It was a beautiful day. We woke up ready for breakfast in the award winning restaurant. This was the best breakfast so far. The cabin had a binocular, to help us to find animals, we found none, but it was so comfy to be sitting at the porch of the cabin, breathing the fresh air, and watching the mountains afar. It felt so good!
The ice trek tour took us into the Matanuska glacier. Matanuska is a glacier estimated to be 27 miles long, 4 miles wide and 4 miles deep.
We put on full gear including a hard hat, a well-worn hiking boot from the tour company, and carried a pair of clamping shoes. The tour guides were two young women, both flying in to work during the summer months. They told us that the glacier has been receding very quickly. What surprised us more though was that the glacier started with the “muddy” soil that we stood on; when one of them threw a rock into a narrow muddy poodle, we did not hear the rock landing, that was enough for us not to dip our hiking boots into any of the poodles or crevices through the tour. This was not a good idea to bring small kids who walked to dip into every poodle they saw. We did our own facial mask with the muddy glacier soil, it was very cooling and we took a bag of it home at the end ;).
As we trespassed from the muddy glacier to the icy glacier, we changed to our clamping gear and learned how to walk across, up and down with the clamping shoes. It was not strenuous but still tiring with the 3-hour non-stop hike on clamping shoes. There was no resting place once we were on the glacier, we kept walking, only stopping to observe crevices, observe new formations, refill our water bottles with glacier water, or to take pictures. The landscape changed so rapidly, on our return, we could no longer backrack on the same route. Along the way, we could see a few other tours.
Does the constant human footprint threaten the ice glacier more? Does our walking on the glacier accelerate its receding?
We learned to have a full stomach before any long drive in Alaska, and caught a late lunch back at the beautiful Sheep Mountain Lodge.
We headed south, and Seward was our next place to be.
The Bear Lake Lodging inn keeper greeted us as we arrived at the Bear Lake Lodging in the late hours. The innkeeper was a black woman, and we were a bit surprised. In our mind, Alaskans are mostly caucasians. We later found out that she was from Virginia and she took good care of us with her friendly demeanor, her delicious breakfast, and her thoughtfulness to cater for special diet needs. We were tired after the Matanuska glacier hike and the long drive, we wanted a quick check in and a simple room to rest, yet the lodge seemed to be a place in the middle of nowhere. We were thrilled to discover a spacious 2-floor suite, a fully equipped kitchen, a full bathroom, a half bathroom and 2 TVs at our discretion. On top of all these, we had a gorgeous view of Bear Lake with a dense forest in the background, a launch dock with scores of kayaks and canoes ready for use, and an airplane for our admiration. The Bear Lake Lodge became one of the best, if not the best, accommodation in this trip. We would stay here for 4 nights with the innkeeper serving us fresh-made breakfast every morning and the opportunities to meet with fellow travellers.
More on Seward & the beautiful Bear Lake
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