Alaskaphototravels.com

Up Front Rhythm of the Ice -- Travels on the Matanuska Glacier by Mark Arvid White click for larger pic     Venturing onto the Matanuska Glacier is like crossing into another world of ice, dirt, rock, and water. Each time that I return to the glacier I am amazed at how much it changes. Walls of ice that once greeted me have split, revealing gaping maws that could devour the unwary. Elsewhere, new frozen wonders have emerged. Undulating hills of hardened snow slowly inch their way like some crawling giant of white and shadows. Tiny trickles of melting ice form into rivulets and streams, some splashing across a slippery surface, while others might vanish into a dark chasm. Here and there are rocks and boulders, scarred by the glacier's passing, carried from some lofty height to be discarded at its pleasure, heaped with others of their kind in great abandon, frozen and thawed, strewn about and dumped as if by an army of trucks intent on carrying out some madman's idea of a construction project.     The Matanuska Glacier is the remnant of a monster ice flow that once covered the land from Anchorage to the Talkeetna Mountains. Now at some twenty-six miles in length, stretching from Mount Marcus-Baker high in the Chugach range, the Matanuska still has the power to impress. Most glaciers in Alaska are receding, victims of a complex array of causes including rising air temperatures and decreasing precipitation. The Matanuska, however, tenaciously holds her ground, defying that which has diminished her sisters, such as the Portage and Columbia glaciers.     I leap from rock to a clustered patch of pebbles frozen in the glistened surface, pausing to survey my next step, thrilled with this rhythm that recalls days spent as a boy bounding from one rock to another on a black sand beach on Kodiak Island. Now I am become aware of another rhythm, not of my own pace, but of that to which the glacier moves. It is a place and a time unto itself, a force that stays and yet never remains the same. At such a moment it almost reflects the essence of earth entire, seemingly solid and understandable, but in reality it exists a thing of motion, an evolving presence ever mysterious and very much alive. The Matanuska is one of the most easily accessed glaciers in the state of Alaska. Some eighty miles north of Anchorage along the Glenn Highway, a side road winds down a steep incline past thick grey deposits of glacial till. This road goes all the way to the glacier's terminus, but does so across private land. Those wishing to drive to the glacier's edge have to pay a fee, usually about $7.00 per person. And there is much to see and do once the parking lot is left behind. From day to day the glacier has visitations from hikers, ice-climbers, photographers, extreme sports enthusiasts, rockhounds, sight-seers and explorers of all ages. For the more adventurous equipped with harnesses, crampons, prusiks, ice axes and the like, the Matanuska offers a dizzying variety of ice walls, crevasses, pits, streams and moulins at its high face and further along its length, in ever-changing patterns. For the inexperienced, carefully placed orange safety cones guide the way to the easiest paths along the lower parts of the glacier. I make my move, aware that the best place to step is still, at best, a smooth and shiny baldness of ice. For a moment I balance, caught in the grip of that deep rhythm, a waltz of gravity and wind and motion to which the glacier creaks and groans and comes and goes. I balance, and then stand firm. Making my way from the slickness through water and mud across the end moraines to solid ground once again, I can only smile. Hundreds of people wander on and across the Matanuska Glacier each year, sharing in its many sights and wonders. And yet each person's experiences are uniquely their own. For me, each time i return, it is like revisiting a friend, one who plays a song of the earth and of time and of movement, a song that only she knows. But if you listen close enough, the song becomes familiar, and your feet will begin to tap out the rhythm of the dance. click for larger pic