Matanuska Glacier Peril

I arrived back at the car from after a couple of hours hiking around on Matanuska Glacier, and my clothes were still wet. Although the day on the glacier had been beauty-filled and grand, I had learned a steep lesson on glacier safety.

We reached Matanuska Glacier just as the sun was starting to come out again. During the drive up the Matanuska Valley the sun illuminated the mountains that rose high on each side, and the Matanuska river lay below us along the curvy, Glenn Highway. As we stood in the parking lot we could see a 4 mile-wide swath of ice at the front of the glacier called the terminal moraine. From there the glacier stretched back over 26 miles into the mountains! We walked down the safest path of firm glacial silt and ice, which was marked by orange cones. In a few more minutes we stepped onto the full glacier.

Hindsight is always 20/20, which is why I now realize that stepping away from the orange cones which marked the “safe trail” was more risky than I previously thought. In a quest for images I moved through the ice hills of the glacier looking for pools of water to shoot reflection shots from. I walked through ankle deep, sticky mud towards higher ground where the glacier had deposited a gravel pile. From there I stepped to the edge of some flowing water, stuck out my toe to test the depth of the water, and immediately slipped off the ice edge and into the water. I never hit bottom!! The flowing water had cut a deep, deep pool which I now found myself in up to my shoulders. During the fall I was fortunate to have turned myself around quickly, so I put my elbows up on the edge of the glacier and pulled myself back out. In the fall my camera and tripod fell into a pile of glacial silt, and fortunately not into water with me. The incident lasted only a few seconds before I was back on solid ground and moving quickly away from that deep pool. I stripped off my wet shirt for warmth, used it to begin cleaning my camera, and shook a bit as the adrenaline set in.

What is particularly annoying (to me) and perturbing about the situation, is that I was not doing any unnecessarily risky. In fact, when I slipped in I was testing the water before stepping in. So, I’m now asking you to learn from me – test unknown and murky pools with a long stick, rather than a short toe!

Aside from a scrape with death, our day at Matanuska Glacier was remarkable. The gallery and images below details the gigantic ice face as well as the tiny details of the glacier.

Striations in this piece of ice caught Kassie’s eye, and the lighting sealed the deal. I love this image of a glacial ice cube.

The face of the glacier was carved in interesting ways. This up-close shot looks at the melting ice on its surface.

These large rocks melted rapidly, providing a brilliant blue window into the glacier.

This panoramic image looks back at the glacier, and down the headwaters of the Matanuska River.

A small rivulet of water pours into a crevasse.

The glacier till in this picture is created by the glacier as it grinds the river valley down.

The blue ice of the peaks of the Matanuska Glacier lit up as the sun came out.

A valley of ice holds a small pond of water on the Matanuska Glacier.

A semipalmated plover feeds in the glacial till and among the ice cubes of the Matanuska Glacier.

The end of a happy day at Matanuska Glacier!

Watching a Glacier Die

Drop a few ice cubes in your drink before you start reading this, and consider the question : how many licks does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop? Now, while you are thinking about that illusive answer, consider how many days it takes to melt a glacier. Just how fast does it happen? My several trips to Castner Glacier over the last 15 months provide interesting evidence into this impossible to answer question. Let’s take a look!

April 2014

When I first visited Castner Glacier in April 2014 a monstrous, multi-chambered ice cave shook me to my core. The ice cathedral hung over my head an estimated 80 feet above. The walls and ceilings of it were composed of blue, transluscent layers of ice and closer inspection of the walls showed that the clarity of the ice provided a window deep into the glacier of the sediment suspended in it. A chimney was cut into its ceiling allowing light to illuminate the icy floor of the glacier.  It was awe inspiring!

This was the glacial face (moraine) as I found it during my April 2014 visit. Clear, blue ice was found in the face, and particularly in the caves.

Once you walked through the ice caves, this cathedral was found on the other side. I guess, based on my height in this picture compared to the ceilings, that the cave was 80 feet tall!

This chimney was found in the ceiling perhaps 20-30 feet above the glacier floor in April 2014. It was very narrow at the top, but the bottom is much wider than this picture would suggest. The icicles at its base suggest that some melting was occurring in it.

This video was taken in April 2014 during a walkthrough of the ice cave and captures the scope of it. Instability of parts of the video was due to the slippery ice floor!

August 2014

The next time I visited the rainiest summer recorded in Fairbanks was coming to a close, and the rain had reshaped the ice in unimaginable ways. Water ran down the glacier in small rivulets and opened the chimney to a yawning mouth. It degraded the ceiling so extremely, that large chunks of the cavern had crashed down. If you stood close to the mouth of the cave many rocks fell dangerously from the ceiling as they melted from their icy tomb of thousands of years. The rapid melt had removed the beautiful transparency from the ice. It was now silty and gray.

When we returned in August 2014 we found the result of the constant rain over the summer. The chimney had melted so rapidly that the roof of the ice cave had collapsed.

This image shows the degradation of the chimneys from the top and back of the glacier. Although I didn’t take an April 2014 photo for comparison, this image is especially revealing when compared to June 2015 (upcoming images)

My parents stand next to the ice cave’s face for perspective. The large blocks that stood in front in April were now gone, and the top of the cave is much, much thinner than just three months earlier. 
 

This image from the front of the caves shows a large section of ice which caved off the front. The scale and setting of this picture is similar to the April 2014 image of me standing in front of the broad ice cave.

The rapid melting that we witnessed inspired me to create a different type of video for Castner. This video documents the fall (August) stage of plant life around the glacier, and then documents the progression of drops of water from the glacier which eventually build into the silty and fast-flowing Castner Creek.

June 2015

When I visited the Castner Ice Cave in June 2015, it was just a shadow of its former self. Only a small arch of ice remained of the once huge cave. Castner Creek ran through the remnant of the ice cave, where previously it had run to the side. In just fifteen months, unquantifiable amounts of ice from the glacier had transformed into water, carrying with it many tons of silt to the broader river valley that Castner Creek flowed into. The glacier was rapidly changing, dying.

This image of the Castner Ice Cave was shot in June 2015 from the back. The thin, collapsed chunk of ice in the foreground is all that remains of most of the ceiling of the cave.

This image of the back of the Castner Ice Cave can be compared to the images taken in August 2014 and April 2014. The trailing edges of the large ice cathedral that I stood in can be seen in the back right. The arch of the glacier is thin, and a new chimney shows that it continues to degrade.

The trailing edge of the ceiling on the right is all that is left of the ice cathedral from April 2014. Large piles of debris and silt have been deposited, and the floor where the cathedral was is much higher now.

The answer is two hundred fifty-two. At least that is what students at Purdue concluded to the center of a Tootsie Pop. But why does it matter that Alaska’s Castner Glacier and the state’s other glaciers are melting so rapidly? Alaska Dispatch News recently reported on a new study demonstrating that Alaskan Glaciers are losing 75 billion tons (75 gigatons) of ice each year, and that 94% of that loss is occurring on inland glaciers like Castner. This means that Alaskan glaciers will continue to contribute a significant amount to global sea level rise, especially in light of a warming climate. They end the article with a quote by study co-author O’Neel. “This is probably going to be a pretty tough year for a lot of the glaciers”, he stated. It appears he is right, and Castner’s included.

A Wood Frog, Blog

Visually and sonically the pond was alive. Golden light of a pre-evening sun poured over the pond, and where the light fell on the far bank the sound of spring in Alaska, a loud wood frog (Rana sylvatica) chorus, echoed in the birches. Wood frogs are the only species of amphibian found in Interior Alaska, because let’s face it : there are not many species that can withstand -40 degree temperatures! In the winter, wood frogs burrow into the soil under leaves or woody debris and concentrate glucose in their blood as anti-freeze. However, the glucose only provides some relief. In the cold months with little sun, their heart stops beating, eyes freeze, blood freezes, and brain activity stops. By almost any definition the frogs would be declared dead, but when spring temperatures arrive the frogs thaw out from the inside-out (instead of the outside-in, scientists have no idea how), resume life, and jump into local ponds for reproduction. It was that yearly event that I stood in the middle of with my camera.

I waded into the ~55 degree water, and through the old vegetation of the pond. Crossing the 60 foot wide pond to where the frogs called, resulted in water mid-way up my thighs and soaked my pants. I draped a camouflage cloth over me and waited like a giant, brown heron (or maybe the swamp monster) for the frogs to start singing. When they did it started as a single croak which seemed to say “all clear”. Within no time the life of breeding wood frogs unfolded all around me. Only a few feet away, each frog that called swelled up pockets of skin along their cheeks and side, and sent a rippling well of water out from its body. I think that communication occurs both by sound and by the small waves of water, although that is just an observation. Many of the male frogs chased females while rapidly swelling their air sacs, calling, and sprinting towards females. Often their approaches seemed to be rejected. I watched as many males swam up rapidly to a female and attempt to mount, but were thwarted by an elusive mate. Often in denser vegetation, groups of frogs boiled in the water as a constant struggle to maintain a female ensued. As I watched the frogs many mosquitoes fed on their exposed heads. After seeing that, I hypothesize that frogs are an important early food source for mosquitoes. I stood for 90 minutes while my legs turned into cold stumps, and finally decided that I couldn’t take the cold water much longer. However, my 90 minutes in the water was worth it! The short video below captures just some of this behavior. Be sure to watch them call in slow motion. Enjoy!

Frogs in the spring have long been a part of my life. Growing up, my open window in the warming days would let their songs in. In the Midwest, higher frog species diversity adds a wider range of tenors and bass to the chorus. The small, 200 foot diameter “frog pond” just inside the woodline is a consistent producer of leopard frogs (bass), spring peepers (tenors), wood frogs, tree frogs (several species), and likely others. The frog pond was an important stomping ground for my brother and my nature education. Although I never got to observe the frogs very often because they were pretty elusive, we often collected eggs and tadpoles for rearing. So, finally after all these years, the opportunity to see these frogs in Alaska up close was a real treat!

A before and after comparison of a wood frog with its air sacs swollen.

I really like this wood frog in black and white!

I’m not sure why this wood frog was only able to swell one air sac. However, it kept it swelled for long periods of time, and it seemed to be bigger than those with two.

Water droplets fly from the swollen air sacs of this frog.

Success! This wood frog male will fertilize the eggs of this female as she lays them.

A quick burst and a large amount of water fly from the air sacs of this aggressively calling male.

I observed many frogs make very small noises which resulted in these large water wells. My observation, is that the water waves are also communication.

This wood frogs is the epicenter of a small tsunami.

Cuttin’ loose with both bellows

A wood frog takes a quick break between calls. My, what eyes he has!

A quick selfie of frog photography.

Want to learn more? Check out this video highlighting some ongoing University of Alaska Fairbanks research!

Unique and Beautiful Juneau

Juneau, Alaska is one of the busiest places in the state due to its unsurpassed beauty, and accessibility by cruise ships. The town is surrounded in mountains which are often hidden in fog and rain, but grace the eyes when the sun comes out. Downtown  is full of oddities which reflect the independent people renowned for living there. Due to the surrounding mountains, most of Downtown is accessed by an intricate boardwalk and staircase system which connects houses and properties perched on its steep slopes. Its amazing that houses could be built there at all! As I walked around Juneau and the greater surrounding area, I was struck but its uniqueness and setting. Here are 10 shots to help convey the beauty of the area.

The steep hillsides of Juneau, and the surrounding mountains forces buildings to be built on high-grade slopes. Here’s a colorful array of buildings in upper, down-town Juneau as seen from the boardwalks.

These iron chickens caught my eye as I walked through the streets of Juneau.

A raft of scoters and other sea-birds sits in Juneau Harbor on a sunny day. Surrounded in mountains, the scenery is endless!

Spring was in full bloom in Juneau, and early rising skunk cabin dotted the landscape in bright yellow.

High up in the hillsides of Juneau, the Perseverance Basin boardwalk and trail offer beautiful view of Junea.

The ice caves of the Mendenhall glacier are stunning, and glaciers define the entire Southeast Region of Alaska, including Juneau.

This old mining building is a piece of the Treadwell mine of the late 1800s. In April 1917 this mine was flooded by a high tide, and “questionable” mining practices (http://www.juneau.org/parkrec/facilities/documents/treadbroch1.pdf)

Early blueberries are a species which have flowers before that bloom before leaf out. The water drop perched precariously here caught my eye.

This is a panorama captures the mountain range across Favorite Channel from Eagle Beach.

A mountain sits on the far side of the inlet at Eagle Beach. I was fortunate to have some sun on my last day in Juneau.

Thousands of years inches from your nose : Castner Glacier, AK

South of Delta Junction, AK there are many glaciers. One of them lies at mile 218 and a hike up Castner Creek brings you to its end (the terminal moraine). Once you climb up onto the glacier you are standing on hundreds (or thousands) of years of snow and sediment trapped there. Castner glacier is rapidly receding and as it melts has created many stunning and several exceptional ice caves. The caves often reach far back and are sculpted in inconceivable ways. As  you stand there in the chill of the cave and stare into the crystal-clear ice, it is impossible to grasp it all!

To get at the size and beauty of these caves, I’ve compiled this video of the walk-through of just two of the ice caves. Sorry for a some instability, but the floors were very slippery, and I had to protect my camera in case I fell 🙂

Apart from the beauty of the caves the geology of them is truly remarkable. For instance, consider the images here. The ice is so clear that you can see several inches back into it revealing layers of suspended soil.It’s hard for me to say how long they have been trapped in their icy tomb!

One of the most revealing pieces of the glacier was looking into its glass-clear ice. Inside suspended particles are just waiting to be thawed. I wonder how long they have been in there!

These two rocks have almost made it out from an unknown amount of encapsulation. Far within this crystal-clear ice you can see man other particles suspended and waiting release. Truly an incredible thing to see!

As the glacier melts the suspended sand particles fall out. They form layered domes and peaks which can be be many feet tall. Here’s a small deposited pile in the mouth of the eastern Castner Ice cave.

Castner Glacier is a rapidly receeding glacier. As it melts the sediment being held within the glacier deposits itself in hills and mounds. You can see the man layers of depsiting in this small mount of soil.

There were two caves that I explored with Ross, each were double ended; you could enter through the front and exit in the back. The walls were sculpted by water and wind. Ross commented that it was though “a huge tsunami had just been frozen instantly” – a apt description! It is so hard to judge the size of these caves without scale, so you’ll often see a person just to understand how big they are!

The blue in this huge ice cavern is stunning, as is the size!

 

I am not sure if this place has a true name or not. But the rapid recession of the Castner Glacier is demonstrated in this melting ampitheater of ice. I have decided to call this open ice face the “Cathedral of 1000 Swords”

Posing next to a frozen waterfall at the eastern Ice cave of Castner Glacier. Behind me, the cave extends far back. Look at those layers of ice and sediment! Each represents at least a winter of ice. I am literally standing underneath thousands of years of ice history!

A silhouette of Ross in the eastern ice cave. Look at those layers of ice and soil!!

Being on this glacier was  really special for me. I guess because I suddenly understood all the years of school where we talked about the features of glaciers and their impact on the landscape. To see the suspended sediment in them made it clear how areas like my hometown (with sandy, loose soils) could be laid down by receding glaciers. The importance of the active ends of glaciers (the terminal moraine) were apparent because the river was actively fed by the glacier. And, last, you really can’t imagine how huge they are till you stand on top of one! Or hike across it.

One last piece of the hike was a very cool look at a feeding white-tailed ptarmigan. Ptarmigan are notoriously “fearless” of humans (some describe it as stupidity), so this guy had little problem with us approaching him. He waddled around and ate snow an picked at willows. They are incredibly beautiful in the winter! But I imagine this bird will be molting to his summer brown soon 🙂

White-tailed Ptarmigan in its winter plumage. It was picking buds off this short willow.

This white-tailed ptarmigan is grabbing a mouthful of snow- presumably for hydration.

White-tailed Ptarmigan feeding on some moss or lichen along the top ridges of the Castner Glacier.