I probably wouldn't have watched or missed much.  On the other hand, this looks like a film that is likely to get some folks who normally wouldn't go to the festival to come.  And you're sure to recognize places you know in the film.

Here's the plot from Teaser/Trailer:  (Look for the Alaska mistake in the synopsis)

SUGAR MOUNTAIN Truth gets lost.
 Plot synopsis: “Deep in debt to a local thug (Jason Momoa), Miles (Drew Roy) persuades his girlfriend Lauren (Haley Webb) and brother Liam (Shane Coffey) to help fake a disappearance in the Alaskan wilderness. While the town works together to find Miles, the local sheriff (Cary Elwes) begins to suspect foul play. As he closes in on the truth, Liam struggles to conceal the hoax, and in the process exposes a secret that rocks him and Lauren to the core. Now the two are struggling to stay one step ahead of a sadistic thug and the tenacious cops before Miles is gone for good.”
Tomorrow night we'll find out where Sugar Mountain fits in.  Either way, opening night at the festival is always fun and it's a chance to start meeting all the film makers in town.  Anchorage folks don't need to be shy (and usually aren't) and the film makers appreciate hearing from the viewers and locals who can give them tips on what to do while they're in town.

Did you find the Alaska error?  Look again.  If no one puts it into the comments, I'll add to this post later.

Actors include Drew Roy,  Haley Webb, Shane Coffey,  Jason Momoa,  and Cary Elwes.

Here's the trailer.  says the movie opens December 9, 2016, so we're a week ahead of the opening.




Film plays at 7pm.  Bear Tooth.  This is a pricey film - $25, while the others are $8 - but it's the opening night, a bit of a fundraiser for the festival, and there's a party after.   And the filmmakers and cast members will be on hand.  The price is waived for this gala if you buy a film festival pass ($120).

Spruce Coming Back In Parts Of Kenai After Spruce Bark Beetle

After Seward, we camped at Ptarmigan Creek campground.  This used to be full of huge old spruce trees.  Then in the 80s for 15 to 20 years there was a massive invasion of spruce bark beetles.  From KDLL interview with National Resource Conservation Service forester Mitch Michaud and John Morton, supervisory biologist with the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge:

"A spruce bark beetle outbreak isn’t unusual — we tend to have one every 50 years or so, but the severity and duration of this one were significant. It’s still seen as the biggest outbreak in North America. . . "  [emphasis added.]

With so many trees dying, there was a great danger of fire, so many trees were cut, and at the campground.  Sort of like Bob Marley with a  buzz cut.

But all around the campground area there are hundreds and maybe thousands of young spruce trees pushing up.  There might have been giant die-off, but the seeds were patiently waiting in the soil.

Most of the green in that picture is spruce.  There's a hemlock in the middle foreground and some deciduous shrubs and trees, but maybe thirty or forty spruce trees too.

Seeing things over a span of time helps give perspective on how nature works.  We can get that perspective by living a long time in one place or by reading observations of indigenous peoples in the area and scientists and others who track this sort of thing.

But according to the KDLL interview, it's not the same all over.  Near Homer the spruce doesn't seem to be coming back.

"That’s partially due to fire, which is another huge driver of change in a forest. Again, fire is not an unusual or even necessarily unhealthy occurrence in a forest, but the changing fire pattern is having an effect. Grass grows back quicker than trees, and burns more easily. More-frequent, more-intense fires on the southern peninsula are leading to more grassland growing in than trees."

Exit Glacier Was Here

Kilroy may have been here, but there are no signs that he ever was.   But I remember when Exit Glacier was here - the sign says it was in 1998.

It was extremely disappointing when our guests got to this point and Exit Glacier was gone.  Well, it's still back there, but according to the sign it was right here in 1998.  

Here's a picture with a very similar view in 2003.  Still, the glacier had retreated significantly, but there was still much more of it.

2008 picture from this post

 I don't remember exactly where it was when, but I know when I first went to Exit Glacier - I believe the summer of 1983, maybe 84 - there was no bridge over the Resurrection River.  There was a ranger and a lot of hip waders.  You walked through the water, then all the rest of the way to the glacier.  And the glacier was all the way out to the flat rocky plain.  You could go up to it and touch it, and even venture into  a little ice nook.  That all ended a few years later when a chunk of ice broke off and killed a tourist.  Ropes went up to keep people a safe distance away - say 20 or 30 feet.

But you were right there up close to this massive glacier that went several miles up the mountain.  Soon after a path was begun up alongside the glacier and you could get magnificent views from above.  You can still do that, though there's less glacier up there too.  But it's still magnificent from up there.





The trail has gotten a little tamer.  The summers of volunteers hauling rocks around to make steps and drainages means the trail isn't all muddy.  (Or is it simply because there has been much less rain this year?)  But my old knees talked to me as I went down the rock steps.  Flatter hikes I say, though this is my favorite.

But the trail is still spectacular.  I remember when you had to cross this creek from rock to rock, not over a sturdy wooden bridge.

And while I've been in beautiful gardens created by humans, none of them can compare to this whole mountain of lush green, of water, of ice, of rock, and of flowers.

We even saw a bear, not too terribly far off.  Unfortunately, my son-in-law and grandchildren were on the other side of the bear from us and I wasn't sure how close I had to go to the bear to get to them.  It turned out fine and a ranger later said he sees the bear every day and it's learned to keep away from the people.  

One more flower.


Yellow monkey flower -

"Mimulus guttatus has been a model organism for studies of evolution and ecology. There may be as many as 1000 scientific papers focused on this species. The genome is (as of 2012) being studied in depth"  (From Wikipedia)

Spanish Artist Blogger Depicts His Dinosaur Encounter In Seward

Here's the link to Unexpected Encounter at the Van Gilder Hotel.  

With permission from TS @ Walkdo Walkiria World

I first 'met' Tomás Serrano when told me about how much he enjoyed Exit Glacier in a comment in this post in 2008.  And expanded when he and his family came for breakfast before heading back to Spain.  I've been following his blog ever since (Waldo Walkiria World in the Friends blog roll on the right.)  It's a gallery of amazing art, particularly caricatures, many of them of people I'm not sure I know.  Sometimes they're European politicians I don't recognize.  He's also a great movie buff and does a lot of actors.  He even won a World Press Cartoon Award  in 2011.

But when I looked at Unexpected Encounter, I thought, now this is really obscure, but somehow familiar.  What movie was the Van Gilder Hotel in?  Then I googled the Van Gilder Hotel.  I was a little embarrassed to see it was actually a hotel I'd visited (but not stayed at)  in a small Alaska town I love.  Very near Exit Glacier.

I can't believe Tomás never told me about the dinosaur.   I talked to him just days after it would have happened.  I guess he didn't want me to blog it until he did it first.  

Giving the Gift of Alaska - To Seward On A Black And White Day

We met Moshe at Congregation Beth Sholom Sunday where he gave a talk about how his community of Jews in Ethiopia walked for three weeks through Ethiopia to Sudan where they were in a refugee camp for 2 years before being able to complete their trip to Israel.  He's in Anchorage because of the PACT (Parents and Children Together)  program - which helps Ethiopian Jews get pre-school preparation to be ready for school.  Moshe himself benefited from this and is now a PACT coordinator in his town.  He was here, in part, to thank the people of Anchorage who have contributed to make this program possible.  He mentioned after the talk that he very much wanted to see a glacier and we offered to help him find a glacier Monday.

See the whole strip at REOiv

We decided to try for Exit Glacier and left in a light snow.  The day reminded me of one of my favorite Calvin and Hobbes cartoons.  Here are the key two panels from it.




                                                                                                                                                   Well, our world Monday was back in those old days when you could use color film, but the world itself was still black and white with only a few traces of the early colors showing.

Even without color, the drive to Seward is spectacular and our guest bubbled over with delight.  Sharing Alaska is such an easy gift to give. 

The roads were a bit tricky - and the drivers were getting used to the second day of snow.  And the clouds were really low as we left Anchorage.  Turnagain Arm was better, and things improved a bit as we went over Turnagain Pass.  Eventually, we saw our first hint of sun after the Hope turnoff. 

We took the turnoff to Exit Glacier, but didn't get very far and the road was closed.  That would have been a much longer walk than we were prepared for, especially in several inches of fresh snow.

So back to the main road and into Seward.  A stop at the harbor.

Then lunch at the Apollo.  (There was color still inside.)











Then off to Lowell Point to do a little beach walk on the world famous white 'sand' beach.

(Didn't I say up top this was a black and white day?)










We decided there had to be a lot of fish in this location.  Gulls were predominant, but there were cormorants and what appeared to be loons as well.

Then to the southern shore of Kenai Lake at Primrose campground.  We could see sun on the distant mountains.

And Moshe got a spectacular shot of a bald eagle that flew low over us before taking a tree top perch.  He was rightfully proud of the picture and I'll put it up when he sends it to me.  [UPDATE Dec. 26: I posted the eagle pictures here, but forgot to add a link here.]
 

A short walk through the woods from the Primerose campground trail in the fresh snow.  The trees seemed to be dancing.

A little reflected sun and even some blue sky on the way back. 

And then off to Portage to see if we can find some glacier.  You could see about 30 feet out into the fogged in lake.  So we took the trail to Byron Glacier.  It was after 6pm and the sun had set and the snow was coming down thick.  I hadn't been to Byron in many years.  There isn't much left.  But there was an ice cave on the lower right side of the dark front of the ice and other glacial shapes in the oncoming evening light and falling snow.

It was still not quite dark when we got back to the car.  But once the car lights were on, it was, for all intents, dark out.  And on the highway back, the snow was blowing hard toward us.  Reflected in the headlights, it made it really hard to figure out where the road was.  The rumble strips were great, but it wasn't easy to tell if you were too far to the left or the right.

I didn't quite get it from the back seat, but this does give you the sense of how hard it was to orient to the road.  For once, the headlights of oncoming cars were helpful.

I hope there weren't too many typos.  I'm tired.

Resurrection Bay Kayaking

Monday we got up early and left Primrose to get to our kayaking spot. As much as I love being in a kayak, it's just so much easier, especially with guests who have never kayaked, to go to one of the kayak tour places and let them do all the prep work. I just have to show up, put on their boots, spray skirt, and life vest, climb into their kayak and paddle.


Here's DZ in his first kayak trip.



The kayak guide said this was a marbled murrelet and SEI says they are endangered:

The marbled murrelet, a small seabird which nests in the coastal, old-growth forests of the Pacific Northwest, is listed as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act. In North America, the birds' range stretches along the Pacific coast from the Bering Sea to central California, with the largest populations occurring in southeastern Alaska and northern British Columbia.

Their white heads make bald eagles pretty easy to spot.

We took a short break at the mouth of this creek
where the chum salmon were spawning.

If you look really closely in the lower middle to right you can see the spawning chum salmon. Or you can double click to enlarge the picture and see it better.

Unless you have binoculars, the sea otter is a brown lump
bobbing in the water and suddenly disappearing below the surface.

Exit Glacier - Kenai Fjords National Park

We had glorious weather all day. The young Russians (well one was Ukrainian) who cleaned the B&B Doug stayed in in Seward said that they were going to see the bears at Bear Creek. So before Exit Glacier we went to see. J and Doug saw them, I heard them splashing.



Then back to the Exit Glacier Road. Here's the first real glimpse of the glacier as you drive in. I'm going to dig out our 1984 pictures and do some comparisons. But for now, here's today.
Everything is changed since we were last there - we're guessing 2003. There are new buildings, new signs, and the trails are different. But most noticable is the missing glacier. Well, yes, it's still there, but much less of it. Again this will be more obvious when I find old pictures. But as we got closer, I said to Doug, it feels like it used to be all the way to here. Then Doug read the sign - in 1999 you could touch the glacier from here. That's less than ten years!



Our goal was to go up the Harding Icefield trail at least to the point where we could see the icefield. The trail is better, but still difficult. At the beginning there are steep rocky spots. Here's one part of the trail that is not only steep and rocky, but also a small stream.


We ran into these two rangers with clipboards. They are observing hikers to see where they go and find out why - they are trying to keep people on the main trails and save the vegetation elsewhere. They said last year about 10,000 people climbed this trail, the most ever. And it was very busy today, much more so than I've ever seen it. On a Wednesday, but they said days of the week didn't seem to matter nor did weather. People were there when their travel schedules got them there and they hiked. I'd guess most of the hikers are there June, July, and August. So if there were 9000 hikers in those three months, it would be 3000 per month, or 100 a day. I'm guessing there were over 100 today on the trail. We were constantly seeing people coming back.

Here's a shot of the ridge on the other side of the Glacier from us.

Here's Doug taking a short rest on what I decided was his throne,

Here's J, taking a nap at the top - well, our top. The trail continued on. It wasn't totally clear how far we got. The trail to the end on the map (see below) is 7.8 miles with a gain of elevation of about 3000 feet. That gain is evenly divided. I was watching how all of us were going and thought that this was the best view for the energy output we were going to get and still make it back in time to stop at Double Musky. I have to say it was spectacular up there with views of the Harding Icefield, Exit Glacier, the valleys below, and the mountains all around. In the warmth of the sun. With a chilly wind off the icefield. I could have stayed there forever.

Here's one of the marmots that guard the trail.

Here's a tiny taste of the panorama I mentioned above. To the right would be Exit Glacier (you can see part of it on the right) and the Harding Icefield above. That view is in the previous picture. You can double click this picture to enlarge it somewhat. What a day.


These two pictures are looking down onto Exit Glacier. In the top picture you can see five or six people hiking on the glacier in the lower left.

I know I had a similar picture already, but it was so spectacular. Those are mountain peaks sticking out of the sea of ice. The Harding Icefield stretches 30 miles.

Here's the trail map. You can enlarge it. I think we got somewhere between Top of the Cliff and the Emergency Shelter. It would be nice if they had some trail markers along the way to let you know where you were compared to the map.

Here's the RV parking lot back down at the bottom again. You could see this along with the cars from way up on top.

This was the Harding Icefield trail up along the side of Exit Glacier in Kenai Fjords National Park just a few miles out of Seward.