After the breathtaking cruise on Prince William Sound, I drove up the equally majestic Mat-Su valley, a valley that creates record 9.5 pound radishes, 2.5 pound mushrooms, and 105.6 pound cabbages.
The Mat-Su valley is known for producing huge vegetables. The glacier grinds up rock into silt which gets blown around by wind and deposited in the valley as loess.
Taking the Glenn highway, I drove alongside steep mountains in a valley created by the retreating Matanuska glacier. Roughly two hours away from Anchorage, the Matanuska glacier is one of the oldest and biggest accessible glaciers in Alaska.
The Alaska, Talkeetna, and Chugach mountains ring the Mat-Su Valley.
After my long, picturesque drive, I stayed in a little cabin with a view of this glacier. In the middle of this wide, part muddy, part tree covered glacial valley, I enjoyed immersing myself in the semi-wilderness beneath the immense snow-covered mountain ranges with moose keeping me company.
This was the view from my little cabin!
Being there before the hordes of summer tourists, I was most fortunate to be able to walk on the glacier in solitude. The hike to the base of the glaciers was muddy. Technically this part is called the moraine, and it is comprised of debris such as silt, sand, gravel, and boulders that the glacier has dropped.
A trail led over the moraine from the parking lot to the edge of the ice.
Once on the glacier, you choose which way to go.
What do you think is the safest?
Is it the rocky path where you follow pebbles and stones embedded in the ice?
Is it the soft snow where you periodically sink in to your ankles?
Is it the honeycomb surface of ice?
The weight of accumulating snow on glaciers creates a tremendous force. Snow crystals then compress, change shape, combine into firn.
Luckily nothing happened to me as I was careful and I encountered only a few streams and cracks 2-feet deep.
Blue ice forms on glaciers as all light except for blue is absorbed.
In what I considered the heart of the glacier, the terminus, a giant pool with a steady stream separated me from the part of the glacier with giant cracks 50-feet deep.
The cracks of the glacier. 10% of the earth's land area is covered by glaciers. This is about an area as large as South America. Glaciers store about 75% of the world's freshwater. If all the glaciers melted the sea levels would rise 231 feet.
I did stop and listen for a while here.
What do you think a glacier sounds like?
Take a minute and imagine it.
The end of the glacier is called the terminus. Antarctica doesn't have snowy winters yet it has 86% of the world's glacial ice? How come? Because it's at the bottom of the world and the sun's energy is less concentrated and unable to melt the snow and ice.
Imagine the hushed whispers of millions of drops rushing to join the gentle murmur of under ice streams. As you walk, the hard crackly crunch of your shoes on the ice contrast to the gentler smushing as your feet sink in the soft snow. Birds chirp in the distance and the wind softly sails around your ear. It’s as magical as the glacier itself.
With this magic, my time in Alaska came to a close. Only a scramble up a mountain and a drive through the rugged nature remained.
Scrambling up this hill was trickier than walking on the glacier.
After my brief time and my varied adventures here, I have come to love and respect Alaska. Spending the majority of my time feeling like a tiny, insignificant speck surrounded by the immense, magnificent offers of nature, I feel this truly is “the last frontier”.
A mommy moose and her calf outside my cabin saying goodbye to me!