During our stay in Seward, Alaska, we drove one morning to the
Kenai Fjords National Park to hike up to Exit Glacier. The Visitors’
Center opens at 9 a.m., and the parking lot is often filled by late
morning, so we were there at 9 sharp.
As we walked up to the building, someone shouted out to us that the 3
1/2 hour guided tour on the Harding Icefield Trail had just left and we
could probably catch up if we hurried. Julia and I jogged quickly up
the trail and asked permission to join the group, which consisted of the
ranger and a father/son. The ranger agreed and then talked for about
five minutes about bear safety on the trail.
“I’m not trying to scare you, but this is bear country, and I want
you to prepared,” he said, letting us know that he had bear spray, but
we should holster up with our own if we had some (I did). It turned out
that this ranger usually did boat tours and that this was only his
second hike of the season on this trail. We quickly started our ascent
through heavy forest and brush. “There are bears all around us,” he
said, “but they generally keep away from people.”
We learned that he was not going to take us on the entire trail, but
was only going to go far enough that we would be able to get a good view
of the glacier. On the way, he instructed us on all types of trees and
plants, including several very toxic ones. It was very informative, and
we were glad for the guided hike, even though the group went slower
than our usual pace.
At first glance, the glacier looks like a long, steep saucer or sled
hill. But upon further review, it contains crevasses that would easily
swallow a person or even a house.
At
the meadow overlooking the glacier, we parted ways with our ranger and
continued up the Harding Icefield trail on our own. The trail climbed
more steeply above the top of the glacier so that we could see the
beginning of the Ice Field from the High Cliffs segment of the trail. In
the photo below, you can see a mountain rising up in the distance
within the icefield. That mountain was only briefly visible before
fast-moving clouds buried it in the mist. The ice field extends back 3
miles from the top of the glacier.
Just
after the above photo was taken for us, another couple shouted out to
us in excitement and pointed to a patch of alpine cover next to the
ice. It was too far away to show up in our photo, but this was our
first and only black bear sighting in Alaska. I thought the bear was
pretty far away, but the local woman taking the photo told us that the
bear was actually pretty close as far as sightings go. “They are all
around us in the park,” she said, “but you don’t usually see them until
you get above treeline and have this type of view.”
Within a minute the bear ran off in the opposite direction and dropped below our view entirely.
Fortunately, this was not our only wildlife sighting on this trail.
On the way back down, we encountered the wild and dangerous Alaskan
marmot.
This
guy was very ticked off that we wanted to pass him, and he basically
refused to move until I was just a few feet away, and even then I had to
cough to get him to move off of his perch. I later learned upon doing
some research that he was likely a lookout for a whole family of
marmots. I’m glad our close encounter was with the marmot instead of the
bear.
We thoroughly enjoyed this hike, which was about 7 miles including
our side trails. We did not walk to the end of the Ice Field Trail,
after receiving a warning of a grizzly with two cubs on the trail above
the cliffs’ overlook. The entire trail is 8.2 miles.
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