Exit Glacier

My friend Andrew and I hiked up by Exit Glacier yesterday. My camera battery hasn't been charged since before I came down to Seward, though, so sadly, I only got pictures of the first roughly half hour of our hike. Fortunately, that was the part where we went up to the glacier. There's an amazing view even down by the edge of the glacier, so I got a ton of great scenery shots in addition to some pretty decent ones of the glacier.





It's a lot smaller than it was when I first saw it three years ago, and it's not as blue, though I don't know if that was because of the weather or something.





The only wildlife we saw was a shrew, but it was a pretty cute shrew, and it hung out like a foot away from us for a couple of minutes while we watched. It knew full well we were watching it, but it didn't seem to mind too terribly much. I bet it was pretty used to humans.


At the toe of the glacier, the trail gets washed out every winter, and they apparently never bothered making a bridge over the glacier run-off that will let guests go up and touch the glacier. But Andrew and I weren't deterred, and we took off our shoes and socks and waded through knee-deep glacier melt. It was absolutely frigid, and about twelve feet wide. There was so much super-fine gravel sand mixed into the water that it had a silver sheen to it, and it was impossible to see more than possibly a quarter inch through the water. As we picked our way across, I couldn't help but look at my feet to find my footing, despite the fact that I couldn't see anything beneath the surface of the water. With the silvery mass writhing around my shins, I felt like I was floating, even though I could feel my feet firmly planted against the icy rushing water. It was pretty dizzying. It was pretty freaking cool.