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| North by Northwest 'Mog | Short Cuts | ||||
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By: George Reiswig - 8/2002
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| The Bear Glacier looms ahead, a river of water frozen in motion. |
August 9
The elephants were out. Looking out the windows of the hotel, the clouds had risen enough to reveal more of the giant pachyderms feet that surround Stewart. The mountains rise suddenly, bristled with evergreen and jeweled with waterfalls. But still the tops were hidden in mist.
Out of the mist on several of the mountains, one could see fingers of blue ice, cracked and hanging as though frozen by a photograph. The glaciers above are the source of all these waterfalls.
We ate breakfast, then headed up the same road we'd taken the night before, passing the Fish Creek Bear Fiesta, and heading up the 22-mile potholed road into the mountains. It was not going to be a clear day. Nevertheless, as we got near the toe of the glacier, we could see it looming out of the gray. Huge, blue, dirty and foreboding -- Charlie put it well: even when we could not see it, there was a feeling that something massive and powerful was out there, somewhere nearby.
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| It just isn't possible to fathom the scale of a glacier without seeing one in person. |
For those of you who haven't seen a glacier, it is impossible to get a sense of what is at work here. To call it a giant conveyer belt of ice, carrying rock is to do it an injustice. Think on a more geological scale. Think on the scale of something that is comparable in size to the mountains around it. Think on the scale of seeing, from a distance, the U.N. building perched on top of it: you might be able to pick the building out among the rubble, but you would need to strain your eyes as though looking for a no-see-um biting your arm. This is the power that shapes mountains quickly, in the geological sense, and devastatingly.
We drove all the way up to the summit lookout, where we could have seen an even larger view of the glacier had we not been completely inundated with fog. Such is life. Particularly in Alaska, the view is oft obscured by either fog or mosquitoes.
We made our way back down to Stewart, where we fueled up, got lunch, and headed off for however far we could get that day. On the way back, we again stopped at the Bear Glacier, since it was sunnier there and we had a better view.
We made it all the way to Bell II, where we purchased dry camp slots in the R.V. park. That night, we had a good meeting. Clearly, our repair time had cost us some in terms of what we would be able to drive to and see during our limited expedition time. It was time to make some decisions as to what to try for, what to skip. As we discussed it, we agreed that skipping the Denali Highway in order to make up some time might be a good idea, since actually being able to see McKinley is iffy anyway. This is something we will want to do in the future, though, and we vowed to do so.
We slept well, with new driving targets set for the next couple of days. Those days were to be longer days of driving the backroads, without doing real 4x4 trails. That way we could make up some of the distance necessary to meet up with an Anchorage 4x4 club, do some trails, and still meet our ferry schedule for the leg returning us home.
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North by Northwest Expedition: - Introduction - Sponsor List - Reviews - Photo Galleries Before Departure Shakedown Cruise Lower British Columbia More Lower British Columbia Busted in BC BC with Coast Mountain Crawlers Upper British Columbia Almost Alaska |
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