Tuesday, June 29, 2010

To reach Whittier, Alaska, you need to go through the Anton Anderson Memorial tunnel which is single lane only and you share it with the railroad. Every 15 minutes they change the direction traffic can flow and they change from vehicles to rail traffic. It is the longest highway tunnel and the longest combined highway/railroad tunnel in North America. A one way trip through the tunnel lasts 6.5 minutes and the top speed is 25 mph. Jet and portal fans together make up the ventilation system.
Whittier is a small town (population- 300) surrounded by mountains on one side and Prince William Sound on the other. They receive 20 feet of snow annually and 14 feet of rain. The town has an ice-free deep-water port, 1200 feet deep. They frequently have clouds and fog so thick that from a distance the town is not visible. The U.S. used this information during WWII and created the town as a port, petroleum delivery center and as a military supply base. Because you can rarely see it from the water and in the air, it was a great benefit to our troops and the Japanese had no idea it existed.
The town is named after the poet John Greenleaf Whittier. The tunnel,built in 1942-1943, was a 12.4 mile-long railway line for the safeguarding of military supplies from the port of Whittier. The west side of the tunnel is the Bear Valley and the east side is Portage Valley. The tunnel was named in 1976 for the engineer of the tunnel- Anton Anderson.
The tunnel only allows vehicles and trains inside except for 2 hours on one Sunday in June when the annual Walk to Whittier takes place. The tolls are charged for a round trip and are based on the vehicle class. Motorcycles, cars and small RVs without a two car are charged $12. Our RV is 38 feet and has a tow car, so that costs $35. We decided to just drive the car through because the height was rather short. The military was decommissioned in the 1960s and Whittier was incorporated in 1969.
The 14 story Begich Towers was used for the US Army for family housing and civilian bachelor quarters. Now it is condominiums where half of the town's population lives and the government offices. The other half of the population lives in the Buckner Building or Whittier Manor. The town depends solely on the fishing industry and tourism now since the military activities have stopped.
The Begich, Boggs Visitor Center is located on Portage Lake just before you enter the tunnel to Whittier. It focuses on the Chugach National Forest. The Portage Glacier is visible from here. Snowflakes are the frozen breath of the sea. This is the first step of a glacier's formation. Through time and pressure the glacier are formed. The Chugach Mountains have rivers of ice flowing and 1/3 of the forest still is moving ice. The Chugach Mountain Glaciers are master sculptors of the land. When a warming trend comes along, the glacier starts melting and the frozen snowflakes return to the sea again as water. The crevasses in the glaciers can be as deep as a 10 story building and can be hidden from view by snow. These glaciers can move 1 foot in a day and you can hear it grinding as it moves. The melted water flows under the glacier and forms sculptures.
The tundra around the glacier supports many organisms. The marsh is the cradle and nursery for many species. The iceworm lives right on the glacier. The land left behind after the glacier has moved is extremely harsh. It takes 3 years before anything can grow here.
You can still see remnants of the Valdez Oil Spill when the sea otters dig up clams to eat. The oil has gotten into the clams and when the sea otters eat them, they'll die. When they tried to fix up the Valdez oil spill by burning off the oil floating on top, the Orcas were killed because they had to surface to breathe. They inhaled the toxic fumes. Hundreds of them were killed.
There are 26 glaciers on Prince William Sound. We took a cruise on the Aurora Ferry to view them. Whittier is at the top of the Passage Canal and the port here is called Port Wells named by Captain Vancouver in the 18th century. Prince William Sound has 2100 square miles of islands and fjords carved 15 million years ago by glaciation. It is surrounded by the Chugach National Forest which is the second largest forest in North America. The land itself is larger than the state of Vermont. It has the largest intact marine ecosystem in North America and is the northernmost rain forest. The epicenter of the 1964 9.2 earthquake is here; so it is still an active seismic region. Most of the glaciers are named after colleges: the northwest side after the women's colleges and the southwest side after the men's colleges (Amherst, Bryn Mawr, Crescent, Williams, Yale, Dartmouth, Barnard, Smith,Harvard, Downer, Vassar, Wellesley, Holyoke).
When the glaciers break apart and melt, they form icebergs. 85% of the iceberg is below the water; only 15% shows. The sea otters use the icebergs to sleep, rest and play on. They have the densest fur of any animal in the world. They have no blubber to keep them warm. They are the largest member of the weasel family. We saw them sliding down some icebergs like sliding board. In the late 1800s when Russia was claiming this land, they almost slaughtered the sea otters to extinction. The native would never kill a female that had a pup or was pregnant. The Russians and the ruthless fur trappers killed any sea otter they saw.
The Harriman Fjord was named after Harriman in the 18th century when he took John Muir and John Barrows, the great scientist, and they found a water route inside. The Serpentine Glacier has lost its middle so it's separated and looks like 2 instead of one. The Surprise Glacier has a stripe down its side. Some of the huge cracks in the glacier are 100 feet deep. If you fall into these crevasses, it is so cold you would freeze to death before they could get you out. The medial moraine from these two glaciers are coming together at the bottom.
The icebergs are divided into 4 groups: brash- 0 to 3 feet above water, growler- 3 to 7 feet above water, bergie bits- 7 to 10 above water, and the iceberg- over 10 feet showing above water. We could feel the catamaran hitting them as we rode closer. We weren't able to go as far as usual because there were too many icebergs floating around. We could get stuck here and the water temperature is 38 to 42 degrees. One of the icebergs turned as we went over top of it and we could see a huge granite rock stuck into its side. When the ice falls off above the water it is called a "belly flopper". If it shoots off under the water it is called a "shooter". The mountain at the top where the glaciers are formed receive 100 feet of snow a year. When the bergie bits let air escape it is called "SNAP, CRACKLE, POP " !!! The Tidewater Glaciers move under their own power toward the water and they end up in the ocean.
There was a naturalist on board to teach kids about the glaciers in a school. We placed Noah in this and he graduated with a certificate!!! It was a very comfortable boat and was heated so you could stay inside and not freeze to death. We saw black-legged kittiwakes nests. They lay their eggs on the rocks. When the sun warms the rock up the eggs get warm and eventually hatch. When there is a large population of kittiwakes, the watershed is healthy. The kittiwakes are an indicator species.