Taking time away from my computer to visit a glacier, and to remember why NO Alaskan should ever doubt the effects of global warming.

I probably have mentioned before that I am an avid hiker and try to get out on the trails around Anchorage at least once a week, depending on the weather of course.

However I have been in sort of a rut for the last twenty years and essentially keep going back to the same trails over and over again. One of the great things about Alaska is that the wilderness is only about ten minutes away in any given direction. So I have a few favorite places that are not so far away that I can't both drive to, and hike up, them all in about a two or three hour span of time. Which by the way is usually all of the time I have available during the day.

Essentially I just don't want to spend more time in the car driving to the hike, then I spend on the actual hike.  So these places close to town have always been perfect for me.

When my friend Dennis Zaki heard about my hiking habits he was horrified and said that this year he wanted to take me to some of HIS favorite hiking locations to expand my repertoire. "Sure why not?" I said.

So yesterday we went on the first of these new location hikes.

However as it turned out, it was not so much a new location, as a long forgotten location.

All Dennis told me was that we were headed to a glacier that was only an hour away.  He never mentioned the name, and I did not think to ask.

So we left Anchorage and after an hour we arrived at the parking lot of a huge lake where there was absolutely NO sign of any glacier.  "Don't worry." Said Dennis. "It is across the lake and on the other side of that outcropping of rock."

Well, though it was a beautiful, pristine day outside (with temperatures hovering around 7 degrees.), I could barely see the outcropping of rock he referred to from where I was standing in the parking lot.

But I am always game for a new adventure so off we went across the frozen lake.  At first it was just Dennis and I, and a few other friends, who were out on the lake.  Later we would be joined by quite a few other people.

Though there was no wind to speak of (Thank goodness!) the chilly temperature soon managed to make my face numb and my fingertips start to ache.  I had worn my super heavy down filled Glacier's Edge jacket (Think George Costanza"s "puffy jacket" only not so ugly.) so my torso and arms were pretty toasty, but anything sticking out of the jacket was on its own.

As we walked we noticed that in some places the snow had been blown off of the ice and you could look straight down to see cracks, fissures, and bubbles that extended as far down as six or seven feet. Essentially the ice appeared to be so thick that you could have driven a tank across without fear of breaking through.

The walk across the lake seemed to take forever, but just when I thought perhaps Dennis was screwing with me about a glacier, we passed the rock outcropping mentioned earlier and we were greeted with this amazing spectacle.

Yes that's me in my cozy down jacket just taking it all in.

The ice formation below the glacier is where parts of the glacier has calved off and fallen into the lake.  The splash from the impact has then frozen. (I told you it was cold out there!)

Here the sun could be seen shining through the glacier, which made for a truly beautiful effect.

Here is a closer look at the frozen splash.  When we stood silent, without making any noise at all, we could hear the glacier creaking and rumbling as the ice shifted and moved. It was pretty amazing.

Even my giant noggin looks small next to the glacier.

It took us almost an hour to hike from the parking lot to the glacier, so of course it took about the same to get back.  All in all from the time we left Anchorage to the time we arrived back in town we had been gone about five hours.

Now here is the funny part.  As it turned out I HAD visited this particular glacier before, in fact it was Portage Glacier perhaps our most famous local glacier, but that had been FORTY years ago!

I literally did not recognize it as the glacier I had visited when I was eleven or twelve years old, because when I had last seen it I had been able to stand in the parking lot and hit it with a rock.  You heard me, the glacier that it had taken me an hour to reach by foot was once so close it could not be missed.  Even by a rock thrown from a child's hand.

So in forty years time this magnificent spectacle of ice had melted so far down from it once overwhelming size that, not only was it not within an arms throw, it was so far away that it required an hour to hike to where it was now hidden from the prying eyes of the humans who helped usher in its demise.

So when people ask me if I believe in Global Warming, I say yes. 

If they ask me if I think it is mostly man-made, I say of course. 

And if they ask me how I know, I say "Come with me, I have something to show you."

I really doubt there is much we can do to save Portage Glacier, but if we do not start taking climate change seriously and get off of our dependence on fossil fuels we will soon have far more to contend with the simple loss of a once magnificent tourist attraction.