This last weekend my coworkers and I had an awesome opportunity to explore some glaciers in Denali National Park with the Park's Glaciologist Rob Burrows. We spent the weekend exploring the terminus of a glacier located on the East Fork of the Toklat River, about 10 miles from the Park Highway. Rob's goal for this trip was to scout out the area for a field course he will be leading there in a few weeks. We also took some photos and GPS points on and around the glacier. These will be compared to photos and GPS points taken taken ten years ago.
Below is a link to a neat website where you can find modern and historic photographs of other glaciers in Denali National Park:
To get to the glacier in questions we spent most of Friday afternoon and evening hiking up is beautiful riverbed
Bearspray, check! We saw one grizzly bear on this hike but he was quite far away and was quite preoccupied with foraging.
Night hiking never looked so good!
Glacier Terminus, finally visible around the last bend of the river
Caribou! This guy only had one antler and was looking a little shaggy
Glacial silt makes for some very pretty mud
On Saturday we hiked up this ridge to reach a GPS survey marker
Papaver radicatum, Arctic poppy
Patterned ridges in melting snowfield
Rocks, ice and snow with some afternoon light coming through the cloud cover
We found a part of a hill slope that was in the process of eroding away: the ice underneath the rocky debris used to be part of a small glacier but is now stationary. As the stationary ice melts the rocky debris slides downhill a large karst is left behind.
Short video showing the debris sliding away
We made it up onto the glacier on Saturday afternoon. Right around this time a storm moved in so unfortunately we could not stay for long. Nothing makes you feel vulnerable quite like standing on an open ice field when thunder claps overhead!
The view back down the river valley
When we awoke on Sunday morning we had some hail, rain, AND snow on our tent. The walk out was a bit cold but the snow covered mountains were beautiful.
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