Alaska From Above

I knew for a while that I was going to spend a large chunk of my traveling budget up here on a flight into Juneau for a few days. Located in the panhandle of Alaska (the part down along the west coast of the continent), there are no roads into Juneau, as none have been built to cross the rugged Coast Mountains range to the east of town. As such, the only ways to get there are by boat or by car. Since taking the ferry from one of the ports near Anchorage would cost about as much as flying there, but also take several days, I decided that I would fly. Acting on the advice of my mentor at the forecast office, he suggested that I try to visit as early as possible, as the weather gets very foggy and rainy in July and August. With that in mind, I booked travel for this weekend. I flew into Juneau today and will fly back late Monday evening. This gives me tonight, Sunday, and most of Monday to explore and see things before I return. But first, for day 1, I flew in today and this is what happened.
My flight out of Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport left at around 3:40, so I was at the airport by 1. The Anchorage Airport is a decently large airport and, obviously, serves as a hub for Alaska Airlines. Since the Anchorage forecast office is right by the airport, most of the drive was like a commute into work, and it only takes 10-15 minutes to get there from our apartment as long as traffic is good. Compared to the nearly hour-long trek into O'Hare from home, this seems so simple--and I can sleep in and not spend half of my day in transit and waiting at the airport.

The airport is undergoing some remodeling, so only a Chili's and a Quiznos are open for food at the airport. I grabbed some lunch at Quiznos, and had to wait in line between this mother and daughter who ordered four sandwiches and were the pickiest, most particular and argumentatively insistent people I have run across in a while. It took them forever to order their sandwiches and THREE times they asked the lady trying to make them to start over because she "had gotten it all wrong". So when I came up and just ordered one classic Italian on white with all of the normal toppings, she smiled at me and said, "Thank You". I went to sit down at a small table nearby, not stopping to think where the table was. After about 15 minutes of eating and wondering why it seemed like everyone who came by stopped to stare intently at me while I was sitting there (but I didn't want to look up and stare back at them...) did I realize that I had sat directly under the flight arrival and departure screens for all the flights. These signs were mounted on a very, very large photograph/mural that looked oddly familiar. Then I read the caption sign and realized it was somewhat fitting for me to be sitting under it. I had been there.
My flight left, slightly delayed but only be about 15 minutes so they could load more cargo. I deliberately chose this flight because it stopped at two cities--Cordova and Yakutat--that are NOT on the Alaskan road system and therefore are very difficult to get to. Most people woule choose the direct flight, of which there were many. But I chose this one. (It was also slightly cheaper.) Upon taking off, they soon announced that all approved electronics could be used, so I took out my camera. If you've been following this blog, remember how I have been trying hard to get a decent photo of the city of Eagle River that I like so much? Well, here is the entire city from above, all at once. The Glenn Highway is the north-south-ish road to the left of the city. Anchorage would be located to the lower left of this photo.
And this photo is actually the trailhead at the top of Arctic Valley where I went not too long ago.
We started passing over some glaciers. There are a lot of glaciers in southern Alaska. We're still following the Chugach Mountains at this point, so for a mountain range whose western end is in Anchorage, they extend very far to the east.
The body of water we flew over then is called Prince William Sound.
Prince William Sound is notable for many things, most notably being the center of activity for many whale and glacier viewing cruises and also for being the scene of the Exxon-Valdez oil leak many years ago. It is ringed by three major cities--Seward on its western shores, Valdez in the far north and Cordova in the southeast. Seward and Valdez are both on the road network, but Cordova is not. Even so, Cordova has some 2300 people in it, which in Alaska terms makes it a fairly large city. Our plane soon landed there. The airport consisted of this building:
And this building:
And a few other small hangers and huts scattered out in the forests. There was a single paved road leading away from the airport and presumably into the downtown area, which you cannot see. From the airport sign, you can see the airport is called the Merle K 'Mudhole' Smith Airport and, in reality, most of the flights into Cordova are referred to as flights into "Mudhole".
We stopped there for about half an hour. Our flight was not densely populated at all; I had no one sitting next to me and there were maybe 50 people total on our Boeing 737-400. And literally 2/3 of them got off at Cordova. We had fewer than 20 people left. Three got on at Cordova. The entire flying time from Anchorage to Cordova was only half an hour. It really was not long at all. And the low altitude because of the short flying time gave me a very good view of the terrain. But soon we took off again and headed for the next city, Yakutat.

As we gained altitude, we crossed over the mouth of the Copper River, one of the major rivers in this region. Most famous for being the source of Copper River salmon, this river is a major artery for transportation as it is the only river that actually reaches from the Pacific coast all the way through the Chugach Mountains by the shore without running into a glacier and entering the interior of Alaska. This makes it one of the few good passes through the mountains. To that end, there were plans to build a highway, Alaska Route 10, to connect Cordova with the mines at Kennecott in the interior and the rest of the road system. A railroad, the Copper River and Northwestern Railroad, was built along that route in the early 1900s. After the interior mines started fading out, the railroad fell into disuse and its entire right of way was sold to the state to be converted into the Copper River Highway (Alaska Route 10) that would connect Cordova to the road system. Construction began on this road in the 1950s, but was slow going. The great 1967 Good Friday Earthquake up here ended up destroying a lo of the bridges and messing up much of the old railway alignment, so continued road construction was abandoned. However, the highway does stretch out east of Cordova and across the Copper River. It extends for several miles before abruptly terminating at the far end of a bridge over the Copper River called the "Million Dollar Bridge" since it cost that much to build it. However, it is the epitome of another Alaskan "Bridge to Nowhere" as they never finished the highway after the bridge. However, as part of the Alaskan State Highway system (even though it doesn't connect), the road is still maintained and paved all the way out to the bridge and, if you have a car in Cordova, you can drive out on it. I was fortunate enough to be able to see the road from the air, cutting its way across the Copper River delta here.
Then we saw glaciers. East of the Copper River, at some point the Chugach Mountains end and the Saint Elias Mountains begin. The Saint Elias are known for some spectacular glaciers. Here you can see one and all the icebergs it produces in the water at its end. This process of ice splintering off is called "calving" and is supposed to be remarkable (although, a bit dangerous) to witness from a boat.
As we approached Yakutat, we flew over the Malaspina Glacier, which is the largest glacier in Alaska. It's some 40 miles wide and 28 miles long and covers an enormous area. I believe it's also some sort of National Landmark or something. Anyhow, it was huge...
That glacier was right across Yakutat Bay from Yakutat. Yakutat is located on a the strip of Alaska that's very narrow and connects the body of Alaska with the Alaskan panhandle to the southeast. I set the map in the upper right corner of the blog to point to where it is. Because of the very tall Saint Elias Mountains just a little way inland, any southerly winds off of the Pacific Ocean carrying moist, maritime air are immediately forced upward as they hit the Saint Elias Mountains, causing the water vapor to condense out into rain. This makes Yakutat one of the rainiest places in all of Alaska. I didn't have my camera on as we flew over the town, but it looked somewhat pleasant--located on the bay across from the huge glacier, it had many gravel roads and some paved ones, winding their way through small collections of brightly-colored houses and other buildings with dense pine forests in between. Like in Cordova, the airport was somewhat outside of town.

We stopped for a half an hour here as well. I noticed that their was a bar that had one side on the airport tarmac and the other side on the opposite side of the fence and in the public parking area. The place was called The Yakutat Lodge and several, presumably local people were sitting around on a small deck drinking drinks and watching the plane. I guess that's what you do in Yakutat. Yakutat is not connected to the road system either, but it is on the Alaska Marine Highway, so ferries will come into the port regularly to bring people and equipment in and out. (Cordova is also on the Marine Highway). I was surprised at, for a city of 800 some people, how many got on the plane here. We filled up again to probably near the 50 people we had started with--some 30 odd people got on the plane here. Many of them had ski poles, and I was wondering if they had gone skiing on the glacier (do they let you do that?) Others had their fish stories going on and on, so I knew they had come there for that. One man who sat down in front of me was working for the US Forestry Service in the area (the Saint Elias Mountains, the Malaspina Glacier and the surrounding areas are all in the Wrangell-Saint Elias National Park) and he had been there working on developing an eco-tourism sort of plan for the area. Another man who looked to be in his 40s and was sitting across the aisle in my row had just finished kayaking up the coast from the city of Skagway (which is in the northern Alaskan Panhandle) out to Yakutat. It had taken him two weeks. He said that his eventual goal would be to kayak down the entire Aleutian chain of islands, then cross the Bering Strait to the Russian coast, kayak down the Russian coast through Kamchatka and the Kuril Islands and end up in Japan. I don't know if they let you do that either. And where do these people get this time? It reminded me of those bikers we met on the Dalton Highway who claimed they wanted to bike all the way down to the Argentine. Really? You're going to do that? I really want to know how many of these fanciful and grandiose schemes people come up with that they begin, and then see how many actually complete it and how many decide not to.

The flight to Yakutat had taken another half an hour, and it was another half-hour hop into Juneau. Leaving Yakutat, we again climbed over the Saint Elias Mountains. Though difficult to see (and kind of at an angle) there is a very, very tall mountain that goes up into the clouds on the left side of the following photo. If my geography serves me right (and, as long as I'm not rushed, it usually does...) this is Mount Saint Elias, which is the second-tallest mountain in the United States behind Mount McKinley (Mount Logan is the tallest mountain in Canada). It also lies on the Alaska-Canada border and marks the beginning of the Alaskan panhandle to the southeast.
We began flying over the Saint Elias-Yakutat glacier field. This is the densest concentration of glaciers in the world outside of Greenland (which is, in effect, one big glacier). Seeing all these glaciers fill the valleys between the mountains finally put into scale, at least for me, what these ice ages and major historical glaciations must have been like. These are massive glaciers--even humbling the towering mountains with their size. You can imagine with a bit more snow over time, they could become even taller than the mountains. It's no wonder that thousands of years of these icy rivers moving along ground the mountains down into the flat plains we see today in the central US. Finally it all made sense...
I also got a photo of an ice jam. These are major events in Alaska when they happen, particularly on interior rivers. The temperatures are still cold enough for the ice to remain relatively frozen, even as the chunks of it flow down the river once breakup begins in the spring. But sometimes, enough oddly-shaped chunks collect in the right way to completely block the river. If they do, more ice and water will pile up behind this ice dam and it can lead to severe flooding, which is bad news for many interior Alaskan towns which are built along the river banks. There are no towns around here, and I don't think this was too severe of a jam, but it's what one looks like...
And I saw the Yakutat glacier at its terminus. I like how the "river of ice" transitions so abruptly to a "river of water" with the same width and everything.
Of course, then we flew into a cloud bank and stayed in the stratus clouds all the way into Juneau. Coming in for a landing at Juneau was spectacular--we came down through a channel of the ocean in between the coastal mountains and the relatively mountainous outer islands. This means we decended down into a sort of valley over the water below. Of course, I had to have my camera off, so no photos of that. However, it was spectacular. It was (and is) also very densely forested here. Anyhow, after landing, I got out of the small airport to wait for my shuttle to the hotel. These two photos illustrate the view:
The airport itself was very small. And, in my opinion, in need of a facelift. It looked like they were building an addition on one end of it. Plus, construction out front means that you can't drop off or pick anyone up...and they only have one drop off point, since there's only one airline. Literally, this photo shows the entire extent of the airport terminal for Juneau, Alaska's capital city of some 31,000 people:
I've been told that it is usually very cloudy and often rainy here, and that will probably be the case this weekend. However, from what I can tell I like this place. First impression? This is the quietest "city" I've ever been to. It's unusually quiet. Not sure why. But the city is heavily forested and kind of strung out along the coast, with the mountains rising up almost immediately behind the city and then again across the strait in the islands over there. The buildings seem somewhat rustic and it has a feel more of what I had imagined Alaska to be--less the modern American city like Anchorage is and more out there--on the edge, with the city on or in the mountains and the ocean channel right there. Of course, I'm just staying in my hotel tonight, but tomorrow will be much exploring. Hopefully I'll have an account of that up when I get back tomorrow evening.