There's a glacier for everyone in Alaska

Margerie Glacier often puts on a show as huge chunks break off

With apologies to Texas, when it comes to states with the biggest and the most, Alaska stands above all.

Even though we got the land for a little more than 2 cents an acre, Alaska cost the U.S. $7.2 million in 1867 because it covers more than 375 million acres.

It has the most bald eagles, brown bears, black bears totems and volcanoes of any state.

So it should come as no surprise that when it comes to glaciers, Alaska tops that list as well.

On our recent trips over the past few years to the land they call “The Last Frontier,” we have viewed:

—    Sawyer Glacier in the Tracy Arm Fiord from the deck of the  Norwegian  Cruise ship, Jewel

Shakes icebergs are a photographer's delight 

—    LeConte Glacier from the friendly confines of an Alaska Charters and Adventures’ jet boat – www.alaskaupclose.com/

—   Shakes Glacier off the Stikine River from good friend Earl Benitz’s boat

—   Margerie Glacier in Glacier Bay from the deck of the Norwegian cruise ship, Pearl,

Margerie put on a show with chunks of ice calving (breaking off) much to the delight of the camera-toting tourists.

The Sawyer Glacier wasn’t as active. In fact, only a few of us at the stern got to see it shed some of its ice as the Jewel was making a tight turn before heading to its next port-of-call.

While those two glaciers calve chunks of ice, the water in front of them is relatively free of icebergs — at least what one can see above the surface.

It’s quite another story at LeConte, the southernmost tidewater glacier in the United States and Shakes off the Stikine River.

Icebergs calved from Le Conte fill up the bay

LeConte empties into a bay of the same name between the island towns of Wrangell and Petersburg.

The bay is most often filled with icebergs calved by the glacier.

It’s much the same story for Shakes except that over time sediment has built up to the poiint that the icebergs spawned by Shakes can’t make it out of Shakes Lake and into the Stikine.

Sawyer Glacier is impressive up close

It took several years before I was able to get past the bockade of trapped icebergs and motor the two miles through the lake to glacier’s face.

Apparently the difference is that ice that breaks off Margerie and other glaciers in Glacier Bay comes from the face. At LeConte, the giant chunks that break off to become icebergs separate below the waterline and bob to the surface.

How high a berg floats depends upon its size, the ice's density, and the water's density. Bergs may be weighed down or even submerged by rock and rubble. A modest-looking berg may suddenly loom enormous – and endanger small craft – when it rolls over. Boaters and especially kayakers should keep in mind that what one sees is “just the tip of the iceberg.”

One thing that glacier experts can agree on is why the ice is blue. The density of the ice produces the color. The denser the ice, the bluer it will appear.

Rangers who boarded the Pearl to help visitors enjoy Glacier Bay passed along a tip for photographers. More often than not, the snapping off a huge chunk of ice is preceded by a loud crack or pop. Picture taking is a lot easier when the photographer has inkling that something is about to happen.

Hundreds of thousand visit Glacier Bay each year, but the vast majority never set foot in the national park. Instead, they view the bay and surrounding glaciers from the comfort of a cruise ship, spending a few hours in the bay before heading off for another port of call in Alaska.

For more on Glacier Bay, visit www.nps.gov/glba. For information on the others, just plug the name into an Internet search and browse away.

Montezuma Castle

Story and photo

By Bill Wagner

If one was watching “House Hunting,” the verbiage might go something like: “Five story, mountainside retreat with majestic view of Beaver Creek. Peaceful. Nearest neighbors miles away. No utilities.”

Actually, no one is going to be moving in anytime soon, since Montezuma Castle is a national monument.

Actually, it’s one of the four original sites that received that status in 1906 as President Theodore Roosevelt took advantage of the newly passed Antiquities Act.

Nine hundred years ago, only the Sinagua tribe knew of its location. For reasons no historian or archaeologist has been able to determine, they abandoned the site in the 1400s.

Early settlers in the area presumed it to be of Aztec origin, giving it the name. For the record, it is not of Aztec origin and was abandoned nearly a century before the Aztec chief was born.

The national monument is located just off Interstate 17 about 50 miles south of Flagstaff and 80 miles north of Phoenix.

Despite Roosevelt’s good intentions, the historic declaration came years too late to protect the site from looters, who left the dwelling void of relics.

The structure is actually a five-story, 20-room dwelling built into a recess of a limestone cliff nearly 100 feet above ground. The prehistoric dwellers had to use ladders to climb to and from the residence. Nearby is yet another multistory residence.

The second structure, which today is a deteriorated ruin that is a shadow of its former self, had 45 rooms in six stories. 

For more than four decades, visitors were allowed to climb ladders and wander inside the cliff dwelling. In 1951, the ruins were closed to public access to prevent further deterioration.

They remain among the most accessible and best preserved examples of cliff ruins in the U.S.

Today, visitors look up in awe and wonder what life was like for the Sinagua (Spanish for ''without water'') when they moved into the area some 1000 years ago.

The village that included the Montezuma Castle probably finished growing around 1300 and was abandoned a century later when the Sinagua left the Verde Valley area, according to the National Park Service. 

In addition to the castle, Montezuma Well and Tuzigoot are nearby and part of the national monument. 

The well is 11 miles from the castle and is described by the park service as a limestone sink formed when a huge underground cavern collapsed centuries ago. The Sinaguans used its waters for irrigation.

Tuzigoot, the remnants of another Sinaugan village, is 30 miles to the northwest off U.S. Highway 89.

Thanks to its central location and the fact there is little else on I-17 between Phoenix and Flagstaff, the monument gets a steady stream of visitors. The monument is open year-round except on Christmas Day. In the summer, the areas are open from 8 until 7 p.m. Winter hours are 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. The entrance fee is $5 per person. 

For more information visit www.nps.gov/moca or www.nps.gov/tuzi. 

Millions of salmon call Alaska's scenic Stikine River home

By Bill Wagner

Most folks don’t give a second thought to where their Stikine River salmon comes from. They should.

Flowing more than 400 miles from its headwaters in British Columbia in Canada, the Stikine is the birthplace of millions of salmon each year.

All five salmon species of salmon — king, sockeye, Coho, humpback/pink and chum — call the river home.

“It’s a significant wild river in North America,” said Brenda Schwartz-Yeager, who, along with her husband John, operates Alaska Charters and Adventures (www.alaskaupclose.com), who shows tourists a river that is close to her heart. She’s one of several captains that offer tours. They also ferry in kayakers, backpackers and trout fishermen.

“The Stikine is one of the few navigable wild rivers that don’t have dams, bridges or cities. It doesn’t have a lot of human impact on it.”

And that’s what makes it special.

She grew up on the river, often traveling with her dad, Skip, who was a wildlife biologist. For the past 26 years she’s been sharing her love of the pristine wilderness.

Most recently she’s been using a custom designed and built jet boat that skims across the often shallow spots as the river gets ready to dump into the waters of the Zomovia Strait off the island of Wrangell in southwest Alaska.

Actually on this trip, I not only got to see the river from the jet boat but also took a closer look thanks to Earl Benitz and his aluminum skiff.

Earl and his wife, Mary, live year-round on Farm Island, which is about seven miles north of Wrangell. That’s seven miles on a map, but probably 14 miles or so by the time boaters make their way around the sandbars of the Stikine’s huge delta.

Farm Island was homesteaded decades ago and now those homesteads have been broken up into smaller parcels. Four months out of the year, Earl and Mary are iced in.

The low-lying delta is littered with the stripped and bleached remnants of one-proud 100-foot spruce tree along with hemlock and cottonwoods. Some have traveled hundreds of miles before beaching themselves on the sandbars.

Cruising the river and its many tributaries and offshoots, the banks are lined with trees dangling at differing angles, waiting to be claimed as the rushing waters eat away at the banks.

While much of the river is silt-covered, there are creeks that are crystal clear.

The scenery is spectacular. The sky is blue, the trees a brilliant green. Pristine. Stunning. Spectacular.

When the boat motor is off, one has to wonder if Simon & Garfunkel had the Stikine in mind when they collaborated on “Sounds of Silence.”

While we see coyote, moose and bear tracks, we don’t run into any wildlife.

Interestingly, while the river is loaded with fish, not much fishing goes on — at least folks with poles. Upriver some fly fishermen go after trout.

Most fish taken from the river itself fall victim to gill nets of subsistence fishermen. The Stikine is in an area designated for local residents to use the nets.

While most fishermen go after the salmon in saltwater, the migrating fish in the Stikine are still mighty tasty.

“The salmon have been genetically altered to adapt to the long journey home,” Schwartz-Yeager said.  They are loaded with the right kind of oils that makes them tastier, she added.

The river is lined with snow-capped peaks of the Coastal Range. Unlike the Rockies, which are sheer granite, these mountains are mostly covered with green trees. Only the very tops exposed thanks to the gale force winds that blow in the winter months.

If it’s Alaska, there’s bound to be a glacier nearby. For this part of the Stikine its Shakes Glacier, which creates Shakes Lake.

The Shakes Glacier melts off to create Shakes Lake which in turn empties into the Stikine. There’s plenty of ice in the lake from the calving glacier. On of the few good days in September, boats can get closer to the glacier than we did in mid-July.

Between the glacier and the Stikine delta, hot water from Chief Shakes Hot Springs bubbles to the surface. The U.S. Forest captures the steaming water in a couple of wooden hot tubs — one inside a screened hut with the other in the open. It might not be much of a treat in summer, but in the winter snowmobilers and those with hovercraft can drop in for a relaxing afternoon or evening.

In April, the river comes alive with eagles swooping down to feast on hooligan run. Like salmon, the tiny hooligan return to where they hatched.

For more information on other companies offering tours, hotels in Wrangell and the Stikine and Wrangell itself, visit www.wrangell.com

Palouse Falls

The Ice Age floods that scoured southeastern Washington left behind scablands with no top soil. It is not a pretty sight.

Yet, hidden amid the desolation is a gem — Palouse Falls.

The flooding water was so strong that the river’s course changed completely. The river used to run east to west. Now it runs north to south.

Moreover, like Niagara Falls, these falls are moving. The way the water tumbles over rocks is eating away at them, so the falls are moving northward ever so slightly.

When a visitor stands and admires the falls, he or she really cannot get a feel for the powerful floods that scoured the area.

Today, Palouse Falls is the only waterfall that is still flowing with all the others left dry by the Ice Age floods.

The history of the falls is lost on many visitors. Most visitors just want to know how to get to the top or bottom of the falls.

The answer is simple. There are trails to both areas, but they are not maintained.

The falls are open to visitors year round. The area rarely gets snow. When it does fall, it does not last long.

For more information on Palouse Falls and the Ice Age floods, visit the institute’s Web site http://www.iafi.org/ or visit www.parks.wa.gov/

Real Miracle on Ice was in 1960

When T.J. Oshie rammed home yet another shootout goal to beat the Russians in the Sochi Olympics, U.S. celebrated.

Alas, it was just a great game between two teams that failed to win medals.

Nonetheless, just about everyone at NBC was comparing it to the Miracle On Ice win in Lake Placid in 1980.

With apologies to Al Michaels and Mike Eruzione, if you ask me it, 1980 was really Miracle No. 2, the first one occurred in 1960 when Squaw Valley in California hosted the Winter Games two decades before Al Michaels asked his famous question: “Do you believe in miracles?” It was a call for ages.

Granted what was going on in the world in 1980 and the fact that the Russians, were, well the Russians, who had trounced the Americans 10-1 in an exhibition match, certainly conjures up images of a miracle win for that 1980 team.

And with today’s crop of sportscasters and radio talk show guys, who see the history of sports as what they viewed during their lifetimes, the 1960 Olympics don’t even register with them.

What happened in 1980 really pales in comparison to what the 1960 squad did.

The 1980 team was made up of amateurs. Right! They played (and that’s all they did) a 64-game exhibition season all over the globe. They were together for months, working toward the games. Maybe they weren’t pros in the true sense of the word, but they were light years ahead of the “real” amateurs cobbled together for the Squaw Valley Games.

In 1960, the NHL was dominated by Canadian players. There were no American-born stars. The U.S. team was tossed together for the Squaw Valley games consisted of mostly former college stars —obviously not good enough to play in the NHL.

I really don’t know if they played many exhibition games before coming up against the powerful Canadians, who were dominating amateur hockey at that time, the Czechs who were a machine and the upstart Russians who had already claimed a world title right after joining international play a few years earlier.

With Jack McCartan in the goal and two pair of brothers, Bob and Billy Cleary and Roger and Billy Christian, the U.S. squad stunned the world, going 7-0 in the tourney, knocking off the Canadians, Russians and finally the Czechs in the medal round to win the gold.

That was really a miracle.

As long as we’re at it, while I’m a big Mike Eruzione fan, the biggest goal scored in 1980 probably came off the stick of Steve Baker with just 26 seconds to go in the very first game against Sweden. Baker’s late goal earned the U.S. a 4-4 tie. Methinks that tie rather than a loss is what got the Americans into the medal round. No Baker goal, no chance to play the Russians, let alone beat them.

It should be noted that T.J. Oshie, the St. Louis Blues forward, who withstood all the pressure and made four of six shots in the shootout against Russia Saturday (Feb. 15), is just the latest U.S. Olympic hockey hero to come out of tiny Warroad, Minn. The small community is virtually on the border with Canada and has a population of less than 2,000.

The U.S. has won gold in men’s hockey twice and both teams had Warroad alums on the roster. It started with the Christian brothers, who were on the 1960 team, and Bill’s son, Dave, who was on the 1980 squad.

A number of players on the 1980 squad went on to play in the NHL — a few had productive careers.

It looks as though only McCartan got a shot in the NHL — and that was brief. He played in four games for the New York Rangers after the Olympics, and then got a shot share goaltending duties with Gump Worsley for the 1960-61 season. McCartan did not fare well. After a few games, he was sent to the minors. He played for a number of teams over a 15-season span. He did play in 42 games over three years in the early 1970s for the Minnesota Fighting Saints in the World Hockey Association.