The Kenai Fjords National Park is headquartered in downtown Seward, but covers a vast area of the Kenai Peninsula. It has almost 670,000 acres. Exit Glacier is just two miles back toward Anchorage (130 miles) from Seward and 8 miles further inland. It does not touch a body of water other than the outflow generated by its own melt. It is one of the most accessible glaciers in Alaska or anywhere. You drive up to a rather limited paved parking lot bordering a fuel-cell heated visitor welcoming building, pay no fee, and hike maybe a quarter to a half mile up the paved pathway (until the paving runs out and the steeper climb begins) and walk almost up to the face of the ice with only short stretches with mildly strenuous grades. There are about a quarter of a million guests per year to the park as a whole.
When you reach the top of the ascent, there is a series of rope or fence barriers to deter people from doing stupid things, but that probably still happens. Exit Glacier makes no audible manifestations, is not calving off or any of the other exciting things of those that are flowing into the sea. It is rather tremendous in size, however when you are standing near it. Normally, you can walk to the end/base of the glacier and actually walk up and touch the face of the ice. For some disappointing reason, there was a barrier keeping us from taking that fork on the trail and our views were tremendous but only from a side view with the glacier ever so slowly flowing by us. There were signs however, marking where the glacier had been receding over the past 100 years or so that gave a better sense. of the warming and not so warming that had occurred over that time period. There was not a definite acceleration noticeable, though the volume of iced melted would not be necessarily a one to one relationship to the length melted.
The views from beside the flowing glacier were outstanding. Exit dumps into a large valley with mountains seeming to surround the whole valley. The small stream from the melting glacier was cloudy with sediment, but flowed into this hugely wide river plain where the small meandering stream was contained and constrained. The green trees offset by the snow and elevations (probably no more than 4,000 to 6,000 feet at peak) made an elegant sight. The one range of mountains separated us from Seward on the other side. The expanse of the rocky deposits would make a stone/gravel supplier green with envy, something a civil engineer must notice. Having this expanse of small stones already in one place and accessible would lend themselves to rapid screening, trucking to a highway or other construction site and immediate wealth - if only it was located near someplace that needed such resources. Of course, this would never happen in a National Park, but even if it were not a park, it is so far to a place where such masses of stone could be used, that transportation would be many times the worth of the stone.
Near the parking lot and Visitor's Center the rangers and an outside person had set up a display of various animal furs and bones (mainly skulls) of animals found in the area. There is an abundance of animal life in the area though a casual visitor such as us would not often see these small critters, such as mink.
On the same road as Exit Glacier was the summer camp of the Ididerod dog sled family; the Seavey's. The father has competed for many years and has actually won at least once and placed several times. The son is married to a former member of our youth group here at White Plains United Methodist Church in Cary. Joan and I were chaperones for the group to the beach when she was a teen. She went to Alaska with her brothers (Jones) after school and the brothers made their fortune and she married the Seavy son (not to infer that was not or does not equate to a fortune). Now their son is competing in the Ididerod. Anyway, we stopped by the summer camp there but Jeanine had gone into Seward for a time and was not there to greet. Basically, the camp serves several purposes. It provides conditioning and training for the dogs (they sell -wheeled- dog sled rides), they make cash to pay for the dog feed at about $60 per hour-long sled rides. They live up further North someplace but compete each year in the contest which runs about 1000 miles and started to commemorate a trip to deliver medicines to a remote area during the cold of winter. EVERYONE in Alaska knows the Seavys it seems. With such a beautiful valley and the surrounding mountains, it is also a wonderful place to be in the Summer. The only downside I noticed against doing that in the short time we were there looking for Jeanine was that there is a constant roar of barking dogs! That would soon get on my nerves, I surmised.
We considered taking a ride to Homer, but determined that we would not have enough time. Our interest in Homer was sparked by hearing of the halibut that was caught there the day before we went fishing (319 pounds!) and a bumper sticker spied by Charles. It said Homer, Alaska: a quaint drinking village with a fishing problem. In reality, it must be quite similar in ways to Seward but I would not mind a visit there someday to reassure myself that this is the case.
Next - Road to Denali and the Dome Home.
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