<< Our Second Day at Ultima Thule - Part 2

09/18/17 - Our Second Day at Ultima Thule - Part 3

We spent most of the day hiking. We were dropped off around ten o'clock and would not be picked up until four, so we covered the rolling ground at a leisurely pace, stopping often to absorb the surrounding beauty.

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.

The Chitina River, looking towards its sources

Another look

Glacial rivers flow in braids, not channels

One of the great glaciers

Exotic hills

A distant glacier to the north

There are two moose by this distant lake

More exotic hills

Another glacier

Those painted hills

Rock formations of the ridge

Keywords: alaska