Glacier Freeze Gatorade
Summer 2019 my husband and I joined a guided hike around the Matanuska Glacier. We booked the glacier trek with Nova Alaska which was the same company that we booked our white water rafting trip with. Home base was the same as our rafting trip, a cabin in Glacier View, AK. Here our guides set us up with helmets and ice creepers, and checked that we all had sun glasses. The helmets were not the most attractive items, but as long as they did their job that is all I cared.
It was a short van ride over to the trail head, you have to pay an access fee to get to the glacier because the property is privately owned but our tour fees covered it. Once we parked you could see the glacier across the valley. It seemed like it was about a 20 minute walk to get to the ice, but our guide explained to us that we were actually standing on the ice it was just below the dirt that was under our feet.
As we walked you could start to see more ice peeking through the rocks and under the dirt. The guide stopped us shortly up the trail so that we could all put on our ice creepers. At first they felt clunky and abnormal, but as we approached icier paths I was thankful to have them.
The landscape was unlike anything I have ever seen. I would take off my sunglasses for a few moments just so that I could see the colors in their pure form. The glacier in some areas was pure white, and in others a blue that was so clear that I wish I could bottle it up. The best way to describe the color was to compare it to the Glacier Freeze Gatorade, I have a better understanding now as to why they named it that.
We traveled over crevasses, and past ice luges, some that I had a hard time not photographing. As a rule you are only allowed to take photos when the guides stop the tour and have a designated photo time. I bent these rules a tad because I was seeing way more during our hike than at the stops, and because we had a larger tour group I was wanting to get as much of the scenery as possible without a head in the corner of my photos.
We came across an older couple on a private tour, and watched as their guide cut out a stair case for them in the ice. The guide had it done in mere moments, and I noticed that the guide was a woman. I can only imagine how well in shape these guides have to be, to hike all day, cut into the ice repeatedly, and be able to perform rescue operations if required.
After about an hour of hiking, we made our way towards the front of the glacier. From a safe distance we were able to view it’s base jetting out from the waters below and icebergs floating in it’s small bay. The scenery was alien to me, standing upon a large frozen river surrounded by forest and mountains. It was also record breaking heat for the state while we were there, so when the wind wasn’t blowing we stripped down to pants and t-shirts as we hiked the frozen landscape.
On the decent, we heard a loud boom that echoed off the mountains. We assumed it was a piece of the glacier that fell into the bay below. I wish we could have witnessed it, but I consider myself lucky to even hear the action in person versuses solely through Alaska documentaries on the Discovery Channel.
The bay at the bottom of the glacier had quite a few tourists. I remember watching people’s children running around without supervision, and praying that they didn’t find themselves a crevasse. One person even had their infant in a front carrier, and I watched the baby throw her pacifier into the bay waters and the father do his best to retrieve it. One slip is all it would have taken to fall into the hypothermia inducing waters. The guide could do nothing but remind us that we chose the safest option for exploring the glacier, although deaths are rare at Matanuska, you didn’t want to find yourself on the wrong side of the statistics.
As we loaded back into the van, we all talked about what our next activities were going to be while visiting Alaska. We talked about going to Denali, and looking for some hiking areas where we could get some higher views to take photos. This is when one lady told us we shouldn’t go hiking at all in the state due to the bears. We sort of shrugged her off, until she told us a story about how a student of hers was killed by one during a fun run the year prior. After looking up the story and seeing it was real, we opted out of hiking for the time being until we could legally carry a better form of protection besides bear spray.
Besides the sort of morbid conversation we had with another hiker, our tour guide and other hikers were very easy going and awesome to hike with. When we go back to Alaska I probably would not do the same hike on Matanuska again, but perhaps do another plane landing on one. We did have the chance to visit the Ruth Glacier, just below Denali summit via a small plane and I will have the post up soon for you all!
