Disappearing Glaciers in Kenai Fjords
We’d been in Anchorage for three nights, and it was just long enough to make me itch for a world without gift shops and cartoon grizzly bears. On my fourth trip to Alaska, I was beginning to understand the further I moved beyond paved roads and restaurants, the better.
Our film crew had just documented the fledgling surf scene on the nearby Turnagain Arm, a shallow bay that links the communities of Anchorage and Girdwood. Now, we’d turn our attention to the 700 square-mile Harding Icefield and its more than 20 glaciers. The place was a symbol of climate change, and it was just a two-hour drive south of Alaska’s biggest city.
What fascinates me most about Alaska is the immediate connection between its geology and the vast ecosystems that take shape from it. It’s just too easy to draw a cause-and-effect relationship between living things and the physical planet here.
For example, to view a calving glacier dumping tons of ice into a fjord, its freezing claws carving vast mountainsides during this journey to the sea, is to watch a physical force change the landscape in real time. You can often watch families of seals resting and sunning on the little icebergs that drift out from these melting tidewater glaciers, a momentary escape from pods of hungry orca whales on the hunt. The seals, of course, are here to eat the millions of salmon that migrate from the Pacific into the Kenai’s primeval river systems to spawn. Thus another cycle of life begins.
Human beings observing these interconnected forces have made Alaska home for thousands of years. Alaska’s Kenai and Chugach mountains are a name synonymous with the native Alaskan peoples who lived in this coastal mountain range for roughly 10,000 years before the arrival of Russian explorers in the mid-1700s. The word “Chugach” means real people, and is an anglicized version of the traditional Sugpiat name, which is the preferred term for many who descended from this historic and protected area. Their way of life is interconnected with this threatened landscape as well.
Like most native Alaskans the Chugach were hunter-gatherers who lived off the richness of the sea. Their historic villages dot the Kenai Peninsula and the surrounding islands of Prince William Sound. Some sites are theorized to be underwater due to the subsequent worldwide rise in sea levels after the last period of glaciation. Physical changes to the Earth and its climate have already impacted these people, and will continue in the future.
It’s easy to imagine an Alaska gripped in the icy throes of historic glacial advance. To do so, our crew climbed into the rugged mountains of Kenai Fjords National Park with cameras in hand. Our destination was the Harding Icefield, a 700 square-mile ice cap thousands of feet thick, still grinding the mountains hidden underneath. The flowing ice dates from the Pleistocene period, and feeds dozens of glaciers that spill onto both land and sea. Our journey began at the Exit Glacier Visitor Center, just outside of Seward. It’s one of the most accessible places for the public to view this massive hunk of ice.
You can watch our adventure in Kenai Fjords on YouTube: Alaska: Glaciers, Whales, and Bears | Kenai Fjords National Park
The roughly 9-mile hike to view the icefield took most of the day, and included plenty of stops to watch wildlife, including a herd of fluffy mountain goats, shedding their dense, winter fur. Here, thick valley forests of alder and willow gave way to tundra meadows full of Alaskan wildflowers, followed by a mandatory snowfield crossing. Temps were in the 70s and 80s as we struggled through the hot bush, making our way to the icefield viewpoint. The constant thought of surprising a grizzly feeding in the muggy undergrowth was unsettling.
Unfortunately, between swatting clouds of mosquitoes and shedding layers in the summer heat, I somehow lost my sunglasses on the hike. I wasn’t the only one without eye protection, and show host Jack Steward also struggled with the blinding snowfield crossing. Making a rudimentary mask out of buffs was Jack’s solution, and I adopted his strategy, although my eyes still burned and turned red the next day.
Minor inconveniences aside, viewing the Harding Icefield and nearby Exit Glacier was a stunning experience. We soon got comfortable on some jagged rock outcroppings near the terminus of the trail, and set up cameras to take in the massive views. Looking out onto the sea of blue glacier ice and crusty snow, you could be forgiven to assume climate change was on hold here. However, this was officially the hottest summer on record in the State of Alaska, and a thick smudge of wildfire smoke spilled onto the horizon from afar. Although quite stunning, I knew this icy landscape was slowly shrinking due to climate change and rising temperatures.
I would later learn that scientists have measured the nearby Exit Glacier’s retreat every year since the 1950s, and a pavilion once built to view the glacier now just looks at a stand of young trees. Measurements indicate the glacier has retreated more than a mile since 1915. Hundreds of Alaskan glaciers are receding at similar rates. How many generations would be lucky enough to take in the views we had that day? Predicting the future seemed anything but certain.
We’d now seen the source of glaciers in Kenai Fjords National Park, but how about the effects they have on ocean life? To answer that question, we’d need to literally follow these glaciers into the sea.
The next day found our crew on a sightseeing cruise bound for the park’s namesake fjords. Out of the many adventures I’ve had with the show, this was one of the most memorable. Taking off from the Seward harbor, its docks lined with cackling seagulls and industrial fishing boats, we slipped into the morning fog. The trip would last more than six hours, and take us past towering mountain peaks and through the narrow rock passageways of the remote Chiswell Islands, then along the coast to Ailik Bay.
The highlight of our morning was undoubtedly a pod of ghostly orca whales that swam past the boat, one young bull even approaching the bow and diving underneath it. I swear the curious whale looked me in the eye before exhaling with a mighty huff. Was it a show of friendship or defiance? It’s been shown that orcas are among the most intelligent animals in the world, and to see one swimming wild and free in the waters of Alaska is exhilarating.
By midday, the sun was out and I filmed groups of sea lions hauled out onto the misty rocks of the Chiswell Islands, part of the Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge. Rising vertically from the ocean, these small islets lack beaches of any kind, and are home to vast colonies of seabirds that nest on steep cliffs. We watched fascinating flocks of puffins balance like orange-beaked clowns in this unforgiving terrain. I noticed the short wings of these heavyset birds caused them to pinwheel through the air like little dive bombers as they launched from the cliffs and searched for herring and other small fish in the waves below.
Our destination on this cruise was the Holgate Glacier, a three-mile long tidewater glacier that perpetually calves into Aailik Bay. This is a popular place for tourists, and we saw several other large craft jockeying for position roughly one-quarter of a mile from the dangerous calving zone. Once there, the crowd went silent, everyone straining to listen for the noise of car-sized blocks of melting ice as they rumbled into the freezing water. Because sound physically travels slower than light, it’s easy to miss the action if you aren’t paying attention. The glacier calves sporadically, but we did manage to film this incredible geologic process.
However, what really impressed me about this tidewater glacier were the dozens of harbor seals I saw peacefully basking on the icebergs that drifted out from the destructive terminus. Sighting the little seals through my Canon 100-400 millimeter zoom lens, I thought they looked like gray and white furry fishes, their heads and tails curved up from the ice to minimize contact with the cold surface as they absorbed a few hours of midday sun, temporarily safe from predators like the orca bull we’d seen earlier in the day. What a harsh environment for a peaceful nap.
Here again, I reflected on the demonstrated connection between the primal forces of the Earth and its effects on animal life. Carved by glaciers, the narrow fjords of southeast Alaska provide just the right habitat for seals, fish, birds, and whales to coexist in this productive marine world. Thankfully, these fjord estuary systems are also among the most protected in the world, and that’s a good thing, because the biological processes here are still being studied by scientists. Only the mountainous regions of Norway, Chile, and New Zealand offer similar fjord estuaries.
Its important to thank the folks who organized our whale watching/glacier viewing trip, and I’ll definitely recommend the kind folks at Major Marine Tours out of Seward to anyone who wants to view the harsh landscape and glaciers of Kenai Fjords National Park. They helped us gain a perspective you just can’t get from a hiking trail or the highway.