Whittier is about 60 miles south of Anchorage. It is sitting at the head of a passage canal and is accessed through the Anton Anderson Memorial Tunnel. This 2.5 miles World War II - era railroad tunnel was transformed into the longest vehicle-railroad tunnel in North America by June 2000. It is shared by trains and then Auto's including tractor trailer trucks and campers. There is a schedule that allows travel from the Black Bear Valley east to Whittier about every hour on the half hour, and the reverse at the top of each hour, each for about 15 minutes. But some trains may also impact that schedule as one arrived just before we were to head out. We camped in the valley (before heading through the tunnels) at a fantastic campground. It is part of the USFS, and half price for senior gold card holders ($9/night). As the main road was just put in in 2000 everything here is in excellent shape! The campground has paved sites, large picnic tables and you feel that you are surrounded by rain forest. Very spacious and private sites with fire-pits and compost outhouses near by. There was moose evidence along some of the paths and you had to be bear aware. After the first night we hiked about 1 1/2 miles to the Begich-Boggs Visitor Center and saw a nice film. There were nice displays there as well. And great views of Portage Lake.
Yes, that is an iceberg behind Bob. We then hiked back along a small stretch of road to the trail head to Byron Glacier. That trail was an easy 0.8 miles long and gravel.
You could get fairly close to the lower snow field and view the foot of the glacier at a safe distance. Then we hiked back to the campsite and prepared our supper. We hiked about 7 to 8 miles hiking that day.
Friday, after camping the 2 nights in Williwaw Campground, we journeyed aboard the largest, fastest catamaran in Alaska 145 miles through rugged wilderness, towering glaciers and pristine waters. Prince William Sound is 2,100 square miles of islands and fjords, carved by 15 million years of glaciations and surrounded by the Chugach National Forest. Only about 7,100 people live in the entire area, (only 200 in Whittier) which is larger than the entire state of Vermont. It is America's largest intact marine ecosystem and North America's northern-most rain forest. This is also one of the most active seismic regions in the world. We traveled very close to the epicenter of the 1964 Good Friday Earthquake that measured 9.2 on the Richter scale. The first people who lived here were the Chugach Eskimos, now known as the Alutiiq, who migrated into Prince William Sound about 7,000 years ago as the glaciers began their retreat.
This is a twin serpentine glacier. You can see the medial and lateral gravel lines. That is caused by the crushed stone that it pushes. There were several fishing boats with nets set out and a few shrimp pots with floats, but we didn't see any fish coming in.
After we left Whittier we also didn't see any houses, power-lines, or any other of man's influence marking this pristine area. Occasionally we could see some "dead trees", these were caused simply by the fact that there are so many and there aren't enough nutrients available for so much growth. So when some get stressed they die. There are no beetle problems here, yet. There was one area way back in the valley that had a section of dead trees and that was due to the Earthquake in 1964. It caused the ground to drop 10 feet in that area and the sea water rushed in. The salt water is what killed those trees. All along the sound there is rich green forest, and tall rocky hillsides. There was a fresh snowfall on these peaks just a few days ago! And it is mid-June!
The glaciers were wonderful to see. They are bigger than you would imagine. They appear blue due to the light passing through their crystals. Kind of like in a rainbow. Except the blue light rays have a shorter wavelength and they are the only color that makes it through. They have some dust and dirt on top of some, due to volcanic eruptions and just dirt over time. Flakes morph into denser material. It takes 100 feet of snow pack to have enough weight to (compact/pressure) form 10 feet of glacier ice. The seals and sea lions were hanging out on the ice flows that were shedding from some of the tidal glaciers. You could hear the cracking and squeaks as the pressure built and some of them calved while we watched. I even saw a pretty good wave of water after one splashed in!
The sea otters were the cutest of all. They were floating on the backs, alternatively flipping their rear feet or tails and turned their heads to check us out as we passed. I even saw a few babies on their mothers stomachs. One was napping!
I hope you can zoom in on this mom like I could. At the end of our voyage we passed a Kittiwake Bird rookery located just across the bay from Whittier. More than 10,000 birds inhabit these rocky cliffs each summer laying eggs, fishing and teaching young hatchlings the survivals tips they will need before they fly south for the winter.
There were even a few bald eagles perched in one of the trees. They like to eat some of the Kittiwakes! Plus there are plenty of fish for them to catch here. We really enjoyed our voyage!
Yes, that is an iceberg behind Bob. We then hiked back along a small stretch of road to the trail head to Byron Glacier. That trail was an easy 0.8 miles long and gravel. 
You could get fairly close to the lower snow field and view the foot of the glacier at a safe distance. Then we hiked back to the campsite and prepared our supper. We hiked about 7 to 8 miles hiking that day.
Friday, after camping the 2 nights in Williwaw Campground, we journeyed aboard the largest, fastest catamaran in Alaska 145 miles through rugged wilderness, towering glaciers and pristine waters. Prince William Sound is 2,100 square miles of islands and fjords, carved by 15 million years of glaciations and surrounded by the Chugach National Forest. Only about 7,100 people live in the entire area, (only 200 in Whittier) which is larger than the entire state of Vermont. It is America's largest intact marine ecosystem and North America's northern-most rain forest. This is also one of the most active seismic regions in the world. We traveled very close to the epicenter of the 1964 Good Friday Earthquake that measured 9.2 on the Richter scale. The first people who lived here were the Chugach Eskimos, now known as the Alutiiq, who migrated into Prince William Sound about 7,000 years ago as the glaciers began their retreat. 
The glaciers were wonderful to see. They are bigger than you would imagine. They appear blue due to the light passing through their crystals. Kind of like in a rainbow. Except the blue light rays have a shorter wavelength and they are the only color that makes it through. They have some dust and dirt on top of some, due to volcanic eruptions and just dirt over time. Flakes morph into denser material. It takes 100 feet of snow pack to have enough weight to (compact/pressure) form 10 feet of glacier ice. The seals and sea lions were hanging out on the ice flows that were shedding from some of the tidal glaciers. You could hear the cracking and squeaks as the pressure built and some of them calved while we watched. I even saw a pretty good wave of water after one splashed in!
The sea otters were the cutest of all. They were floating on the backs, alternatively flipping their rear feet or tails and turned their heads to check us out as we passed. I even saw a few babies on their mothers stomachs. One was napping!
I hope you can zoom in on this mom like I could. At the end of our voyage we passed a Kittiwake Bird rookery located just across the bay from Whittier. More than 10,000 birds inhabit these rocky cliffs each summer laying eggs, fishing and teaching young hatchlings the survivals tips they will need before they fly south for the winter.
There were even a few bald eagles perched in one of the trees. They like to eat some of the Kittiwakes! Plus there are plenty of fish for them to catch here. We really enjoyed our voyage!
I've never been to Whittier, but it looks very interesting to visit. Back in the 80's, you had to load your vehicle on the train to travel to Whittier. In 2012 we made it to the entrance of the tunnel, but got impatient waiting for our turn to run the tunnel.
ReplyDeleteNow, Portage Glacier, has receded so much! I have pictures of the Glacier nearly on shore near the new Visitor Center location.
Did you know that when you insert your pictures, if you double click on the picture a line will appear at the bottom and you can align the picture left, right or center. This will text wrap around the picture. Your doing a great job! Please don't take my comment offensively. Inserting pictures into the blog is my most time consuming task with mixed results.
No offense taken! I can never tell what I'm doing. Sometimes I can get it to work (pictures) and sometimes I feel I may be adding too many for people to download and try to make some or all of the "small". I can "zoom - in" with my laptop , only sometimes. And of my cruise pictures somehow I managed to delete 1/3 of them, those being the ones we took of ourselves, as proof we were actually there!
ReplyDeleteWe did the cruise on Friday and even knowing the schedule for the tunnel apparently arrived 1 minute after it closed down our direction. Due to waiting for a train we waited a good 50 minutes. The very next day there was a high speed chase down portage valley and the "perp" drove straight into the tunnel and collided with another vehicle. It was closed for several hours as a result. Glad we didn't go on our cruise the next day! (besides it rained much of Sat.) And to my delight there was a whole article on the Anchorage Sunday Newspaper, front page! Very informative.