Matanuska Glacier Hike

Kind of odd but you have to pay to drive down a road to get to the Matanuska Glacier.  You can hike to the Glacier for free but a private company owns and maintains the closest road to the Glacier.

You can pay $20 per person to drive up it. But we opted to pay $50 each and get a 3 hour guided tour of the glacier. It included equipment which was good as you really needed crampons to explore the ice.

Having the guide was fun, even if he was kind a slacker. We saw all kinds of features of the glaciers including caves, mulans ( deep holes ), and seracs.

And he was eager to take out pictures at all the features.

This was a deep Mulan, The picture looks like I am hanging over it a lot more than I am in real life.

Josh our goofy guide likes to have us pick up big rocks and drop them down the Mulans.  When you do this you realize it is hard hard ice and not snow down there. The rocks bounce and make cool noises until finally hitting the water at the bottom.

Often there are under ice lakes or stream under the glaciers.

And we even got a bunch of sun here and there while we hiked the glacier.

We probably hiked about a total of 3 or more miles.

Here you can get a better idea of just how big the glacier is.

That is all ice even the gravel looking stuff, it is just covered with gravel the glacier rips apart as it flows down the mountain.

The ice here was really really blue here. Climbing all over the ice with the crampons is actually really easy once you trust the little teeth strapped to your feet.

Looking into a big crack between the Sirocs.

A lot of people where out on ice climbing trips.  Our guide Josh loves ice climbing.

Did I mention the poor college kid is living in a tent here and has no car. So he basically doesn't get to see much of Alaska while he is here. Our guide at another park had a similar problem.

We hung our around this big lake for a while and Reen played in the mud which she was obsessed with. She also got to bring home some glacier water.