Another item ticked off on the Bucket List...

Sometimes things go on your Bucket List and you don't even know that they're on it. If you don't have a Bucket List...of things you want to see or do before you "kick the bucket"...sit down now. Write it down. You will be amazed how many of them will get done in the not distant future once they're written.

For us, we took an overnight backpacking trip to do something that neither one of us had ever done. At this point, we have a hard time finding things that one of us hasn't already done, seen or accomplished that the other one wants to do. For us, it was to visit and walk on a glacier...together...for the very first time for both of us!

Now when you cruise to here you can book two different trips in Skagway through Holland America. One is called Dog Sledding and Glacier Landing. That costs $519 per person. The other one is called Glacier Discovery by Helicopter. That costs $299 per person. Glacier Discovery is a helicopter flight and glacier landing. The other one also includes a visit to a musher's camp located up on the glacier and riding in a dog sled. If you weigh 250 lbs. or more for either trip there is a 50% surcharge. A wee bit above our budget and this particular company offers NO discounts, let alone a comp'ed tour for locals or those who help book their trips.

Obviously, we did not take either of those trips. We visited Laughton Glacier in the very best way...we earned it. There is actually a day excursion that you can buy on some cruise ships and walk with about 18 other people to the glacier and back. No thanks. For anyone travelling to the glaciers, the only way to access the trailhead is to take the train. It isn't accessible by road. There are actually two glacier trailheads that are available only by train here in the area. One is Denver Glacier at mile marker 5 on the train. Laughton Glacier trailhead is located at mile marker 14.

Sunday morning was cold and windy. Excitedly, we waited for our train. Mike jogged across the park to see which ship was in port while I watched a bald eagle riding the wind. So far, an excellent start to the day. The station masters are excellent at their job...keeping people in their groups by train car. That morning we were the only hikers boarding for Glacier Station. They put us in the first car behind the engines. It was a car all to ourselves and it had a cupola with room for two people. The conductor kindly gave us permission to sit up top.
Mike loved riding up there, but my seat wasn't bolted in as tightly and was bobbling a little too much and motion sickness was incipient. So I went back down to the regular seats. This was Mike's first time actually riding on the White Pass and Yukon Route RR, although he drops people off at both the Skagway and Fraser stations almost every day that he works.

We got dropped off and started up the trail. Along the way we passed 4 people catching the next train to Skagway. If there weren't any other people camping there, it would mean we would have the entire glacier area to ourselves! (And it turned out we did!)

The trail winds through woods along the Skagway River through Warm Pass Valley which seemed anything but warm. The trail is very easy the first two miles to a cabin that you can rent from the forest service. We decided to bring a tent and intended to sleep at (my choice) or on (Mike's choice) the glacier. Our brochure recommended we take the overlook trail to avoid impact on the trail from the cabin. Always wanting to be obedient, we chose that one.

Yuck.

We love rock scrambling and bouldering. It's one of the things we love most in our trips into the desert in Arizona. We do not love wet rocks. We do not love wet moraine. We do not like humping backpacks up wet moraine.

But trudge up the moraine we did. The valley that this glacier occupies shows stark evidence of how the glacier is receding. Sharp slopes of dirt and rock edged with lateral moraine. Eventually we neared the foot of the glacier having taken a diagonal approach to the valley floor as it sloped upward towards the glacier.

At first it doesn't seem like much: large brown boulder piles with some sheer blackened walls. All day the clouds stayed low and we didn't see the top of the mountains the glacier sat on until the next day.
We found a sandy spot with a very interesting cairn in it. It was the perfect spot to pitch a tent!

We shared a quick sandwich and left our packs at the site and headed towards the glacier...or at least towards the rocks. We could see one swoosh of bright white and brilliant blue with water flowing through it. That was where we headed...but how to get to it with a river in our way? We headed up the rocks on a hill. They were the most unsteady rocks we've every walked on and we realized that they were NOT sitting on any kind of bedrock, but on ice! Those barren slopes in front of Mike are nothing but ice with dirt on top of them at about a 70 degree angle. Still, this portion was too rocky to put on the crampons we'd brought with us. We looked left, right and ahead and finally figured a way over to the blue cascade and worked our way over to the left of the brilliant waterfall. Meantime we kept stopping to take a picture of every piece of blue ice we could see! And while the pictures jog our memories, they just don't show the intensity of that blue color.

Eventually we made our way over to the ice field and donned our crampons. Now I'm usually a little "concerned" about using new gear in the field that I've never tried out. Not only was I unfamiliar with their use, Mike had never worn crampons either. So this was new to both of us. How would they work? Would they go on easily? Will we have weird balance? Not just no, but hell no! You just slip these red rubber gizmos with chained spikes onto your boots. And voila! You are a mountain goat! All those years of paranoia in Connecticut about walking on ice....if I'd only had crampons! I love crampons! Maybe I should compose an Ode to Crampons! We were fleet- and sure-footed as we traversed all the ice fields. Thank you, Packer Expeditions for the loaners! It's good to be a local!

So the above picture is Mike beginning to build a little platform to put the camera on and use the timer to get a photo of both of us in front of the brilliant blue cascade. We enjoy hiking together and often in beautiful and varied scenery. And we frequently take photos of our little trips. How does Mike usually capture me hiking? With an intense, up close and personal, not with a wide-angled lens, but with a wide-angled capture of my butt. I just couldn't resist the opportunity to return the favor:

The cascade was amazing:

The black thing in the middle of the waterfall is a cluster of rocks caught up on an ice shelf. You can make out a pillar of ice with a cut-out to the ice wall. Mike threw some more rocks to try to get the rock cluster to fall. But in order to reach it, the rocks he threw had to be small and didn't have the weightt to knock the cluster off. We really didn't need to help the glacier. As we walked we could see rocks tumbling down off of the ice walls on the lower glacier.

It was fascinating to walk above the cascade onto the ice fields and watch how they changed the closer you got to the upper glacier. It went from boulders to fine rocks to medium rocks to large boulders poised on points of ice. As the sun would heat up the rocks sitting on the ice, small puddles would surround the rocks. Sometimes they were a couple of feet deep into the blue ice. More often, they were as if each rock was nestled in its own little pool of water. Everywhere were rivulets of flowing water. Yes, we were uber careful about crevasses.
There were ice caves and ripples of ice to walk over. Eventually we came to a part where the ice began to look like a pond looks as the ice is beginning to melt. We deemed it to be far enough and did not get quite all the way to where the flow was coming down the cliff. Still, being that near the upper glacier gave us an up close and personal look at the frozen ice age rivers. Up ahead we could see soccer-ball sized chunks of blue ice lying on the white snow where they had fallen from the frozen river above.
Compared to the valley it once occupied, the glacier is very much smaller than it had been. You hear about glaciers being a mile thick. In this area you know which mountains are higher than 5,000 feet because those are the crags and spikes above more rounded mountains that had sat beneath the glaciers. It isn't until you are in the presence of this incredible natural force that you can begin to get a glimmer of the size they must have been.

You can take this as a day trip, taking the 8 a.m. train and returning on the 3:30 train. I am so glad we did an overnight backpacking trip. It gave us an unhurried, leisurely time to explore at our (my) own pace. It drizzled on and off all day and remained cool and windy. Glorious!

We actually both slept fairly well in our little tent and enjoyed coffee in our tent before setting off. Just before we left camp, the sun broke through the clouds and showed us the top of the mountains above the upper glacier. The sun on the pure white snow at the mountaintop was positively blinding after so many cloudy days. We only had a moment to capture this one photo because the clouds moved back in at warp speed. Yes, it was so warp speed. Trust me.

OK, I do care about the impact on the environment. I also care about the impact on our knees...and care more for the knees than the environment. I am sorry, Gaia. So, we followed the trail along the river back to the cabin and avoided the moraine. If you don't like tent camping, the cabin is definitely a very viable alternative with bunks inside with a fire ring and bench outside.

We chose to leave and catch the 11:30 a.m. train instead of our scheduled 3:30 p.m. train. On our hike out, the day was warmer and drier than the previous day. We passed two separate couples...one doing a day hike and one couple planning to overnight at the cabin. And then we met two TOUR GROUPS! The tour guides carried monster packs with one person at the head and tail of a group of 20 people off the cruise ships. Yeesh. Not my style of hiking at all. But I applaud them for taking this tour because it is real. It is Alaska. It is a glacier. It's not a gift shop and there wasn't a shopping opportunity for 13 miles. Good for them! And how lucky am I that I get to live here and take all these trips as I wish all summer long! I am blessed!

We returned to the trailhead at the whistle stop with about 1-1/2 hours until our train would appear.
Mike wanted me to walk out onto the bridge...which, of course, I didn't want to...but did anyway. It was a time to relax and eat our other sandwich before taking the train back into town and take a shower. (Purists will note that the train is going in the wrong direction to be heading back to Skagway. It's just that going out of town is when we got the better train photo. Pfffft!)

And, of course, I took a whole bunch more flower photos. Maybe I'll make that my next task this afternoon...creating the file with just flowers of Alaska in it. Just for me.

We're at the midpoint of the summer for Mike and past the midpoint for me. My season ends about September 6 and his goes until the end of September. It is the time to think about what work lies ahead for me. Time to research, update the resume, submit applications, make calls and contacts. Too soon it will be time to leave these mountains. Did I mention it was 56, cloudy, windy and drizzly here while it was 109 and sunny in Peoria yesterday? Do I really have to say how happy I am to be here yet one more time?