Hatcher pass and Valdez

Raining in Anchorage but we spot sunny and high 60’s in Valdez so we are off.  The 1st part of the trip is on the Glenn Highway which travels between Anchorage and Glennallen. It’s a beautiful drive with the Chugach (pronounce Chew-gach) mountains to the south and the Talkeetna mountains to the north.  This highway follows the Matanuska river which has a braided design caused when enough glacier silt from the Matanuska glacier settles in one area and stops the flow of water causing the water to take another route thus producing several channels of water within the river banks and a braided appearance over time.  The river appears low and never full from bank to bank but there are several swift running waterways braiding within the banks. 

The 27-mile-long Matanuska Glacier is along this route and is one of the few you can access by car.  With a 4 mile wide terminus it is quite striking from the hwy.

Approaching Glennallen you get your 1st view of the Wrangell mountain range with Mt. Drum (12,010 ft.), Mt. Sanford (16, 237 ft.) and Mt. Wrangell (elev. 14,163 ft; the only active volcano in the Wrangell mountains) all in sight on a good day.

Vegetation varies markedly along the Glenn Hwy. from dense stands of white spruce, aspen and birch to stunted black spruce depending on the type of soil. 

On a side note, Hatcher Pass Road is a summer side trip off the Glenn Hwy.  Karen and Ray Doty and Bill Swanson who took an Alaskan motorcycle trip and stopped by to see us in Anchorage, visited this scenic alpine terrain area with us. The Independence Mine State Historical Park is located up in the hills and consists of old mining machinery and several old buildings which you are allowed to walk around.  We visited this area in July and the temperature was 37 degrees!  Gold was mined here from 1938 through 1941.

Turning south at Glennallen one begins the journey south to Valdez on the Richardson Hwy with the Wrangell mountains to the east.  The Wrangell mountains are within the Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve. The trans-Alaska pipeline is seen here and there as you drive this portion to the trip and, of course, there are more glaciers.  Remember the pipeline carries oil 800 miles from Prudhoe Bay on the Arctic Ocean to Valdez. Approaching Valdez after 6 hours of changing, beautiful scenery, you enter Keystone Canyon with it’s magnificent waterfalls.

Valdez (pronounced val-deez) has a population of about 4,000 people.  Snow piles remained in town even in June 2012 because of the 38 feet of snow that fell last winter! This is where we met Capt. Fred and went on his yacht, Lu-Lu Belle, for a cruise in Prince William Sound.  On his tour we saw whales breaching and spent a long time watching a young whale playing with a sea lion.  What a fun sight that was as the whale rolled about and the sea lion popped up here and there.  Further on, as our boat drove around iceburgs we saw the Columbia glacier in the distance.  We stopped 7 miles from the glacier because the water was entirely full of iceburgs.  

Did you know there are 100,000 glaciers in Alaska?

Loving AK!     P&L