Mile 16266

 We return from Homer, AK back to Palmer, AK back tracking the way we came and spendthe night again at the previous campsite.  Here we do a last laundry, have a nice shower and prepare for the continuation back into the Yukon.

 We get up with some cloud cover and hope this will clear soon.  After stopping for gas, some groceries and a fresh coffee we find our way on to Hwy-1, also called the Glenn Hwy and head out to Sutton, AK with the Chugach Mountains to our right, and the Talkeetna Mountain Range to our left.  

Chugach Mountains, Talkeetna Mountains

 It can't get better than that driving in-between those two impressive mountain ranges.  The weather clears a little bit, and this is very welcome as our next stop is the Matanuska Glacier.  Here we take a guided tour (and only this way you can access the glacier).  We have the guide to our own, no more people in our group other than Elke and me.  

Matnuska Glacier from AK-1 viewed

Matanuska Glacier terminus

Those crevasses can be hundreds of feet deep, ....

..... likewise those lakes

Glacier moraine and moulin

Glacier from 20,000 ft (courtesy of Wikipedia)

 We learn a lot about the Matanuska glacier, like the ice of the glacier needed about 600 years to reach the terminus of the glacier (a flowing rate of about 8 inches a day), the age of it (about 10,000 years at its present form), being about 500 to 700 ft thick, the source of it being Mt. Baker and Mt. Wickersham, the glacier is 27 miles long, and 4 miles wide at its terminus, and much, much more.  The hike up the glacier, and we only went two miles up the glacier, were so much information, it would be worth an entry on its own.

It is late afternoon when we finish our tour and we decide to only continue to Glennallen, AK (population 439) and call it the day.  We find a campsite, set up camp, have a quick dinner at one of the three "restaurants" and call it quit after all that hiking.  

Wood carving in Glennallen, AK

Mt. Drum from AK-1 (Hwy-1), right courtesy of Alaska.org

 Unfortunately  Mount Drum doesn't want to show its summit, and neither Mt. Sanford.  Maybe we have some more luck tomorrow, but what we can see is impressive. 

"The glacier was God's great plough .... set at work ages ago to grind, furrow, and knead over, as it were, the surface of the earth?"  -  Louis Agassiz, Swiss-American biologist and geologist, 1807-1873