August 22
“It’s Hawaii with glaciers,” Jed says to everyone he speaks to. He and I and most of the other male deck rats cruised yesterday with our shirts off, lounging on the aft deck as Alaska Ferries’ “Malaspina” motored south out of Haines, weaving through the islands of southeast Alaska like a needle through fabric. At sixteen knots we left the glacial fjord of Haines and Skagway behind and cruised through taiga and glaciers to Juneau, taiga as thick as caribou fur and glaciers that crept toward the sea like ice cream dripping down inverted cones. That night, after passengers with cabins retired below decks and we deck rats fell asleep in our lawn chairs under the soft glow of Aurora Borealis, the Malaspina stopped at St. Petersburg and Wrangell and navigated “The Narrows,” a stretch of the route where land is reputed to come within a stone’s throw of both sides of the boat. I wouldn’t know, though, because Jed and I had drunk several beers and I was fast asleep.
Time aboard the Malaspina is delightfully idle. People read or sleep or sit together, sometimes talking, sometimes not. Some lift binoculars, some do not; some click their cameras, others don’t. We all watch the scenery. The inactivity frets Jed. “I feel like I should have to work for this,” he says from behind his sunglasses. This morning he did pull-ups. “I’m used to biking or hiking every day.” I adjust to stationary life more easily, watching the white, bubbly trail of the ferry fade to blue beyond the brown toes of my propped-up bass fishing shoes. The shoes were new when I started this trip, but now the scars and blemishes of travel are turning them into proper footwear. My Carhartt pants, too, are showing signs of use. There is gray silt stuck around the cuffs, and I sit up to brush at it.
The silt came from the lateral moraine of Worthington Glacier. I was driving south into Valdez when I passed it, and since I’d never been close to a glacier before, I decided to visit. When I climbed out of Squatter and headed for the ice, I looked – exactly – like a Georgia boy out to see his first glacier. I wore a flannel shirt, Carhartt pants and bass fishing shoes manufactured by Georgia Boot Co. In lieu of an ice pick, a carpenter’s hammer swung gaily from my hammer loop as I skipped over streams of meltwater gushing from beneath Worthington.
Different parts of a glacier move at different speeds. When the glacier flows over a dropoff, it accelerates and the downhill ice temporarily outpaces the ice behind it, causing tension within the glacier. Crevasses form perpendicular to the direction of movement. As the glacier flows, those crevasses bend so that they resemble giant smiles, curving up at each end because the thinner edges of the glacier move more slowly than the thick ice in the middle, which deforms more readily as a result of its great weight and generates more meltwater because of the pressure it exerts on the ice below.
At the edge of the glacier I swung my hammer at the ice, expecting it to give way like so much hard-packed snow. The ice chipped. I swung again. It chipped. Impressed, I decided to climb up. I reversed the hammer and drove the claw as deep into the ice as I could, then, pulling on the handle, clamored onto the glacier. Rocks and debris from the cliffs above littered the surface. Water rushed audibly below. I swung the hammer again and climbed higher. Then I thought about the crevasses, and slid sideways to examine the nearest one.
I peered into it. Even at the edge of the glacier the crevasse was eight feet deep and two feet wide. At the bottom, the ice was blue, indicating ice crystals compacted so tightly that only low-frequency blue light could penetrate – light waves with shorter wavelengths, toward the red end of the visible light spectrum, never made it. Though I stand over six feet tall, I was by no means confident that I could climb out of the crevasse if I slipped into it. Certainly there was no one around to pull me out. Beloved though they may have been, my carpenter’s hammer and bass fishing shoes could scarcely function as an ice axe and cramp-ons. And that blue ice looked cold.
I slid back down onto the churned rocks at the glacier’s base. A ridge of lateral moraine ran along Worthington Glacier’s southern side, an easy 50 or 60 feet above the glacier’s surface. Probably a vestige of the last Pleistocene glaciation. Atop it, according to my brochure, was Moraine Trail, a one mile hike alongside the glacier. I climbed toward the trail. The moraine slope lay near the angle of repose, and I climbed on all fours to the sound of loosed rocks clattering below me.
The trail was a ribbon of hard-packed till that traced the crest of the lateral moraine. Breathing hard, I sat down on it. The gray dirt that now covered my hands and pants fell away steeply on both sides, in places so steeply that I doubted I could have scaled them. I looked out over Worthington Glacier. Its source was high in the Alaskan Range, a snowy basin as white as angels’ gowns. As the snow accumulated, the ice crystals compacted into ice and when the ice reached a critical mass it spilled out of the high basin. Now in motion, the glacier interacted with the mountain, reshaping it and being shaped by it. No longer pure, the ice grew dirtier with the crumbs of the cliffs it had carved as the glacier descended from the angel-white basin. It ground the stone underneath into “rock flour” that would cloud alpine streams with silt. It plucked whole boulders out of the mountains and incorporated them into its sliding bulk as the ice at the base melted and froze, melted and froze. It sent glacial streams downhill from its terminus like fingers, streams gurgling siltily into the lake that formed uphill of the terminal moraine Worthington Glacier had deposited during Pleistocene time, 12,000 to 1.8 million years ago. Trees shaded the western shore of the lake. Bare and sterile rock touched the snow of the angel-white alpine source.
I put a hand down on the firm dirt of the trail and pushed myself up. The wind I had scarcely felt down on the glacier blew hard from the south across Moraine Trail. I walked slowly, almost slow enough to double-step, because the grade was steep and would get steeper as it passed the point where Worthington fractured into crevasses. I climbed. I began to sweat. I pushed my sleeves up and unbuttoned my shirt front so that the wind could cool me, and the first raindrops I felt fell on my hot forearms. They were small raindrops, typical of southeast Alaska. The kind of rain that could fall all day.
As I hiked upward, the loose morainal ridge that had marked the glacier’s southernmost edge during Pleistocene time gave way to hard rock and cliff edges. The rain kept falling. In places, the trail strayed obnoxiously – and I thought perilously – close to the ledge. I held on to the bushes that grew on the opposite side of the trail with both hands and sidled past the cliffs. When my bravado refused to submit to prudence any longer, I dropped to my hands and knees and crawled toward the edge. I poked my head over the empty space. “Sheer” is an understatement. The rock, gray and brown and unforgiving, dropped straight down, offering only thin ridges that looked like blades to break the fall of a tumbling hiker. I wondered how much it would have cost the Forest Service to install safety nets. Rain fell on the back of my neck and ran under my shirt. It was turning the trail, I thought with dismay, to mud. I backed away from the cliff and continued up.
The stones beside the trail had been dull with the dust aroused by nearby foot traffic, but now spots appeared in their dusty coats like specks of varnish flicked from a paintbrush. My southern arm and pant leg were getting wet. I moved my camera into my right pocket and kept walking. Only my exertions kept me warm. The vegetation grew scrubbier as I climbed. The trees were below me, and I could see up ahead that tough-souled grasses would supplant the bushes I walked through now. The rain intensified, the drops growing larger. Above the grasses rocks, ornamented only by lichens or unassuming mosses, fought the battle against wind and rain alone. I knew they were losing. The rocks beside the trail where I was were pretty well varnished now.
I began to look for temporary shelter. Ahead, to the south of the trail, I saw an angular boulder leaning slightly to the north. “House Rock,” I decided to call it. When I reached House Rock I found the dust on its north side dry, so I sat down and nestled against the stone. It was smooth and cool, soothing against the hot skin of my face and neck. I stretched my legs in front of me against the rock and found that most of the time even my northernmost leg stayed dry. I pulled the brochure from my back pocket and read. Worthington Glacier was a temperate glacier, more responsive to climatic fluctuations than glaciers in colder regions because its ice did not glue it to the mountainside. Because it was temperate, Worthington had more meltwater underneath. Temperate glaciers were early indicators of climatic change. Temperate glaciers were now receding in overwhelming proportions. I rolled down my sleeves as my perspiration evaporated. The warmer climate concomitant with global warming had also brought more precipitation, however, so many temperate glaciers in southeast Alaska were accumulating ice at their alpine sources although this accumulation had not yet manifested itself in glacial advance. That would take several years. For now, glacial tongues were receding in the balmy temperatures, even as glacial mass increased. I rebuttoned my shirtfront. The brochure advertised Worthington as “Alaska’s most accessible glacier.” The wind slackened for a moment and rain fell against my leg, popping against the stiff cotton of my pants. I shivered and slid the brochure back into my pocket. I left House Rock with a pat and headed uphill.
The trail petered out in a field of broken stone near the source. Ahead, above and to the left, a field of ice and snow sat poised to send its contents downhill. Ice flowed from it, a tributary, crossing the direction of the trail and sweeping down to the right to join Worthington Glacier. Far ahead and on the other side of the glacier lay the massive, pelagic sheet of pristine white that fed Worthington Glacier. The sheet had fed Worthington Glacier throughout the Pleistocene, and fed it still. Clouds blowing across the mountains veiled its furthest limits so that the snow of the glacier’s source blended imperceptibly into the white obscurity of the clouds.
I turned and crouched by a pool of glacial snowmelt. I drank from my cupped hands. The cold of the water hurt my fingers. The pool was clear. If not for the dimples of raindrops I could have discerned individual granules on its bottom.
I thrust my hands into my pockets for warmth as I hiked back to Squatter. I wiped my hand dry on the inside of my shirt and shielded my camera from the dampness of my pants. Water ran down my forehead and dripped off my nose. Now the rain dampened my right sleeve. Lower down, the wet bushes beside the trail drenched my pants and I carried my camera in my hand. The bass fishers were soaked, and my cotton socks damp. Water dripped off the handle of my hammer. My pants were sodden, the dust around the cuffs turned to mud. I grinned and stretched, then skipped for about thirty yards. The warmth in my quadriceps spread across my body. I was too wet to think about being dry. I opened my arms to the rain and let it run down my cheeks.
The moraine is caked to my pants and will not brush off. It doesn’t much matter; the Malaspina’s deck rats aren’t particular. I lean back in my lawn chair and feel the sun on my face. Jed is wishing a storm would come up so the Malaspina would at least rock a little. The stillness is fine with me. The white bubbles of our passing are turning gradually to blue, but it’s not the aquamarine blue of the Caribbean or the cobalt blue of the Mediterranean. The water is more greenish-gray because of the silt.
Time aboard the Malaspina is delightfully idle. People read or sleep or sit together, sometimes talking, sometimes not. Some lift binoculars, some do not; some click their cameras, others don’t. We all watch the scenery. The inactivity frets Jed. “I feel like I should have to work for this,” he says from behind his sunglasses. This morning he did pull-ups. “I’m used to biking or hiking every day.” I adjust to stationary life more easily, watching the white, bubbly trail of the ferry fade to blue beyond the brown toes of my propped-up bass fishing shoes. The shoes were new when I started this trip, but now the scars and blemishes of travel are turning them into proper footwear. My Carhartt pants, too, are showing signs of use. There is gray silt stuck around the cuffs, and I sit up to brush at it.
The silt came from the lateral moraine of Worthington Glacier. I was driving south into Valdez when I passed it, and since I’d never been close to a glacier before, I decided to visit. When I climbed out of Squatter and headed for the ice, I looked – exactly – like a Georgia boy out to see his first glacier. I wore a flannel shirt, Carhartt pants and bass fishing shoes manufactured by Georgia Boot Co. In lieu of an ice pick, a carpenter’s hammer swung gaily from my hammer loop as I skipped over streams of meltwater gushing from beneath Worthington.
Different parts of a glacier move at different speeds. When the glacier flows over a dropoff, it accelerates and the downhill ice temporarily outpaces the ice behind it, causing tension within the glacier. Crevasses form perpendicular to the direction of movement. As the glacier flows, those crevasses bend so that they resemble giant smiles, curving up at each end because the thinner edges of the glacier move more slowly than the thick ice in the middle, which deforms more readily as a result of its great weight and generates more meltwater because of the pressure it exerts on the ice below.
At the edge of the glacier I swung my hammer at the ice, expecting it to give way like so much hard-packed snow. The ice chipped. I swung again. It chipped. Impressed, I decided to climb up. I reversed the hammer and drove the claw as deep into the ice as I could, then, pulling on the handle, clamored onto the glacier. Rocks and debris from the cliffs above littered the surface. Water rushed audibly below. I swung the hammer again and climbed higher. Then I thought about the crevasses, and slid sideways to examine the nearest one.
I peered into it. Even at the edge of the glacier the crevasse was eight feet deep and two feet wide. At the bottom, the ice was blue, indicating ice crystals compacted so tightly that only low-frequency blue light could penetrate – light waves with shorter wavelengths, toward the red end of the visible light spectrum, never made it. Though I stand over six feet tall, I was by no means confident that I could climb out of the crevasse if I slipped into it. Certainly there was no one around to pull me out. Beloved though they may have been, my carpenter’s hammer and bass fishing shoes could scarcely function as an ice axe and cramp-ons. And that blue ice looked cold.
I slid back down onto the churned rocks at the glacier’s base. A ridge of lateral moraine ran along Worthington Glacier’s southern side, an easy 50 or 60 feet above the glacier’s surface. Probably a vestige of the last Pleistocene glaciation. Atop it, according to my brochure, was Moraine Trail, a one mile hike alongside the glacier. I climbed toward the trail. The moraine slope lay near the angle of repose, and I climbed on all fours to the sound of loosed rocks clattering below me.
The trail was a ribbon of hard-packed till that traced the crest of the lateral moraine. Breathing hard, I sat down on it. The gray dirt that now covered my hands and pants fell away steeply on both sides, in places so steeply that I doubted I could have scaled them. I looked out over Worthington Glacier. Its source was high in the Alaskan Range, a snowy basin as white as angels’ gowns. As the snow accumulated, the ice crystals compacted into ice and when the ice reached a critical mass it spilled out of the high basin. Now in motion, the glacier interacted with the mountain, reshaping it and being shaped by it. No longer pure, the ice grew dirtier with the crumbs of the cliffs it had carved as the glacier descended from the angel-white basin. It ground the stone underneath into “rock flour” that would cloud alpine streams with silt. It plucked whole boulders out of the mountains and incorporated them into its sliding bulk as the ice at the base melted and froze, melted and froze. It sent glacial streams downhill from its terminus like fingers, streams gurgling siltily into the lake that formed uphill of the terminal moraine Worthington Glacier had deposited during Pleistocene time, 12,000 to 1.8 million years ago. Trees shaded the western shore of the lake. Bare and sterile rock touched the snow of the angel-white alpine source.
I put a hand down on the firm dirt of the trail and pushed myself up. The wind I had scarcely felt down on the glacier blew hard from the south across Moraine Trail. I walked slowly, almost slow enough to double-step, because the grade was steep and would get steeper as it passed the point where Worthington fractured into crevasses. I climbed. I began to sweat. I pushed my sleeves up and unbuttoned my shirt front so that the wind could cool me, and the first raindrops I felt fell on my hot forearms. They were small raindrops, typical of southeast Alaska. The kind of rain that could fall all day.
As I hiked upward, the loose morainal ridge that had marked the glacier’s southernmost edge during Pleistocene time gave way to hard rock and cliff edges. The rain kept falling. In places, the trail strayed obnoxiously – and I thought perilously – close to the ledge. I held on to the bushes that grew on the opposite side of the trail with both hands and sidled past the cliffs. When my bravado refused to submit to prudence any longer, I dropped to my hands and knees and crawled toward the edge. I poked my head over the empty space. “Sheer” is an understatement. The rock, gray and brown and unforgiving, dropped straight down, offering only thin ridges that looked like blades to break the fall of a tumbling hiker. I wondered how much it would have cost the Forest Service to install safety nets. Rain fell on the back of my neck and ran under my shirt. It was turning the trail, I thought with dismay, to mud. I backed away from the cliff and continued up.
The stones beside the trail had been dull with the dust aroused by nearby foot traffic, but now spots appeared in their dusty coats like specks of varnish flicked from a paintbrush. My southern arm and pant leg were getting wet. I moved my camera into my right pocket and kept walking. Only my exertions kept me warm. The vegetation grew scrubbier as I climbed. The trees were below me, and I could see up ahead that tough-souled grasses would supplant the bushes I walked through now. The rain intensified, the drops growing larger. Above the grasses rocks, ornamented only by lichens or unassuming mosses, fought the battle against wind and rain alone. I knew they were losing. The rocks beside the trail where I was were pretty well varnished now.
I began to look for temporary shelter. Ahead, to the south of the trail, I saw an angular boulder leaning slightly to the north. “House Rock,” I decided to call it. When I reached House Rock I found the dust on its north side dry, so I sat down and nestled against the stone. It was smooth and cool, soothing against the hot skin of my face and neck. I stretched my legs in front of me against the rock and found that most of the time even my northernmost leg stayed dry. I pulled the brochure from my back pocket and read. Worthington Glacier was a temperate glacier, more responsive to climatic fluctuations than glaciers in colder regions because its ice did not glue it to the mountainside. Because it was temperate, Worthington had more meltwater underneath. Temperate glaciers were early indicators of climatic change. Temperate glaciers were now receding in overwhelming proportions. I rolled down my sleeves as my perspiration evaporated. The warmer climate concomitant with global warming had also brought more precipitation, however, so many temperate glaciers in southeast Alaska were accumulating ice at their alpine sources although this accumulation had not yet manifested itself in glacial advance. That would take several years. For now, glacial tongues were receding in the balmy temperatures, even as glacial mass increased. I rebuttoned my shirtfront. The brochure advertised Worthington as “Alaska’s most accessible glacier.” The wind slackened for a moment and rain fell against my leg, popping against the stiff cotton of my pants. I shivered and slid the brochure back into my pocket. I left House Rock with a pat and headed uphill.
The trail petered out in a field of broken stone near the source. Ahead, above and to the left, a field of ice and snow sat poised to send its contents downhill. Ice flowed from it, a tributary, crossing the direction of the trail and sweeping down to the right to join Worthington Glacier. Far ahead and on the other side of the glacier lay the massive, pelagic sheet of pristine white that fed Worthington Glacier. The sheet had fed Worthington Glacier throughout the Pleistocene, and fed it still. Clouds blowing across the mountains veiled its furthest limits so that the snow of the glacier’s source blended imperceptibly into the white obscurity of the clouds.
I turned and crouched by a pool of glacial snowmelt. I drank from my cupped hands. The cold of the water hurt my fingers. The pool was clear. If not for the dimples of raindrops I could have discerned individual granules on its bottom.
I thrust my hands into my pockets for warmth as I hiked back to Squatter. I wiped my hand dry on the inside of my shirt and shielded my camera from the dampness of my pants. Water ran down my forehead and dripped off my nose. Now the rain dampened my right sleeve. Lower down, the wet bushes beside the trail drenched my pants and I carried my camera in my hand. The bass fishers were soaked, and my cotton socks damp. Water dripped off the handle of my hammer. My pants were sodden, the dust around the cuffs turned to mud. I grinned and stretched, then skipped for about thirty yards. The warmth in my quadriceps spread across my body. I was too wet to think about being dry. I opened my arms to the rain and let it run down my cheeks.
The moraine is caked to my pants and will not brush off. It doesn’t much matter; the Malaspina’s deck rats aren’t particular. I lean back in my lawn chair and feel the sun on my face. Jed is wishing a storm would come up so the Malaspina would at least rock a little. The stillness is fine with me. The white bubbles of our passing are turning gradually to blue, but it’s not the aquamarine blue of the Caribbean or the cobalt blue of the Mediterranean. The water is more greenish-gray because of the silt.
posted by Jeb Butler at 10:10 AM
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