Following Melting Highways in the Magnificent North West – Alaska (part I)

The shore has a dual nature, 

changing with the swing of the tides, 

belonging now to the land, 

now to the sea. 

Rachel Carson

The tiniest of town, Chicken, Alaska

Large chicken sculpture and much larger dredge….

Named Chicken because its residents couldn’t agree on the spelling of Ptarmigan, Alaska’s state bird, they wanted to name the town after.  Only two to six hardcore souls live here through the winter, a few more in the summer, when the road re-opens for a short season. 

PS: Town is for sale: https://downtownchickenalaskaforsale.com/

You are standing on the edge. 

On one side the sea surges, waves crash and pummel the shore. 

On the other side, a salty marsh of silken mud percolates with life. 

Overhead, a gull’s cry stitches together the margin between land and sea. 

At high tide sea and river waters blend to concoct one of the richest

and most productive habitats on Earth… an estuary

where the mingling of sea and river thrives on dynamic exchange.

 Poster by the Hachemak Bay estuary.

Homer Spit with homes and businesses on tall stilts

Some built from salvaged docks or wooden boats,

others barged in from across the bay

4.5 miles of dark sand segmenting the Hachemak Bay

Camping on the beach here – it was peaceful

Where salt-kissed breezes dance to the rhythm of the surf.

Archeological digs show this area was occupied by natives as far back as 6,000 BCE.  Now, Homer is the most westerly US community by contiguous road, hence its nickname of Land’s End.  Homer Spit was created by forces of nature (glacier, sand, water and wind) but might have more likely been washed away years ago if humans had not intervened.  Nearly every winter, northwest storms angrily try to separate the spit from the mainland. 

Homer Village was located on the spit from 1896-1902 (convenient for fishing and boating) but most moved to the safer mainland by 1910.  The spit shrunk heavily dropping six feet during the 1964, 9.2 Good Friday earthquake and most of its vegetation was killed, leaving it mostly gravel and sand today.  Now, only 19 feet above sea level, it is very susceptible to storm surges which can garner up to 30-foot waves!  Homer spit contains the longest road into ocean waters in the world. 

Other nicknames for Homer include Cosmic Hamlet by the Sea, Key West in a Parka, Banana Belt of Alaska, and Northern Shangri-La.  In the 1960’s several hippies came to Homer, they were known as ‘spit rats’.  People easily fall in love with this beautiful and unique place full of relaxed vibes, lacking in road rage or traffic jams, bursting with bucket-loads of good karma, and blessed with creativity everywhere.  Homer is considered the counter-culture capital of Alaska, full of artists and people disillusioned with mainstream society.

The couple of days I visited there, a fishing contest was taking place.  The winners were: largest halibut, 252.2#, and largest salmon, 25.6#.  Homer is also the Halibut Capital of the world….

Colors to help enliven the typically gray days

Alaska’s motto ‘North to the Future’ captures the adventurous spirit and optimism of its people.    It is a huge state, 1/5 the size of the combined lower 48 states!!!  It is larger than Texas, California, Montana, and West Virginia combined!  Everything in Alaska is oversized.  When I returned to the USA after a visit here, a whole lot seemed smaller.

Alaska has 3 million lakes, 29 volcanoes, over 100,000 glaciers (before they melt away), the tallest point in North America (Denali), 33,000 miles of coastline (more than the entire lower 48 states put together), one bear for every 21 residents, and grows some of the largest vegetables in the world due to nearly 24 hour of sunlight per day in the summer (19-pound carrot to 127-pound cabbage).  You have a chance to see the northern lights 243 days/year in parts of Alaska (near Fairbanks).  One in three jobs are tied to the oil/gas industry.  

Hachemak Bay estuary looking northwest towards glaciers

Kachemak Bay Wooden Boat Society

Looks more like a wooden boat cemetery

Tiny 1927 Post Office

Transfiguration of Our Lord Church

Russian Orthodox, 1901

Cemetery overtaken by weeds

Ninilchik, Alaska

Alaska is only 55 miles east of Russia so you can see why there was some Russian influence in the early days.  In 1867, Russia sold its sovereignty over Alaska to the USA for a mere $7.2M or $0.02/acre.  Most Russians, a population never larger than 900 people, left the region.  Nearly all Russian institutions disappeared when Russians left however, the Orthodox Church flourished, even after financial support ended.  The few Russians who are still in Alaska are known as the old believers.  Men wear colorfully embroidered shirts and handwoven belts, women ankle-length dresses.  They live quite remote.  I saw them only on one occasion while driving (or getting lost in) the back roads near Homer. 

‘The more I become acquainted with these savages, the more I love them

and am convinced that we, for all our ‘enlightenment’ have,

without even noticing it, departed far from the path of perfection.

Many a so-called ‘savage’ is morally far superior to us so-called ‘enlightened’ people.’

Russian Bishop Innocent Veniaminov, 1843

Exit Glacier pours over from the Harding Icefield

You can drive close to this hanging glacier

The Harding Icefield was made up of 35 glaciers, the Exit Glacier is just one of them.  It received its name because it was used as the exit in the first recorded crossing of the Harding Icefield in 1968.  This visible dirty blueish remainder is a very small portion of what it used to be.  It is believed to have once reached all the way to Seward, eight miles away.  It had been receding 162 feet/year between 2010-2015 and at the faster pace of 262 feet/year in 2015-2016.

Nearly translucent Glacial Ice from the Portage Glacier

Accessible to view by boat or kayaks, May-September

Visited with locally built MV Ptarmigan

The boat is manufactured to be frozen in place during the off-season

Make up of a glacier:

• Snow is 90% air and this location receives more than 100 feet per year.
• Firn is 50% air.  Firn is snow that survived a year without melting.  These once fluffy flakes lose their delicate shapes and compact into crystals as they melt, re-freeze, and are pressed tightly together by additional layers of snow, much of the air being pushed out.  
• Glacial Ice is 10% air.  After 4-10 years of compression, firn grains fuse into a dense mass of glacial ice, which geologists consider a metamorphic rock!  As the air bubbles are squeezed out and the ice crystals enlarge, the ice appears blue, just like large quantities of water appear blue.

Portage Glacier viewed from MV Ptarmigan

Once a large icefield comprised of five glaciers

Some glacier break-offs floating in the lake

Close-up of the blue ice of Portage Glacier

Nearby town of Portage destroyed as it dropped eight feet

in the 1964, Good Friday 9.2 earthquake

when 600 miles of fault ruptured at once and moved 60 feet!

Glaciers are called rivers of ice because despite being solid ice, they are in constant motion.  Glaciers creep or slide.  They are landscape designers, creating ‘U’ shape valleys, gouging out kettle ponds, stranding erratic boulders, or leaving behind gravel outwash plains.  

Eklutna Village Historic Park Cemetery

Small spirit houses built over graves

Dena’ina Native Village in Chugiak, Alaska since 1650’s

Before they encountered the Russian fur traders and priests in the early 1700’s, the Dena’ina cremated their dead.  The ashes were usually put into birch-bark baskets and placed in a tree or by a riverbank, in the belief that would free the spirits to make their final journey to what the Dena’ina call the ‘High Country’.  The Dena’ina began to convert to Russian Orthodoxy around 1836, after a smallpox epidemic wiped out half their population.

Keeping with Dena’ina beliefs, the houses provide shelter for the spirit; and following the Orthodox tradition, the bodies are buried in the ground. But an Orthodox burial is a back-breaking process in a place that is built on glacier-scoured rocks. 

The Eklutna village is the oldest continually inhabited Athabascan site in the Anchorage area with about 800-1,000 years of human history.  A blend of Athabascan beliefs and Russian Orthodox teachings introduced by missionaries in the 1800s holds that when a person dies his spirit wanders the earth, searching for his earthly possessions.  To keep the spirits confined to the Eklutna Cemetery, colorful miniature houses are built on top of the graves. The tiny houses contain personal items of the deceased such as cups, plates, spoons, a comb, a pipe, or even a rifle or camera. 

Most of those buried in the graveyard are Athabascan Indians, along with some Russian people and Yupik Eskimos.  The spirit houses are placed over the grave 40 days after the burial to house the spirit of the deceased and their possessions.  Blankets are placed on the grave instead of flowers, as compared to the American tradition.  

Byzantine or Russian Orthodox cross

Featuring distinct gabled roofs with comb-like ridge crests. 

An individual’s social status determined the size of the house.

A house within a house meant mother with child is resting there.

 The clan affiliations were notated by the color and the styling of the crest.

Top crossbar = INRI

Middle crossbar = arms of the lord hung there

Bottom crossbar = footrest higher on right side showing

balance of righteousness – that Christ was fully God and

He was fully human, feeling pain and agony

Natives as well as Russians are buried here

Called ‘Spirit Houses’

More modern Mary Rosenberg Spirit House, 2003

Resembles girl’s dormitory at the Eklutna Vocational School

Old St. Nicholas Church

Oldest remaining hand-hewn log structure in mainland Alaska

Originally built 1798 in Knik, by the Eklutna Indians,

and moved to Eklutna in 1900

New Eklutna Church, built 1954-1962

With cupolas and Russian Orthodox crosses

Reminder of days when Alaska was claimed by imperial Russia

Valdez Glacier Lake

Camped for the night here

Amazing how much colder it is near a glacier lake

Breeze cooled when passing over the ice and water

Seal intestine rain jacket with grass stitching

Throwing dart made of wood, ivory, sinew and ptarmigan feathers

Alutiiq

For wet weather and water travel, the Alutiiq used sea mammal or bear intestines sewn with sinew or grass to create clothing that was waterproof and breathable.  Intestines were cleaned, dried, bleached and carefully sewn into lightweight gear.  Bear intestines were prized for their long wide strips.  Sewn with precision to prevent water from penetrating the stitching.  Tufts of hair, yarn, or small feathers wicked moisture away from seams. 

Part of the Maxine and Jesse Whitney Museum, Valdez

Largest collection of Native Alaskan art and artifact in the world

Collected between 1947 and 1980

These wolves are some of the best taxidermized animals I have ever seen

Bear-proof food cache

Found throughout many parts of Alaska

The first barrel of North Slope crude oil to arrive in Valdez

from Prudhoe Bay

It did not come through the Trans-Alaska Pipeline.

More than a year before the pipeline was completed, Fairbanks dog musher Richard ‘Red’ Olson, his 14-year-old son, Randy, and a team of huskies brought a barrel of oil to Valdez on a specially built dog sled.  Their epic journey was a Lion’s Club fundraiser to build a new fire station in Fox, AK.  The team left Prudhoe Bay February 23, 1975 with a 42-gallon barrel of crude oil. 

They encountered harsh weather and had to alter their route several times, making them travel an extra 300 miles!  Kobuk Kid, the lead dog, eventually brought the team into Valdez on Saturday, April 13, 1975.  Eleven-hundred miles in 49 days.  The team also brought a bag of mail.  Postmistress Pearl White opened the post office to postmark the mail the team had delivered.  This was the ONLY time in history that the post office was open on a Sunday.

Construction of the Trans-Alaska pipeline system was a remarkable feat of engineering containing many unprecedented firsts.  Covering 799 miles and at the cost of $7.7B, it was the largest privately financed project ever undertaken.  At peak of construction, over 24,000 people were employed on the project.  It was completed in 1977.

Several methods of transport were discussed, including the use of tanker aircraft and submarines.  Developers soon concluded that the most viable way was through a pipeline to the nearest year-round ice-free port: Valdez. 

At the peak of operations, the pipeline carried two million barrels per day or 14% of the domestic production.  Today, it only carries 650,000 barrels per day on its long 800-mile journey to Valdez.

How long the pipeline is expected to remain in operation is debated but Alaska is required, by law, to remove all trace of the pipeline after the oil extraction is complete.

New Valdez harbor, surrounded by snow topped mountains

The colors are truly amazing

You can see why they call it the Switzerland of Alaska

For more than 70 years stood the town of ‘Old’ Valdez, named, in 1790, after the Spanish who dominated exploration in Prince William Sound during the early years of European investigation of the North Pacific.  Valdez eventually flourished as the major port in south-central Alaska to supply interior Alaska.  It quickly grew as supply point for developing industries in the area: fisheries, mining, fox farming, and ALCAN highway building.

As far as historians know, the area around Valdez was never permanently inhabited before the founding of the town by white settlers, although Natives did use the land extensively for hunting and fishing. 

To get here you use the Richardson to Valdez Highway, the oldest highway in Alaska (1910), passing through a beautiful canyon with several gorgeous waterfalls along the way.  Unlike its unpleasant history, if feels very magical to drive to and be in Valdez.

The 9.2 Good Friday earthquake of 3/27/1964, the largest earthquake ever recorded in North America and second largest in the world after the 9.5 Chile earthquake of 1960, left many people dead.  Although badly damaged, ‘Old’ Valdez was not destroyed during the quake and following tsunami.  The US Army Corps of Engineers however, declared the site uninhabitable since it was situated on unstable ground.  Many residents continued to live in ‘Old’ Valdez for three years while the ‘New’ Valdez was prepared about four miles away.  In total, 68 residences and businesses were relocated.  In October 1967, all services to ‘Old’ Valdez were severed and the building of the ‘New’ Valdez complete. 

The cost of the destruction in today’s dollars in Valdez: $292M, and Alaska: $2,530M!  Destruction of portions of the highway and loss of the city docks curtailed the town’s main industry, cargo transportation.  Fishing industry and tourism were impaired too.  In the late 1800’s there were more than 4,000 prospectors in Valdez, after the quake, fewer than 850 people stayed there. 

Since it happened on Good Friday, many thought it was the end of the world.  The main reason so many children died had to do with the timing of the earthquake.  The SS Chena, a 10,000-ton cargo freighter brought supplies to Valdez.  Children usually went to the docks to meet the ship since the crew threw candy and fruit to them.  Tragically, 28 adults and children gathered on the dock that day and did not survive.  A section of the coastline slid into the sea, taking the dock and people with it.

Descriptions of the earthquake from the time it happened: The entire earth rang like a bell.  The water sloshed in wells in Africa, swimming pools in Puerto Rico and Australia, and canals in Louisiana.  There were ground-waves three to four feet high causing trees to sway side to side, their branches touching the ground with each swing.  Aftershocks traveled the globe for over a year. 

The manmade disaster, Exxon Valdez oil spill, happened exactly 25 years (3/24/1989) to the day after the Good Friday 9.2 earthquake.  The oil floated 490 miles from the original spill, affecting 1,300 miles of coastline.

Old Valdez after the 1964 Good Friday 9.2 earthquake

Colorful kayaks, a fun way to visit the area, New Valdez

Ancient Messenger by Andrew Abyo

Alutiiq Culture in modern age

Representing hardship, we are going through such as

loss of culture, tradition, and language

Hunting Visor by Peter Lind Jr, 2012

With Russian trading beads and feathers

Alutiiq

Men wore visors when pursuing marine animals.  Visor was meant to honor the spirits and give them luck while hunting.  It also helped to keep the sun or rain off their face.  Finally, it aided in camouflaging the hunter when crouched in kayak.  Feathers indicate the direction of the wind. 

Why do you find French tapestries in art galleries and 19^th century totem poles in natural history museums?  Why is one called Art and the other Artifact?  The answer has to do with how objects have been historically divided into categories. 

Traditionally, Western culture defined fine art as ‘free from function’.  It’s ‘art for art’s sake’.  Objects that are useful, like moccasins, have been called applied arts, crafts, or artifacts. 

Western culture used these categories to hold its art high above the art of others.  But these categories are difficult to apply to Alaska Native objects.  If you look closely, you’ll see that many objects people might call fine art have purpose and many objects people might call artifacts are beautifully made.  

Tipsy, dancing, or drunken forest

In a drunken forest, trees, often pipe-cleaner black spruce, tilt in all directions like a group of rowdy revelers stumbling along the street.  Drunken forests aren’t caused by alcohol, but unique soil conditions found in the North.

Melting permafrost is the most common cause.  They form when ice-rich permafrost thaws, causing the ground surface to sag.  Nearby trees, which have adapted wide, shallow root systems, to hold onto what little soil is available above the permafrost table, bow toward the newly formed depressions, presto, drunken forest. 

This melting also creates roller coasters on the Alaskan roads where cars’ shock absorbers are pumping like pogo-sticks when driving by a drunken forest, chances are, permafrost is also the culprit. 

Black spruces are sometimes called pipe cleaners.  At 60-80 years of age their trunk is only five inches in diameter.  Shallow wet soil, permafrost, rocky surface are all very difficult conditions for growth.  They are survivors.  White spruces grow in dryer deeper soil, takes 20-25 years to reach the same five inches in diameter.  It can snow ANY month of the year.  There are possibly 100-day growing season in these areas.

Fish-Wheel, water too silty to fish with other methods

Bear-proof cache as well, Chitina River

Many interior Alaska rivers originate from melting glaciers, and so are filled with fine particles of rock ground to dust by the movement of ice.  This ‘rock flour’ does not settle but floats making the water look milky.  Fishing for salmon in such cloudy water requires special equipment.  Lures and bait will not work since migrating salmon stop feeding after they enter fresh water.  Also, the cloudy water makes it difficult for fish to see lures or bait.  Instead, salmon fishing in these rivers is done by various netting techniques including long-handled dip-nets, shore-anchored gillnet, and this ingenious device called fish-wheel (or salmon wheel). 

It operates like a watermill outfitted with wire baskets designed to catch and carry fish from the river into a holding area.  It is typically used in shallow rivers with high current.  Long ago, it was also used on the Columbia River (between Oregon and Washington) but has now been banned. 

Even the Natives can only use the fish-wheel for personal, not commercial use.  They are restricted to catching a certain amount per family only.

Only Natives can fish this way, with permits

Chitina Edgerton Highway Overlook

Foreground of the ever-present fireweed in bloom

On the way to the Wrangell St-Elias National Park

More in Alaska part II, next post.