High Hopes: Glacier View, Alaska

We left the Mat-Su Valley heading for Glacier View to see the Matanuska Glacier. It was a rainy day but cleared up along the drive.

The two lane road took us up alongside a mountain with all the normal twists and turns. Warnings for rock slides were often seen. From the passenger side there were many sections of road without any type of barrier.

And, of course, there was the normal road repair work bringing delays.

Trying to keep the hillside from eroding.

Our first glimpse of the Matanuska Glacier.

The Matanuska Glacier is the largest glacier in Alaska that can be reached by vehicle. It is 26 miles long and 4 miles wide. It is classified as a valley glacier, a body of solid ice that flows like a river under its own weight through an existing valley. About 10,000 years ago it began its retreat to its present day location and it has not seen any significant change in mass for almost two decades.

The Matanuska is an active glacier which advances at one foot per day. It takes approximately 250 years for the ice to form up-glacier and advance to the terminus. The ice of an active glacier always moves forward due to gravity; like water in a river, the ice will flow down valley. When ice melts at a higher rate than snow accumulates, the glacier margin recedes.

The majority of glaciers in Alaska today are smaller glaciers which hang off mountain slopes.

Because the Matanuska Glacier is a weather hole, cold air from the glacier forces warm air upward towards the mountain peaks. This results in sunny skies and more favorable weather than its surrounding areas.

When we drove past the glacier we thought this was just dirt where the glacier had once been and was starting to grow vegetation.

While we were at Glacier View we decided to take a tour of the glacier and contacted one of several local companies that offer that service. There is only one entrance to get to the lower part of this glacier and it is on private property. The man who owns it built the road and bridge you need to travel to get to the glacier. He used to charge $30 a vehicle to get onto his property but over time he realized what a money maker it was and increased it to $30 per person. Mind you, that does not include the cost for the tour company.

The bridge over Matanuska River on our way to the glacier. It was rustic, at best.

Whether you go with a guide, or by yourself, you have to sign a series of waivers that basically says no one is responsible if something happens to you except yourself. And if something does happen, and you decide to sue, it must be done in the state of Alaska.

You can go out on the glacier by yourself without a guide but it is not recommended. Of course, we always have that fringe that does it on their own and we saw people out there without proper shoes or clothes. The worst was kids running around all over the place and one guy even brought his dog with him.

At the beginning of the glacier before our tour.

We had to wear helmets and if you didn't have good boots they supplied some for you. Along with the boots were crampons you put on to help walk on the slippery spots. Crampons are like snow tires for shoes. I put my hood up because it got cold out there.

All this black stuff we thought was just dirt was actually glacier silt on top of ice. We followed the guide and he showed us places we could walk and not walk. A puddle of water might be 40-50 feet deep since you were actually walking on the glacier. He dropped a piece of rock into one of them and you could hear how far it fell.

Sections of ice in the glacier that were heaving apart.

All the rocks were tilted to one side. That's because the sun could hit part of the glacier and melt it so the rocks tilted that way. They had cones marked near rocks that were really tipping so people would not get hurt.

A sediment hill caused by the glacier.

Picnic tables were provided if you wanted to hang around. We used them to put on and take off our crampons as we went further onto the glacier. Notice the splits in the glacier on the right. Some of them were quite deep.

This was our guide Matt. The black on his face is glacier sediment which is extremely fine. Many people come out to the glacier to collect containers of it and then sell it to be used as a mud facial. It's supposed to work really well.

One of the ladies in our group really got into it. She was trying to find something to use to carry more of the sediment back. The Captain had a doggy poop bag (empty) in his pocket and gave it to her and she filled it up and carried it out with her.

Someone else had to get into the act, too!

The ice on the left is glacier ice that has been compressed and it is pure and clear. The ice on the right is also glacier ice but it is white because it still has air bubbles in it and was not compressed.

This section of ice had heaved and was ready to fall. Our guide said the day before he saw people out by this chunk of ice letting their kids climb on it. Others were even sitting under it eating snacks. The ice weighs tons. It takes 100 feet of snow to create one inch of ice.

Because this is a valley glacier and it is continually moving, there are daily changes on the ice. A section you were on the day before might be totally changed the next day from melting or heaving.

Hiking through the glacier crevices.

Our group. We probably only hiked out about a half mile onto the glacier but to get there and back took 2.5 hours. It was very slow moving and easy to slip and fall especially when you were walking over crevices or climbing up narrow slopes.

Glacier View is a beautiful area and we enjoyed our stay. The RV park is remote, about 90 miles between two different towns, but there are still Alaskans living there.