Into the mines! (The Lost Post)

SO...now after all this time, I went back and looked...and one blog post was missing. I had written this all up the day it happened and somehow the blog website never posted it. This was one of my favorite adventures, too...so now I'll repost it. This occurred during our Valdez trip on the day before we took the ferry...

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After I finished writing the previous post upon our arrival in Valdez, Matt and I went out to explore the town and to get dinner. This gave us a better look at what was around this city.

Valdez seemed, to me, to be exactly like the other Alaskan port cities of Homer or Seward, only with much less charm and far more industry. Its touristy downtown consisted of this one street along the waterfront.
Most of the businesses there are either small restaurants, glacier/sightseeing cruise companies, or fishing tours. Even so, there are only about a dozen or so businesses there. Valdez has what looks to me like a smaller harbor than Homer or Seward, though it was still decently sized. Most of the industrial ship-loading equipment is located on the other side of the bay with the Alyeska Pipeline terminal. There weren't many touristy gift shops or anyhing like that, so I didn't find a place to buy postcards or anything. We then drove out to the "Original" Valdez Townsite. Valdez was one of the places hardest hit by the giant waves generated from the 1964 Good Friday Earthquake in Alaska. The waves apparently rose up and completely swamped and destroyed downtown Valdez. So, they moved the town to a place four miles down the bay. I'm not sure that puts them in any better position if another giant wave were to come but...they moved the town. What's left of the old townsite are a bunch of random gravel roads with remnants of sidewalks and wooden walkways still visible, all running in a miniature grid throughout this grassy marsh at the end of the bay.

In the water by where the old port of Valdez used to be, you can see the pilings that used to support the main pier in town, as well as some old, rusted machinery that was left behind. I'm amazed that they've let all of this just sit here since 1964...it's still in recent enough memory that a lot of local residents were alive and remember well what happened that day. However, the entire subject and its remnants are treated with a museum-like atmosphere that makes it feel like this disaster happened centuries ago. It's an interesting atmosphere surrounding that earthquake.
The next day, Matt and I set out for our destination (chosen by me) of the city of McCarthy, Alaska, and the Kennecott Mines nearby. There are only two ways to get to McCarthy--you can either fly in or drive down the Edgerton Highway and McCarthy Road--the latter half of which is an unpaved, gravel, 1-lane drive for 50 miles on an old railroad bed into McCarthy. According to my Milepost guidebook, this route was recommended for those who like "adventurous drives." We would find out.

However, the route to McCarthy begins as the Edgerton Highway, which branches off the Richardson Highway some 85 miles north of Valdez. The Edgerton Highway heads into the heart of the Copper River Valley region of Alaska, which is a rather broad, flat region that runs all the way to the Wrangell Mountains in the east. On a clear, non-hazy day, the skyline in the above photo would be dominated by the great stratovolcanoes of the Wrangell Mountains, but today there was a fire to the south that was spreading smoke up north. This haziness really hampered our views of what should have been a spectacular mountain setting. Nevertheless, it was a pleasant, scenic drive.
Thirty-three miles down the Edgerton Highway, we came to the town of Chitina (which is pronounced like Chit-na...the second i is apparently silent). This is the last stop with gas and food services on the route before you begin the McCarthy Road. It's also the place where the pavement ends. Chitina sits in a very scenic little valley at the junction of the Copper River and the Chitina River. The Edgerton Highway and McCarthy Road follow what used to be old railroad beds, in particular for the Copper River and North-Western Railroad which was built solely to transport copper ore from the mines at Kennecott out to the port of Cordova on the coast. You may remember several posts back when I was flying to Juneau my plane stopped in Cordova. I talked about how there was a highway, the Copper River highway, that ran out northeast of town for a ways before randomly ending in the middle of nowhere after going over a "Million-Dollar Bridge" over the Copper River. That highway in Cordova follows the southern end of the old Copper River and North-Western Railway bed. There are miles of abandoned railroad grade between the end of the Copper River Highway outside of Cordova and here in Chitina, where the road once again picks up on the old railroad bed. Eventually the state of Alaska has plans to connect the two, but that could be a long ways off. Anyhow, when the railroad was active, Chitina was a major stopping point for it, about halfway between the mines at Kennecott and Cordova on the coast. There were thousands of people living in the town in the early 1900s and it used to be one of the largest cities in the state. The photo above shows all that's left of it. It's not much.
Then the Edgerton Highway ends and the McCarthy Raod begins. You can see here that the pavement ends and the road narrows considerably to travel the remaining 60 miles in to McCarthy.
Immediately upon leaving Chitina, the road crosses the Copper River itself, and it is quite the mighty river--worthy of all of the things named after it. This area of the Copper River is popular for dipnet fishing. This basically involves taking huge nets on the ends of long poles and running them through the water when the salmon are running, virtually guaranteeing a catch of fish. It is a method used by many natives and rural Alaskans for obtaining food for subsistence and, because it is so "simple," the state of Alaska limits dipnet fishing to only current citizens of the state. This means that none of us out-of-state people can participate in it.
The McCarthy Road has many scenic moments. Because the road is all gravel, it's extra challenging to drive and requires a lot of concentration. Many times you'll come around a curve and there will be a car coming the other way. The road has several winding spots where the road is very rough and full of washboard sections that force you to slow to almost a crawl. I lost half of the coins out of my little change bin in my car on the drive out, simply from all the bouncing around in the car. However, there are also several long, straight sections where the gravel has been totally packed down and its practically as smooth as pavement.
On these sections, you can get your speed up to 55 mph for a while with no trouble. Otherwise, I usually averaged around 35-40 mph going down the road. This means it took about one and a half hours to reach McCarthy--all down this gravel road.
The road doesn't actually go into McCarthy. It stops at several small parking areas at the edge of the rushing Kennicott River where you leave your car. Some parking areas are free, others require you to pay for the day. We chose one a little further out that was free. From there, it was about a half-mile walk down the road to a footbridge over the Kennicott River (the river is spelled Kennicott with an 'i' and the mining town is spelled Kennecott with an 'e'...apparently it was a very old clerical error...).
On the far side of the footbridge you can see a van waiting. Every half hour or so, the Wrangell Mountain Air Tours people have shuttle vans that run between the end of the footbridge, the town of McCarthy and the Kennecott mines. The actual town of McCarthy is about 3/4 of a mile from the end of the footbridge, and the Kennecot mines are another 4.5 miles beyond that. Matt and I figured we could walk into McCarthy, but would probably have to take the shuttle out to Kennecott. The shuttle costs $5 for one way and $10 for round trip. That $5 one way gets you from any point on the run to any other point on the run.
The view to the north from the footbridge was stunning. Up on the mountainside was the massive Root Glacier. At the base of the glacier was this extensive field of glacial moraine hills that looked like piles and piles of dirt, gravel and sand all spread around like sand dunes. Such an amazing vista. Note how clear it was at this point.

Matt and I then walked the easy 3/4 mile into McCarthy. I knew that McCarthy was supposed to be a very small town, retaining much of its appearance from its mining days in the early 1900s. This is the view upon turning down Main Street in downtown McCarthy.
And this is what downtown McCarthy actually looks like.
The town of McCarthy started as a service location for the miners and other workers up at the Kennecott Mines. Though all the workers lived on site at the mining town up in Kennecott, the mine owners placed the usual restrictions to make it a proper company town--no alcohol, no cigarettes, no vice of any kind. In response, the town of McCarthy sprang up about 5 miles south and off of the mine's property, featuring several saloons, brothels, and various other stores that stocked goods that were not sold in the Kennecott company store. When the mines closed in the late 1930s, the town of McCarthy basically shut down as well. It is currently enjoying a decent revival, though, as tourism to the Kennecott mines has exploded in the last few years. The town is currently home to some 50 permanent residents, who live in homes scattered throughout the area down random gravel roads. There is a general mercantile store in downtown McCarthy that stocks groceries and other goods, two restaurants that I saw, a small clothing store, and several tour companies. All the mountains you see in the backgrounds of these photos are peaks in the Wrangell Mountains, though none are the massive volcanoes the range is known for. The McCarthy-Kennecott area is located in the heart of Wrangell-Saint Elias National Park, and McCarthy is fast becoming a major launching point for backpackers and other adventurers who are exploring the park. With these adventurers and renewed interest in visiting the mines, McCarthy is starting to boom once again. Literally, that's all there is to the town now, though...

Matt and I bought something to drink at the mercantile and then got tickets from the Wrangell Mountain Air place to take the shuttle up to Kennecott. We also signed up for the 3:30 PM tour of Kennecott for $25. If you go back two photos to the one with the big glacier, the Kennecott Mining town is located at the base of the mountains to the right, above the big field of glacial till and moraines. Here's a closer view of what that area looks like through the trees as we drove by it. Such a bizarre landscape...almost looks completely unnatural and out of place.
We then arrived up at the main road in Kennecott, through the mining town. The tour launched from this point. The National Park Service bought the Kennecott mining town in the 1990s and major renovation and refurbishment work on all the buildings is currently ongoing. Thus, many parts of this "abandoned" mining town are extraordinarily neat and restored. It actually is a very pleasant-looking place.
If you imagine taking that photo above and turning left 90 degrees, this is what you see---that eerie dune-filled landscape again.
What's more incredible, though, is the fact that you can see this wall of smoke and ash moving up the valley from the south. The winds had just shifted, and the smoke from the major wildfire to the south was moving northward en-masse. I've never seen smoke have such a pronounced edge like that before...
Our tour was rather long--two and a half hours--but very, very informative and entertaining. We walked past several of the buildings. There you see the Kennecott Lodge up on the hill. Since the previous owners of the mine sold various parts of it to private individuals, the park service doesn't own every building. This lodge is an example of one of the privately owned buildings. Completely renovated and refurbished, the lodge is now a 35-room hotel with a full restaurant. Apparently it's very hard to get reservations to stay there, since it is always booked up. I was surprised at how many people were out in the mining town...we ran into maybe a dozen or so people in McCarthy, but up at the mines I saw at least 50...maybe more. Don't know where they all came from...
You can see here how the park service is refurbishing this place. The building in the foreground used to be a bunkhouse for mine workers. It's currently in the process of being redone by the park service, but you can still see the worn out paint and all the broken windows. In the background is the main storage building for the mining town, and that building has been refurbished...note the deck has a nice red railing and all the trim is painted and the roof redone. Almost every building a Kennecott is painted red for the same reason that all those turn-of-the-century schoolhouses were painted red--it was the cheapest color of paint available at the time. I really enjoy the image of the red and white buildings at this place.
The world's richest and densest concentration of copper ore was discovered in the mountains above Kennecott by prospectors in 1900. Instead of me going into the full history of the mines here, I invite you to read the Wikipedia article on the mines at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kennecott,_Alaska. It will just save me a lot of space here. Anyhow, obviously one of the first things you need to have when you want to build a mine is a sawmill so that you can cut the lumber needed to build all the rest of the mining buildings. The photo above is what remains of the sawmill, oddly one of the only buildings in the entire mining complex to completely collapse--most remain quite intact. Since they didn't have a sawmill to begin with, the sawmill itself was made out of very poorly hewn and assembled timbers, thus it didn't stand up to the test of time.

This creek runs through part of the mining town. It had a major flood in 2006 with the stream reaching heights that hadn't been observed since the original building of the town. All the buildings seen in this picture had part of their foundations washed away due to the flooding, and that's what's now causing them to collapse. The Park Service is doing whaever they can to stabalize and secure these buildings but some, like the Assayer's office in the front left foreground of the photo, have been so damaged or washed away that they'll likely just be allowed to collapse. The white building in the photo was the hospital for the town, and some mine administrative offices and housing were located in the partially collpsed white house behind that. The buildings on the right were more bunkhouses for the men.
This is the biggest and most famous building in the town...the massive mill. The primary reason I wanted to take the tour we took was because this tour let you go inside the mill. In doing all my research these past months about things to do in Alaska, I was always haunted by images of that mill building whenever they came up. The Park Service didn't even want to touch it to try and refurbish or restore it, so all they did was secure and stabilize it so it wouldn't collapse. They ASSURED us that it was safe and stable. I still think that building is just amazing looking. In the foreground, you can see a backhoe and some new construction--that's a replacement bridge that goes over the creek seen in he previous photo. The 2006 flood washed out the old railroad trestle that used to be there. You can see how the railroad cars would have crossed there and pulled into the buildings at the base of the mill. Ore from the mines was brought into the mill at the top and they let gravity move the ore down through the various stages of milling--this is why the mill building is so tall and built into the hillside.Our tour went to the top of the hill where the ore would have come in and we began our decent through the mill building there. The actual mines themselves are way up in the mountains above the mill and, though there are trails up to them and many people do visit them, there was no time for us to do that on this trip. So we started into the mill building. That did not look like the most inviting place to enter...Apparently when the mine was abandoned in he 1930s, they tore the roof off of the upper part of the mill. And some walls too. It seriously looks like a tornado came through and did all this damage...complete with the snapped power-line pole thing in the foreground. The Park Service people assured us this was safe...keep in mind were atop a 22-ish story wooden tower built nearly 100 years ago...Even though it REALLY doesn't look safe... there was a "walkway" with handrails on it that we were told to follow. No one even thought about straying from it...This is an aerial view of some of the other mine buildings from the top of the mill. You can see the construction progress on that new bridge.Looking out the other side, you can see a variety of other plants, including the one with the smokestacks which was the electric power generating building for the mine. You can just see the furthest tendrils of the Root Glacier out in the glacial moraine field out there, but...that smoke had really set in and that's what our visibility was cut down to.Anyhow, back inside the mill, our tour group of 14 people carefully poked our way around in there. Such chaos...there are no full floors...there are half floors and drops in the floor and there are sometimes ceilings 6 inches from your head and sometimes ceilings 20 feet above your head. Timbers crossing every which way in no clear pattern...random abandoned machinery just lying around idle. Complete chaos in there...Just more chaos. Some of these ladders were unstable and we were told not to use them. This was one place where everyone obeyed the guide to the letter.There was a set of red stairs outside of the building that followed a chute leading all the way from the top of the mill to the train tracks below. We were told this was for the highest grade of copper ore that needed no milling...they just put it in the chute straight down to the trains. Otherwise, ore that was less pure had to be crushed and ground up and then separated into copper and non-copper bits or "tailings". That's what a majority of the equipment in the mill was for. Anyhow--that ladder. It's known as the "John Denver" stairs, apparently, because, according to our guide, in one of his songs he mentions the Kennecott mines and McCarthy and in an "Alaskan Special" video, John Devner performed while sitting on these steps. For that reason, the McCarthy-Kennecott area now has an annual "John Denver Tribute Festival" where they gather to play John Denver songs and have a potluck and all that. Being a John Denver fan myself, this intrigued me...Anyhow, it took us a full hour to descend through that building. It was so dark and creepy in there...and so completely confusing. Stairways were steep and narrow, everywhere there were broken floorboards and random equipment just laying around. We were told that one summer a bear had found its way into the building and a tour group ran into him about halfway down through the mill. Both the bear and the tour group were scared out of their wits and took off in opposite directions. The tour group scrambled down to the next level, only to walk around a corner and find...that the bear had scrambled down as well! So both the bear and the group were frightened again and took off in opposite directions...such a cartoonish thing. But, we saw no bears and made it out of the building in time to catch the 6 PM shuttle back to the footbridge. I am so glad we took that tour (even if it was a bit scary) and it is definitely a highlight of my Alaskan adventures.

We got back to the footbridge and, now that I knew where all the turns and rough spots were, we made excellent time back down the McCarthy Road into Chitina and pavement. We stopped in Chitina, actually, and ate dinner at the Hotel Chitina--just like Copper Center Roadhouse, another randomly delightful restaurant in a random, middle-of-nowhere place in Alaska.

We then drove another two hours back into Valdez where we quickly fell asleep. But, we had to get up early for the ferry the next day. More on that tomorrow...

PS. I can't emphasize enough--keep in mind just how far away from everything all of today's activities were. It took us nearly 4 hours of driving from Valdez to get to McCarthy, and along that entire way we went through only one other town--Chitina. And in Chitina there were hardly any services--one small-store, shady-looking gas station and the restaurant we ate at and that was is. It was a 60 mile long gravel road into McCarthy---there are no other towns or settlements anywhere within that 60 mile radius of the city. And yet, this whole huge mining complex and the town of McCarthy with all of its tourists and adventurers and whatnot...they're all there. It just amazes me. My entire concept of "remote" has been completely changed by trips like this, the Alaska Highway, and driving up through the Brooks Range and the North Slope. Incredible.

Take the midnight ferry...

For our return journey from Valdez, Matt and I decided that instead of driving the full 6.5 hours back or so, we would take the "shortcut" and take the ferry from Valdez to Whittier, which is southeast of Anchorage just a few miles from the end of Turnagain Arm, though it is on Prince William Sound. The map here should show it better. Valdez is in northeastern Prince William Sound and Whittier is on the northwestern end of Prince William Sound.

The ferry from Valdez to Whittier is part of the Alaska Marine Highway System. Many of the coastal cities in Alaska have no road connection or lie at the ends of roads, and getting from place to place can require major detours inland. Thus, the Alaska Marine Highway was born. It's an official part of the Alaska State Highway system and is even eligible for federal funding through the interstate highway system because one of its connections is at Bellingham, Washington. The Alaska Marine Highway System (I'm going to use the AMHS acronym from now on) is one of the primary modes of transportation between the many towns on the many islands in southeastern Alaska, places like Juneau, Sitka, Ketchikan and Skagway. However, there is a "cross-gulf" route that goes across from Juneau to ports on Prince William Sound like Valdez and Whittier that are connected to the mainland road system. This greatly simplifies travel to the rest of the state from Juneau, as it affords people with cars a way of getting them out of Juneau and to someplace else.

The ferry also has a western branch to its system, with departures from Homer on the Kenai Peninsula out to Kodiak Island (famous for its bears) and then west along the Alaska Peninsula through the Aleutian Islands to the cities of Unalaska/Dutch Harbour. When I ge the money one day and can come back up here, I would love to take the 3 day--2 night ferry ride out from Homer and Kodiak to Unalaska/Dutch Harbour, slowly cruising by all of those islands in the Aleutian Chain. It's expensive, but not moreso than any other method of travel. The cost to transport a single passenger out to Dutch Harbour is around $800 one way, which is about the cost of a plane ticket to go out there anyhow. I would plan to take the ferry out there and then drive back.

The city of Anchorage does not have immediate access to the AMHS, as they expect you to drive to Whittier or Homer to pick up the ferry. It's meant to be a supplement to the road system instead of an alternative, for the most part. However, we just wanted the experience of riding the ferry, so we went for it.

It cost us $89 per person to get passage across Prince William Sound, and another $105 to transport my car. Rather expensive, but we still wanted the experience. The cost and scheduling are the most prohibiting things to travelling on the AMHS.

Case in point, the only ferry that would allow vehicles on it was the 5 hour and 45 minute ferry that left Valdez at 8 in the morning. There was a second ferry leaving around noon that only took three and a half hours, but this "express" ferry didn't allow vehicles. Twice on my confirmation email and on the AMHS website appeared the line "FOR ALL FERRY PASSENGERS WITH VEHICLES TO/FROM WHITTIER--CHECK IN IS 3 HOURS PRIOR TO SCHEDULED DEPARTURE". This meant we had to check in at the ferry office by 5 AM. Early morning...
We got up at 4 in the morning and were at the ferry terminal by 5 AM (the terminal was only a five minute drive from our hotel). It was very foggy and rainy in Valdez, but still light out, since it's always light out up here. The lights in the ferry terminal, however, were all dark and a sign in the window said that they were closed. This bothered me. So we parked the car and I went up to read all the signs posted in the window. The largest was a schedule which listed all the departure times and the phrase "All departures must check in one hour prior to departure." One hour. We now had two hours of nothing to do. Very disappointing. So, Matt went back to sleep and I read for an hour and a half until someone showed up and the terminal opened. We went inside and picked up our tickets. We then got back in the car and were directed to a holding area by the ferry. There were already six vehicles there. I don't know how six vehicles got in ahead of us when we were sitting there in front of the terminal the whole time, but somehow they did.
In the photo above you can see the ferry on the other side of the covered sidewalk. This was in the holding area. We waited there for another half an hour before they finally began boarding the vehicles.
On board the ferry, we turned to the left which would be toward the aft of the ship. There's a wide deck inside, but we were told by the crew members there that I would have to back down into this narrow side "hallway" of sorts because my car was small enough. I don't like backing vehicles into anything, and everyone else somehow seems to be very good at it, but I'm not. They had people directing me though, and after watching these other drivers get yelled at and crew members running toward them yelling "NO! NO! STOP! STOP!" my nearly flawless parking job meant all the more to me. They packed the cars in very, very tight.
This is the first time since I've had this car that the car has been able to travel somewhere without having to do all the work in getting it there. I felt good about giving my car this break, particularly after all its been through in the past few months, even more so after driving down the McCarthy Road the day before. You're not allowed to access your vehicles during transit, so Matt and I collected a few things then climbed the stairs to the surprisingly lush passenger deck.
This was the foreward observation lounge. It reminded me of a theater, but with windows instead of a screen or stage. The chairs were all very plush and they all reclined--wide seats with plenty of legroom too. If only flying could be so comfortable. I enjoyed watching the rest of the vehicles go down the ramp into the ship for a while.
Somehow they got all the cars in and we shoved off right on time. The fog was very dense and it was pouring rain, so for the first hour or so we didn't see anything at all except white emptiness. The boat moves at around 14 knots, but the waters were also very calm and you could hardly feel that we were moving. A member of the US Forest Service was on our ferry, and the AMHS has Forest Service or National Park employees on many of their ships to act as guides and answer questions to take the pressure off the crew. Our guide set up a schedule where every hour he gave a 15 minute presentation on some aspect of our surroundings--be it glaciers, fishing, fox farming, or the city of Whittier. I found this to be very entertaining and fun. Our guide was an elderly man who lived in North Carolina, but came to Alaska with his wife every summer and the two of them did work for the Forest Service. Apparently there are a lot of people with summer jobs in Alaska...
After a time, the fog began to clear a little and we could see a bit of the surroundings. The ship's bell is out front and the label on it has our ship's name, the Aurora. I went outside to the outer deck that runs around the outside of the ship and was able to take in the misty scenery.
After a short while, we passed Bligh Reef, which was the actual location of the Exxon-Valdez oil spill. This is how it looked through the fog--all cleaned up now.
Soon we passed north of an island called Glacier Island and entered a strait between it and the northern shore of the Sound. Apparently the very large Colombia Glacier was to our north, but we couldn't see it through the fog. However, chunks of ice that had calved off the glacier recently started showing up all around.
Some of these icebergs came VERY close to the ship. I think everyone has ingrained in them he danger of icebergs to ships because of the whole Titanic thing. A lot of people on board the ship became very edgy as these bergs came in closer. The captain and our Forest Guide had to keep assuring people that everything was all right. I just went outside and took pictures.
The fog set in again, though, and we spent most of the rest of the trip lost in obscurity. There was a full-service, cafeteria-style galley behind the observation lounge and when they opened at noon for lunch Matt and I ate. I enjoyed a fish (cod) and chips meal that I didn't expect to find on this ride at all...I had no idea they had a cafeteria on these cruise ships. Very pleasant find.
On the way there, I noticed the familiar "Alaska Scenic Byway" sign that I had seen on so many roads in the state. Apparently, since the ferry system is funded as part of the state highway system, they can declare the ferry as a "Scenic Byway". Strangest scenic byway I've ever been on...
Anyhow, we were due to arrive in Whittier around 1:30, so we soon approached.
Whittier is a very funny kind of town. It's only a little over an hour from Anchorage by road, down past the end of Turnagain Arm. There's only a small strip of land separating the eastern end of Turnagain Arm from Prince William Sound. Once again, see the map I linked to above for better details. This strip of land is that low ridge of mountains you see behind Whittier. Without that strip of land, the entire Kenai Peninsula would instead be Kenai Island. Of course, as we can see here, Whittier is on the Prince William Sound side of these mountains and not on the Turnagain Arm side. In the 1940s, the US Military established the town of Whittier as a military outpost during World War II. Turnagain Arm and the Cook Inlet (where Anchorage is) freeze over during the winter, but Prince William Sound does not. Thus, the military wanted an ice-free part that was near Anchorage and thus Whittier was born. Of course, accessing Whittier from the Anchorage side was still a problem, so the Army Corps of Engineers constructed a 2.6 mile long tunnel under the mountains to connect Whittier with the rail line to Anchorage. More on that later.

In the photo above you can see two large buildings. The tall, lighter-colored one on the right is called the Begich Towers and 75% of Whittier's population of almost 200 live in that one building. The other 25% live in one of two other condominium/apartment buildings nearby. The other, lower, darker building on the left is called the Buckner Building, and at one time it was the largest building in Alaska. Back in the days when Whittier was a military town, the entire population lived in that one building. However, it was abandoned in the 1960s (before the 1964 earthquake, actually) and today no one knows who owns it. The building, though huge, is completely abandoned and condemned as well. People had planned to tear it down, but the building is full of asbestos, which complicates matters. The city of Whittier once offered to let Steven Spielberg blow it up for one of his movies, but he learned he would have to pay several millions of dollars to then clean it all up--which is difficult not just because of the asbestos, but also because the only way out of Whittier is by boat/barge or through the very narrow tunnel. So the building remains abandoned, but several local residents and many tourists still go into it to explore. I'm told the building smells horrendous, several of the lower floors are flooded, walls are caving in, ceilings are collapsing, and bears hibernate in the building for the winter. But people still go there...
We departed the ship and drove towards the tunnel out of Whittier. On the way, we passed this building that, on a sunny day, is what I have often thought one of the most picturesque buildings I've seen in Alaska. It's called The Inn at Whittier and is one of the few places with lodging that you can find in this 3-street town. I have wanted to eat at the restaurant for some time now, but I'm told it's very pricy. One day I'll find out. The rest of Whittier is the harbour with all of the small boats and a lot of the little shacks offering fishing, wildlife, and glacier tours. There are no real "shops" or anything else...in fact, there really isn't anything to do in Whittier unless you catch one of those cruises or the ferries there. Other people have insisted to me that there's "tons!" to do in Whittier, but all I can ever get them to remember is that they bought fudge at a shop there. It's a strange town.

We approached the tunnel, which was only upgraded to include car traffic about a decade ago. At 2.6 miles long, it is the longest car-train combined tunnel in the world, and the second longest automobile tunnel now that the Big Dig in Boston is complete. Normally, coming in from the Anchorage side, there is a toll of $12 round trip you have to pay to use the tunnel. There is no toll booth on the side leaving Whittier, so if you're like us and come in on the ferry, you don't have to pay anything, which I greatly enjoyed. Since the tunnel is only one lane wide, it alternates between which direction gets to go at which times. Every hour on the hour for the first 15 minutes of the hour, traffic out of Whittier is allowed to go through the tunnel. Then it shuts down and if there's a train, the train can go through. Then, at thirty past each hour, a 15 minute window opens for traffic going into Whittier from the Anchorage side. Thus, for whatever direction you're going, you really only have 15 minutes every hour when you can get through the tunnel. The tunnel also closes at 11 PM and I don't know when it opens in the morning...so it's conceivable that you can get stuck in Whittier. Anyhow, since we got in at 1:30, we were able to make the window that opened at 2 PM with no problem. First, we waited in a staging area until we were signaled to enter.
The zoom on my camera was zoomed in a bit much for this photo, but you can see the narrowness of the tunnel. They also send the cars in relatively tightly. It's rather dark in the tunnel, but my camera took in a lot of the light and made it look significantly brighter to give this image.
As you can see, the tunnel is only one-lane wide and the road bed is shared with the railroad tracks. As I said before, the tunnel is 2.6 miles long and the posted speed is 25 mph, so it takes about 10 minutes to get through it. It feels like an awfully long time, though, as you just keep plodding away through this tunnel. At four places along the tunnel's length are "safehouses" which are apparently rooms to the side of the tunnel. This is an earthquake prone area, and should such a disaster occur and the tunnel collapses, in theory people will be able to make it to one of these safehouses where we are told each one has enough food, oxygen and supplies to keep 50 people alive for 25 days. Apparently they think that rescuers will be able to get there in that length of time. The entire tunnel is kept well-ventilated by large turbines that look like jet engines periodically spaced on the ceiling. The walls for the most part are raw rockface. So we spent 10 minutes driving under the Chugach/Kenai Mountains and then popped out the other side.
And from there on it was the normal 1 hour drive or so back to Anchorage down the Seward Highway along the north shore of Turnagain Arm. So, in effect, I only had to drive for one hour and five minutes to get back from Valdez to Anchorage instead of driving for six and a half hours. We spent another five hours and 45 minutes in the meantime cruising across the sound, but it was well worth the time. I enjoyed this experience a lot. And so ended this weekend's trip.

I'll try to post again sometime later this week (maybe FINALLY describing the scenic goodness that is that Turnagain Arm drive), but this is my last full week in Alaska, as I'll be flying into Washington this weekend to make the presentation for my scholarship.

Update

Made it back from our travels today, but it's very late and we have to be up early again tomorrow, so the description of today's travels will have to wait a day...