Whittier
On Thursday we went to Whittier. There is only one road from Anchorage to Whittier and it involves a single lane tunnel that runs under Maynard Mountain and is 2.5 miles long. The single lane contains a set of railtracks as well and, in fact, from when the tunnel was constructed in the early 1940s until about 2000, only trains went through the tunnel. Now cars are allowed to go from the Whittier side to the Anchorage side on the hour and in the opposite direction on the 30s. I don’t know exactly how they work in the trains. Here is the entrace to the tunnel from the Whittier side:
And this is what it looks like in the tunnel:
Almost immediately after exiting the tunnel on the Whittier side we turn right off the main road onto a gravel road that led quickly to the Portage Lake trailhead. On the other side of the tunnel is the other side of the lake where one can find the Begich, Boggs Visitors Center which was built to explain the retreating Portage Glacier and the lake. The hike into the lake wasn’t too bad but it did have a few steep ups and downs. A wrong turn led us to a nice viewpoint.
Portage Lake is the one by the glacier. I’m not sure if the puddle has a name. We we arrived at the lake to see several groups of people were sitting in the gravel and taking in the view; the sun was out, the temperature was nice and the winds were mild.
After returning from the lake we drove into Whittier which is barely more than a marina. There were several businesses claiming that they had kayak rentals so Arlene and I made inquries only to find that they all had only guided tours. The last time we went on a guided tour we found ourselves waiting for our guide to catch up so we decided against it. But Prince William Sound (or the very small part of it that we were able to see) was beautiful.
Then we found a little shop that claimed to harvest sea salt. They had a variety of flavored salts and I could resist the jalepeño-lime. Arlene wanted one with cinnamon and sugar for her oatmeal on Sundays.
Then we tried to walk into a waterfall and ended up on a trail that went into the mountains above Whittier, then out on the other side of town. There we found a small port that could handle containerized cargo and an old, abandoned miltary building called the Buckner Building. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buckner_Building) I thought the most amazing thing about the building was that construction was completed in maybe 1954, then it was shuttered in 1960. And then just abandoned.
We walked back to the car and made the return trip through the tunnel.
Independence Mine State Historical Site
Today we got off to a slow start by first watching the individual time trial (stage 13) of the Tour de France. (Pogi decimated everyone and the fight for the yellow jersey is basically over.) After that we rowed on the erg for the first time since we left Seward. Then we drove north out of Anchorage, into the Wasilla/Palmer area, and up to the Independence Mine.
The mine had been abandoned at some point in the past, then allowed to deteriorate; all of the buildings had collapsed.
Then the old mine site had been turned into a park but it feels like a celebration of the way that companies extract profit from natural resources and externalize the costs. There was a “museum” where people had collected equipment and tools that had been left at the site to rust then placed them on display and called them “artifacts.”
Arlene took a picture of this cabin that was located a ways from the other mine buildings.
Inside the cabin was a wooden bed; there was an old sink crooked on the ground.
A trail went up to a partially frozen lake. There were signs that said the path up to the lake was in tundra and that tundra is fragile so please stay on the path. There were also many people just walking all over ignoring the sign about staying on the path. There was a sign that said that a brown bear had charged a person on July 3rd so please keep all dogs on leashes. There were dogs off leash.
But here is this nice picture of Arlene and I in front of the partially frozen lake.
On the way back to Anchorge we stopped at Bearpaw River Brewery and picked up some Imperial Russian Stout and a Hefeweisen. I’ve been trying lots of locally-made beer.