Alaska Day 4 - Whittier

On Day 4 we headed to the city of Whittier. Land access to Whittier is through the tunnel - locally known as the Whittier tunnel or the Portage tunnel, the Anton Anderson Memorial Tunnel is a tunnel through Maynard Mountain. It links the Seward Highway south of Anchorage with the relatively isolated community of Whittier. It is part of the Portage Glacier Highway and is the second longest highway tunnel and longest combined rail and highway tunnel in North America. Eastbound traffic, westbound traffic, and the Alaska Railroad share the tunnel.

Whittier Tunnel

With a population of about 200, almost all of them live in Begich Towers - like a "city under one roof", the other older Buckner Building is just an abandoned building.

Begich Towers

Portage Pass trail to Portage lake

The trail to Portage pass and on to the lake is close to the town of Whittier. Coming from Anchorage via Portage the trailhead comes shortly after you exit the tunnel - take the first right across the railroad track onto a dirt road and then a second right past a cinder block building to reach the signed trailhead. About 2 miles roundtrip to the pass, 4 miles roundtrip to the lake. 

The trail to the pass is moderately steep but well maintained and offers good views of the glacier and lake. The trail down to the lake is steeper and made somewhat adventurous by the forest/natural conditions, but provides magnificent views of the Portage glacier.

portage glacier trek

At the pass, someone has installed a solid wooden bench. Great views of the valley & lake from the bench point. Heading back from the bench, cross over to the other side of the pass, over the hill and the trail continues down to the lake.

View from bench

view of portage glacier from bench

Prince William Sound Cruise

There are various tour companies serving the PWS area - Philips Cruises, PWS Cruises and Major Marine. All three of them are great, the PWS cruises and Philips cruises have similar route, Major Marine navigates a different arm of PWS. Kenai Fjords Tours is the sister company of PWS Cruises and after our meal incident, we decided to try out Philips Cruises.

The 26 Glacier Cruise travels over 135 miles into Prince William Sound, the cruise cover 26 “named” glaciers and many more unnamed. We saw several types of glaciers, including Alpine (hanging), Piedmont and Tidewater. 

We got face to face with Surprise & Cascade+Barry+Coxe glaciers - these towering masses of ice, so close you can “hear” the glaciers move and gaze at their brilliant blues hues. After spending about 15-20 minutes at Surprise glacier, we witnessed glacier calving (when broken pieces of ice fall into the water and become icebergs). 

Surprise Glacier

Cascase, Barry & Coxe Glaciers

We also saw humpbacks, orcas, sea lions, sea otters, eagles, mountain goats and kittwakes. There was a US Forest Service Ranger on board to narrate the tour. (Incidentally, she was the same person on our Spencer train tour)




http://www.26glaciers.com/route.htm

Scenic view like this along the tour

Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center

Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center (AWCC) is a nonprofit organization dedicated to preserving Alaska's wildlife - they take in injured and orphaned animals and provide food & shelter. Between the zoo & AWCC, we chose AWCC since it was on our way back from Whittier.

 

Alaska Day 2 - Seward

This was our only day dedicated to Seward, it is a long but enjoyable 3hr drive. The train journey is even more scenic and goes through areas of Chugach NP that are inaccessible by road. Tourism and fisheries primarily drive this town. Notable things to do are the cruises, sealife center and glacier hikes.

Kenai Fjords NP Cruise

 
The 6hr wildlife & glacier cruise provides ample opportunities to view wildlife and glaciers. It will get chilly once the vessel is in cruising, thus dress in layers and have a rainjacket handy. The included "lunch" was a joke for vegetarians (we got salad instead of the hummus roll since they ran out of it!). But apart from that the cruise was nice and the crew were wonderful. 

Glacier.. in perspective (see the small tiny ship?)

I was hoping we would visit the Aialik bay & glacier, but enroute we were told that the cruise was visiting the Holgate Glacier and not Aialik (bummer!). As we went through Resurrection bay, we enjoyed the spectacular scenery and saw lot of wildlife - whales, orcas, stellar sea lions, harbor seals sea otters etc and got glimpses of Bear Glacier. The major stop was the Holgate glacier - it was enormous. 

Wildlife

Glacier wall

One of the crew members picked up an calved glacier ice floating in the bay. Glacier ice doesn't melt as fast as regular icebox ice - something to do with the bigger size of ice crystals and absence of air bubbles in glacier ice.

Glacier ice

Exit Glacier

• Access: Harding Icefield / Exit Glacier. The park is a short distance from the town of Seward, about 120 miles south of Anchorage. There are three final destinations from the visitor center - the toe of the glacier (moraine maybe inaccessible), the edge of the glacier wall and the icefield. Although we wanted to do the icefield hike, we settled for the "edge" due to the fear of hiking without bear sprays at 7pm and the one of the return dudes said that he was the last person from the last trek of the day to the icefield. (bummer!)

• http://www.nps.gov/kefj/planyourvisit/exit-glacier.htm

From the vista point

From the hike end point

Another angle