Matanuska Glacier
Located about 100 miles outside of Anchorage, the Matanuska Glacier makes for a wonderful day trip.
The glacier is huge, and the image above shows it's fed from an ice field quite a ways away. It was part of the Homestead Act, and it's been in the same family since. When we think of Homestead we think of wagon trains and settling in the west, but because Alaska was a fairly new piece of land to the United States, it was only very recently they stopped doing that.
In 1862, Congress passed the revolutionary Homestead Act that sent thousands of Americans west in pursuit of free land. Any man 21 years of age or over was eligible to stake out 160 acres of land for less than $20. After filing their intentions, homesteaders were required to live on the land, build a residence, and farm at least 10% of it within five years before a legal patent for the land was issued. After Alaska was purchased by the U.S., homesteaders began claiming land in Alaska. Homesteaders ranged from dairy and agricultural farmers to miners and wilderness pioneers living a subsistence lifestyle. Though homesteading in most of the U.S. began to rapidly diminish in the early 20th century, it remained a viable method of settling Alaska. The Homestead Act was finally repealed in 1976, though Alaska was granted an extension until 1986.
So somebody homesteaded the area around the end of the glacier, and part of the glacier itself. As it's on private property, they put up a gate, and now can charge $15 a head (so worth it) to visit. The huge advantage they have is after signing a ton of waivers saying anything stupid you do is your fault, not theirs, you can do pretty much anything you want there. Many other Glaciers have been roped off to keep people off in the distance and away from them, not this one.
Very quick lesson on glaciers. Snow falls. More snow falls. More snow falls. More snow falls. The snow on the bottom has so much weight on top of it, the stuff on the bottom gets compressed into ice. Over thousands of years, the masses of ice flow like a river carving valleys out of mountains, etc. The dirt picked up is slowly abraded into a powder with the consistency of flour. It can leave large amounts of debris (rocks, dirt, trees it's picked up and frozen in time for generations, etc) in it's path. They move forward and backwards depending on how fast the flow is and how much it's melting at the end. This one was about 600 feet thick at the end of it.
You pay, go through the gate, and drive up a gravel road to the parking lot. There you are pretty much free to do whatever you want, walk out (10 minutes) and leave, climb on, hike, or if you are really adventurous you can even do some ice climbing.
It was wonderful. The ice was incredible, and it was fairly easy to see that it was not just a giant block of ice. Rivers of water were forming as
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Ice climbers working out where they were going to scale down |
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Gravel and dirt settling out from the melting ice |
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Flowing water carving little rivers in the ice |
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Looking down a deep crack in the ice (no it's not upside down) |
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A small lake formed between the hills of ice |
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On to Afternoon Rafting