Saturday, October 2, 2010

Salmon Glacier


Now that I’m back from my travels to and from Alaska this summer, I’ll begin to post a few of the photographs I took along the way. I’ll add a few more as time permits. Salmon Glacier is in British Columbia, just to the east of the southern end of the Alaskan panhandle. It’s a good illustration of the pleasure I get from the I-wonder-what’s-up-that-road kind of traveling I like to do. Returning to Berkeley from Alaska along Highway 37 in British Columbia, I noticed on the AAA map Highway 37A headed west to the town on Stewart in British Columbia (not Steward on the Kenai Peninsula in Alaska) and nearby the town of Hyder, just across the border in Alaska. On the map, the town of Hyder looked like the southern most town in Alaska you could drive to from the continent. (There are several other towns, e.g., Ketchikan, further south in Alaska, but you need a ferry, other boat or airplane to get to them.) A conversation with the owner of the campground where I stayed in Stewart revealed the presence of the Salmon Glacier Road, a narrow, gravel road that would take me to the overlook from which I took this photograph (actually several photographs stitched together in Photoshop). Salmon Glacier Road doesn’t appear on the AAA map, which makes it even more fun to “discover.” (I would have known about the Road if I had been reading more closely the indispensable MILEPOST guidebook.) About 13 miles north of Hyder, the road crosses back into British Columbia without Canadian customs. Another visitor at the summit viewpoint informed me she and her husband were there the day before and that they could barely see the rocks immediately in front of them. Salmon Glacier is reported to be the largest glacier in the world accessible by road. It was spectacular.

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