Northern Exposure

Yes, I know the show was set in the fictional rural village of Cicely, AK, not Anchorage. And that it was actually filmed in Washington state.

Yeah, first day in Alaska, and we saw a moose walking down the street in Anchorage—and not on the outskirts of town—this was in the middle of a city of 260,000. Pretty awesome. We were walking to the car, and heard somebody from a rooftop bar yell, “Hey, watch out for the moose.” I thought, “Yeah…thanks, funny drunk guy,” and then looked up and saw the moose. Pretty neat.

I was in Alaska along with most of my graduate group for a 3-day conference, and then a few days of vacationing (hiking, fishing, seeing the city, museums). It felt very odd to get on the plane without my laptop: it’s an entirely novel experience not to have that brick with me.

We had gorgeous weather in Alaska: high 60’s/low 70’s F; a few days of rain, but mostly beautiful and sunny. It was light throughout the day; the summer solstice was close to the day we left. Glad that I was up there in the summer: living with a couple of hours of light a day in winter sounds absolutely soul crushing. If I had something to gain by raising the suicide rate, I’d put on an Ibsen festival during an Alaskan winter, and offer lots of booze.

One of the highlights of the trip was the day-long fishing trip for halibut, rockfish, and salmon, but I’ll write about that later.

The other major highlight was doing a day-long hike up next to Exit Glacier, to the Harding Icefield (a description and a bunch of nice photos at this site). It is an ice field larger than Rhode Island; glaciers are the “fingers” that come off it as it passes through the mountain. Exit Glacier is retreating all right… there were the signs showing its extent in the 1800s, 1930, 1960….

The hike itself was 7.7 miles round trip, with 3000 feet of elevation gain. For a feel for the hike see this aerial photo with the trail map superimposed. What was really striking was the weather change during the climb: shorts and t-shirt at the bottom, and multiple layers, blowing wind, and snow on the ground at the top. Enjoyed a lunch looking over this huge valley filled with ice… a pretty incredible view (as an example, see this panoramic shot that somebody else took.)

Down at the bottom, we waded through ice-cold glacier runoff to see the glacier face. Yeah, that was like stepping in buckets of ice water. As some other website points out: Several signs are posted near the glacier’s face warning of the potential danger associated with getting to close, and yet several people waltz right up and stand directly below the massive chunks of ice. But unless you feel the need to risk being crushed by a calving glacier, I suggest you heed the warning signs. You can see what happens when glaciers go bad, below: