Today's theme: Ice
OK, I have some photos for you. But before I get to that, I just want to say that I'm kind of a mess right now. For some reason, this trip took a physical toll on me like no other trip (including climbing up and down Mt. Washington. Or maybe I just don't remember.) My toes are numb from all the hiking—if it's nerve damage, I hope it's temporary. I have these big, itchy welts on my ankles from my hiking socks, which I've reacted to before, but never like this. I have tiny cuts on my fingers from this awesome walking stick that I discovered (really helped with the stream crossings) and a blister on my left thumb from the kayak paddle. To compound this, I burned my wrist and cut my index finger while cooking tonight. I think I need some sleep.
Rather than go through the pictures in chronological order, I thought I'd pick themes instead. So today's theme is ice. We were pretty excited to see glaciers, and we took a boat trip to make sure we saw a lot of them. But the best pictures come from Harding Icefield, which covers more than half of the nearly 608,000 acres of Kenai Fjords National Park. The trail is a difficult 3.7 mile trek up which is nearly vertical at some points, but totally worth it—on a par with going down into the Grand Canyon for worthiness. The grandness of the scale is magnified by clicking on the Flickr photos to enlarge them.
Exit Glacier, which is the only glacier coming off Harding Icefield that people can easily walk up to.
A couple of days after going up to Harding Icefield, a boat took us to Northwestern Glacier and some others around it.
By the way, here's the extremely pithy answer for why glaciers often appear blue. I have to admit that I was surprised at how dirty they are.
Finally, Mt. McKinley is snow-and-ice-covered year-round. As it turns out, McKinley comes out very infrequently, so although my photos didn't turn out very well, we were very lucky to have seen the small amount of it that we did.
For more photos in the "ice" category, go to the Flickr set on Alaska (including an awesome panoramic picture of the icefield) that I've started setting up. New themes to come later this week!
posted by Ianqui at 10:14 PM
13 Comments:
So beautiful! I am very jealous :-)
Get some rest, though....
Beautiful!
Nice pictures, ianqui.
Now I understand how "tough is to be an American". You really are a "rugged couple".
Salut i a reveure,
Ricarditu
Holy crap, that's pretty.
Those are amazing!
Breathtaking pictures! Thank you so much for sharing them with us! Hope all scrapes, cuts, etc. heal quickly.
Ice has something like 17 different crystal structures, most of them occurring at the same temperatures but different pressures. Glaciers are blue because they are a different crystal structure than the ice in your freezer, and therefore absorb light differently.
that is your materials science for the day. time for sleeping now!
FBG: Ianqui and I had an extensive discussion about glacier color. I even recounted the following lines from the famous poem you wrote about your trip to Alaska way back:
[I] saw lots of glaciers, which are pretty and blue
because the high pressure changes their crystal structure and causes them
to reflect different colors of light (to which one person responded "so
they're not really blue, they just look blue?)
Gorgeous!
Wow, those are really extraordinary. Thanks for sharing!
Stunning! Thanks for sharing!!!!
Oh, wow.
Those are gorgeous.
We were in Alaska last summer, and went on a little ranger-led hike on the trail to Exit Glacier. One of the people in our group was a creationist, which led to some rather interesting discussions. I didn't think the ranger handled it well, in a way--in an effort to not antagonize the other man (who kept saying "well, but those ages you're giving, they're just theories, right?") ended up saying "well, yes, they're theories and people have different opinions about them." Not a great introduction to science.
Your photos are awesome.
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