Hiking the Matanuska Glacier: So cool! ;)

There are very few experiences you can call both thrilling and chilling. Hiking a glacier in Alaska is one of them. There are several glaciers you can access and hike on in Alaska. Many require you to have a guide with you. We chose to do our glacier hiking at the Matanuska Glacier, near Chickaloon, Alaska. (Isn’t that an awesome name for a town!)

The beautiful Matanuska River spreads out in the valley–the waters flowing from the Matanuska Glacier. Glacial water is very silty so it almost looks like watered down chocolate milk.

This year, in July, Alaska experienced the highest temperatures ever recorded. The Matanuska River flooded pretty significantly because the high temperatures accelerated the glacial melt. The temperatures had settle down a bit by the time we arrived, but the river was still running high and fast.

We found an awesome boondocking spot (thanks to Campendium) next to the King’s Crossing Bridge. Mike and Dad had to do a bit of maneuvering, but they made it in. No fires allowed because with it being the hottest July on record, it is also super dry and there are a lot of fires everywhere across the state. Most of the fire danger signs we saw said “Fire Danger Extremely High”. We have run into several in our travels. In fact, Mike and Mom and Dad drove through the canyon above about one month before this when they were coming to Anchorage to pick me up at the airport. It was so smoky, they could not even see the mountains that are captured above. So much smoke. What a difference a month made while we were down in the Kenai peninsula.

For our glacier hike, we decided to take a guided hike through MICA Guides. You can hike the very front part of the Matanuska Glacier on your own, if you pay park entrance fee. However, Mom was a bit nervous about it, so we determined that we wanted to go on a guided hike because we wanted to have crampons to help us have more sure footing. I am so glad we went that way. Walking on the ice with crampons is awesome. They grip the ice very firmly. You can climb pretty steep stuff with out slipping at all.

We also wanted someone who knew the glacier and from whom we could learn about it. It was the right call to go with a guide. Not only did we all enjoy it more because we all felt secure in our footing, but we learned a ton about the glacier from our awesome guide Levi. Levi was from Cortez, Colorado and is Navajo. He was great. He loved that we were from his part of the world.

A few things I learned that I found interesting are:

• Glacial mud makes great facial mud because it is so fine. We put some on our checks.
• Glacial mud is neither a solid or a liquid. It is in-between. We would stand on it and it would move like a liquid but it was solid too.
• The blue hue in the ice is from the most compressed ice which is the same as what we call “black ice”. It is super hard and slick.
• It is blue because the ice is refracting the light waves then all the other colors get absorbed – leaving just the blue color.
• The dirt on top of the glacier is sediment that it has pick up. The sediment layer is not that deep.
• Most of the ice is crunchy ice which is easy to walk on, but watch out for patches of the black ice.
• Glacier is always moving and changing.

One example of the changing nature of the glacier is below. These two pictures are of the same spot. In the morning as we began the hike it was just a pool of water. As we finished our hike 2 1/2 hours later, it was a much bigger pool and the water was actually flowing out of it and down the glacier. The melt had increased and this was one of the outlets from underneath the glacier. We never would have noticed that without a guide. That was pretty cool.

What an amazing experience. I feel like I have said that a lot on this trip in Alaska. But, it is true–Alaska is full of one amazing experience after another. It is “epic”.