09/23 - Our Ultimate Day at Ultima Thule - Part 4

It was icy up on the ledge. We broke into our bags and brought out another layer. Ultima Thule suggests packing layer after layer and bringing the whole kit with one every day. With landings like this, it only seems sensible.

Then we took off again, leaping over the edge of the cliff and into the sky. Off to McCarthy. Our bags were waiting for us. Our connecting flight had not arrived. Our pilots departed after assuring us that there was a plane heading out our way. We waited patiently. Our plane arrived. Amazingly, though, the incoming flight was carrying take out pizza for the staff at Ultima Thule. Luckily, McCarthy has good Verizon coverage, so we made a quick call to the lodge. They would send a plane for it ASAP.

We left the pizza in what we hoped was a safe place and headed off for Alaska. Apparently ordering take out pizza is different in Alaska.

09/23 - Our Ultimate Day at Ultima Thule - Part 3

09/23 - Our Ultimate Day at Ultima Thule - Part 2

09/22 - Our Ultimate Day at Ultima Thule - Part 1

Our goodbye tour took us over one of the great glaciers and into the connecting canyons where other glaciers flowed down mountain sides to join it. There were a lot of glaciers and a lot of canyons, so our pilot took us about past steep rock walls and over the rivers of ice.

We landed on the river bed, and stretched our legs. There was a little waterfall in a side canyon, and then the wide open river bed.

09/21 - Our Third Day at Ultima Thule - Part 4

We spent the entire day walking the river bed, but we have no idea of how far we had traveled. We could only note our progress in terms of the unfamiliar ground or distant landmarks which barely seemed to change as we walked and wandered. Gibraltar, that island to the east, grew only slightly smaller as we headed west, and the great mountains seemed as distant as ever.

Then came our ride. A Piper Super Cub appeared from nowhere and found a landing strip. There were lots of landing strips. Then we were airborne. The river looked different from the sky.

09/21 - Our Third Day at Ultima Thule - Part 3

The sand in the river bed is extremely fine. Glacial rivers carry very fine sand as we noted earlier. A light kick could send up a cloud of dust. In the spring, the river bed spawns dust devils, whirling clouds of fine dust. As the winds get more powerful, the entire river bed is almost hidden by the clouds of fine dust, the same dust that gives the river its milkiness.

09/21 - Our Third Day at Ultima Thule - Part 2

One of the more interesting plants we found was the silverberry. It had white berries, the size of olives. They almost looked as if they were made of plastic. The outer skin almost dissolved in one's hand, but the inner green berry was hard. These were popular with the local bears.

09/20 - Our Third Day at Ultima Thule - Part 1

We were looking for bison. There was a herd of them nearby. We could even see their hoof prints, so we explored some of their likely hangouts. We didn't find any.

As we approached the river bed proper we got a real sense of just how big the river valley was. It was miles across and seemed to run forever in either direction.

09/19 - Our Second Day at Ultima Thule - Part 4

We continued east and were soon overlooking the high valley where we would get our return ride. It looked so close. We started down the slope. This was possibly the roughest part of the walk. The slope was steep; then we entered an area of what had appeared to be small bushes between us and our landing strip. These small bushes were small trees, taller than we were. There was no real trail, though our guide found a path through.

There was a small tent with survival gear. Our return flight was right on time. Again, flying in Alaska was different. A Piper Super Cub landed and we clambered aboard, grabbing at support rods and trying not to damage the side panels. We took off for another view of the ridge, river and the valley. It had been an amazing journey, and we would be back at the lodge in time for a hot shower and delightful dinner.

09/18 - Our Second Day at Ultima Thule - Part 3

The river in the valley below followed the usual glacial pattern. It photographs as blue, but appears a milky brown to the naked eye. It is so full of glacial sediment that it looks like chocolate milk or horchata. As the river flows and turns, it drops some of its sediment load, so its course is braided, twisting and turning, splitting and rejoining as sprawls across five miles of the valley floor.

09/17 - Our Second Day at Ultima Thule - Part 2

We loosely followed the ridge, now and then heading towards the edge towards fantastic views of the Chitina River. That name means "copper river". The "na" suffix means river and appears in a lot of Alaskan river names. The "chit" part refers to copper. This region was known from time immemorial for its copper ore, and one of the biggest copper mines in the world, the Kennecott mine, was in the area.

As we progressed the land folded and revealed new, distant forms. We had a tantalizing look at some distant painted hills and glacier covered mountains. We marched on.

09/16 - Our Second Day at Ultima Thule - Part 1

We arranged to be picked up later in the day and started heading east, following the ridge. It was wild, open country, barren of trees. We were in our own isolated world. Depending on the lay of the land, we could see for miles in every direction.

We could see the herd of Dall sheep from quite a distance, tiny white forms dotting the hills. Our binoculars revealed more detail, and as we approached we could see an entire herd of sheep all busy doing the usual sheep things, mainly eating. As we drew nearer, a bunch of them got skittish and bolted up the far hillside. Then they settled down and returned to their meal.

09/15 - Our First Day at Ultima Thule - Part 4

09/14 - Our First Day at Ultima Thule - Part 3

By now we were used to landing on small patches of ground, but this was our first landing well above sea level.

We wandered about for better views of the great waterfall rushing from the glacier at the end of the fjord. There were ice caves and melt pools and strange rock formations. Getting here without an airplane would have required hiking, sailing and then mountaineering. This wilderness is not only roadless, but trackless.

09/13 - Our First Day at Ultima Thule - Part 2

Here we ate lunch.

While we dined, the glacier entertained us as chunks of ice snapped and cracked and dropped into the sea leaving clouds of shattered ice in their wake. For a while, after a large piece of ice dropped, the sea where we were would stay calm, but after a while the sea would start to churn. The chunks of floating ice would rise and fall as the wave front moved past with an ominous rushing sound like an angry river.

It was a great lunch. Only with reluctance, we jimmied ourselves back into our little plane and headed on for the next part of our Alaska adventure.

09/12 - Our First Day at Ultima Thule - Part 1

We flew south over the spectacular scenery of the Wrangell Mountains to the Pacific coast where we landed on a small sand beach to stretch our legs and explore. We had been far inland 45 minutes ago, now we were on an isolated beach. There were rocks, sand, barnacles and seals. We were truly in the middle of nowhere, and it was beautiful.

09/11 - Coming Into The Country - Part 2

We changed planes here. Our next plane was waiting for us, and we took a half hour hop south with yet more spectacular scenery before arriving at Ultima Thule Lodge, a bastion of civilization and luxury in the roadless wilderness of Wrangell-St. Elias National Park. This was a lodge built on the banks of the Chitina using local wood and local stone. Everything else arrived by air.

We wandered the grounds a bit. The lodge wouldn't let us leave the close in region without an escort, so we had a guide take us down for a good look at the five mile wide river bed. We saw another rainbow. This would be our home and base for the next four days.

09/10 - Coming Into The Country - Part1

We took off, said goodbye to Anchorage, and were soon looking out the windows as the landscape rolled and folded dramatically. As the instruments on board showed, there was terrain ahead, lots of terrain. There was also ice, vast glaciers of ice, and rivers run wild between the mountains. We caught a bit of fall color and a rainbow, but we kept flying east.

09/09 - Our Journey North

That city we're flying towards is Anchorage, only a three and a half hour flight from Seattle. We stayed up late and managed to catch a sunset, then we explored the city a bit. On the Tony Knowles Coastal Trail we were rewarded with some sandhill cranes.

Then we checked out the botanical gardens, but cut our visit short. Some of the trails were closed due to recent bear activity.

Finally, we had dinner with our friend Clare who is now living in Anchorage. We met at the Marx Brothers Cafe which we cannot recommend highly enough. Alaska is an excellent place to order things like halibut cheeks and freshly caught scallops.

This was only the beginning. We have over a thousand pictures to go through, so we'll start winnowing and posting them over the next few days. Stay tuned to this blog.