A Drive Along Turnagain Arm



View of Turnagain Arm.

We took a day trip heading south out of Anchorage along the Seward Highway.  Our destination was Portage Glacier about 40 miles away.  The road runs between the 3000 foot mountains of Chugach State Park and the rocky edge of muddy Turnagain Arm. The Cook Inlet stretches 180 miles from the ocean to Anchorage and Turnagain Arm is a branch of the inlet.  It was named by Captain Bligh (yes that guy) on an expedition led by James Cook to find the Northwest Passage.

First stop was Potter’s Marsh where, purportedly, lots of birds reside.  With our usual luck we didn’t see very many on our walk along the boardwalks situated out over the marsh, but the day was beautiful and it was a pretty place to walk.

Pretty much the sum total of all the birds we saw.

There were lots of pullouts to view the scenery.  On our way south, the tide was in, so the inlet was beautiful. On the way back to Anchorage, much later in the day, the inlet was a muddy flat.  There are lots of warnings about walking out on the mud as it behaves like quicksand. Didn’t see any boaters but there were several windsurfers along one stretch.

The Alaska Railroad runs right next to the road.  This track goes from Anchorage down to Whittier, where the cruise ships come in.

We took a boat ride out to the Portage Glacier.  The glacier has retreated significantly in the past 100 years, to the point where there is now a substantial lake where the glacier used to be.  Gold rush stampeders used to travel over the glacier (where it once stood) because it provided a portage route between Prince William Sound and Turnagain Arm and shortened their travel time.  That can’t have been very easy, given all the fissures in the ice, not to mention that the ice is darn COLD!

This glacier is receding about 18 inches a day.

This ice is only about 60 years old, so no old mammoths are going to be popping out of this ice!

One of the many ice floes floating in the lake.

We stopped by a beautiful hotel, Alyeska, where they have a 60 passenger tram you can take up for a view of the area 2300 feet above sea level.  Lots of black diamond trails at the top.  During the summer, people can walk the mountain like billy goats.  We took the tram instead.  The views were magnificent.

An interesting statue in front of the hotel, depicting a trapper making his way down a steep slope.

The 60 person tram we came up on. It took less than 7 minutes to get up to the top.

Some of the black diamond trails are on this slope.  They can get up to 900 inches of snow a year!

A view of Turnagain Arm.

The mountains on the other side of Turnagain Arm are part of the Kenai Peninsula.

Seward Highway is in great shape.  The thing is though, the road is only two lanes and the speed limit is 65 mph.  It is more than a little spooky whipping along this narrow road with no divider between you and the on-coming traffic.  And getting back onto the road after pulling off for one of the scenic stops is a bit hair raising. You have to get from 0 to 65 is like no time. Later we heard that the traffic was extra heavy because the salmon are starting to arrive in the Kenai Peninsula rivers and when that happens, Anchorage empties out to go fishing.  They call it “combat fishing” because folks actually get into fights about their favorite fishing spots. The folks up here are serious about their fishing.