It's 17 Jun 2011. This morning is that early morning bag drag I talked about watching yesterday. Our bags need to be outside our doors at 0600. That left about an hour for breakfast before we needed to be in the lobby to catch our bus to the train station at 0715.
The weather has cleared up overnight, offering a terrific view in all directions.
Not much to say about getting in line. Our bus driver is a retired math teacher, so we continue following the retiree trail.
You have to admire the organization and logistical skill of the Holland America people. While they don't talk about it much, it is apparent to me as a former Air Force deployment and execution planner there are a lot of levels to these trips that need to be patted into place to make it a seamless experience for we passengers. Even this simple trip four blocks or so to the train is choreographed. It's much like the lines at Disney World which frequently include a pre-show to keep everyone occupied and happy before getting to the main attractions.
In our case our driver weaves back and forth through the streets of Anchorage, answering questions and keeping up a running commentary, before parking briefly on a hill leading down to our train. He has a walkie talkie by his side, and when he gets a call we continue back down the hill directly to our car. Oh the things we have to endure to get to our train ;-).
The cars in our train have individual names and numbers, as well as trip designations. Our car is the Kobuk, car number 1053, designated as Coach 26A. I checked online and found that each car is named after an Alaskan city or village and has a pretty detailed history. This includes its manufacture and delivery dates, years of use by various owners, and finally its features on the tour.
If you have to ride to Denali, this is certainly a comfortable way to travel. Most of our time is spent on the upper deck of this double decker car. All the seats are first class by airline standards. The upper deck is covered with large plexiglass windows which provide unobstructed views in almost all directions. The lower deck is a dining area where we'll be served two meals during the day.
As we get underway, we are greeted by the support staff on our car. First is our head car guide, Darin (sp?); he's in law school and he's a character. Throughout the day he'll provide commentary on the views, Alaskan history, local politics (although highly adroitly ;-), culture and customs (more on that later) and in general answer questions and schmooze with us. I figure he'll be in politics before long. 
He's followed by our dining car gal. After explaining how the meals will work, she'll stop upstairs several times during the day to let us know when it's time for a meal, and the order in which we'll be going.
To her right is our bar tender. She keeps us watered (or otherwise liquified) throughout the day.
The one thing all these troops have in common is a terrific way with people. Each and every one is just bursting with personality and bends over backwards to be helpful. This is interesting since nearly all are part-timers who apparently come back each year. The season is such that one can only do these particular trips for about four months before the land of the midnight sun turns into the snow covered land of eternal night. Almost all these folks have other pursuits.
Oh! And there are the views which will change throughout the day as we enter and leave mountain ranges and pass by a series of towns, rivers and lakes on the way. The views are fantastic. This one is of the mountains north of Anchorage from the car. Which car?
Well this one happens to be from the dining car as we are having breakfast about an hour out of Anchorage.
We find one really needs to keep one's head on a swivel to see all there is to see on this trip.
By the way, breakfast and lunch are outstanding. They are not included in the price of the package, but they have the advantage of allowing you to order off the menu.
The Alaska Railroad is the only one in the state. It runs from Fairbanks and Eilson Air Force Base in the north, through Anchorage to Whittier and Seward in the south. It parallels Alaska State HIghway 3. There are a small number of highways in Alaska.
The biggest network is Highways 1 - 4 which connect Deadhorse and Prudhoe Bay in the arctic with Fairbanks in central Alaska and Anchorage and vicinity in the south.
By the way, as far as we know, Sarah Palin was not at home in Wasilla as we rumbled through. Nice little town, by the way, and according to our guides, one of the fastest growing cities in the country. I got the impression these folks were pretty impressed. They went into some detail to describe how the Iditarod was actually restarted here. Seems the original Iditarod Trail started around Seward and Knik, but the race to commemorate the trail starts in downtown Anchorage. The mushers travel a short distance there before hauling their dogs and gear to Wasilla where the actual race to Nome begins.
The implications of the scarcity of roads and rail are substantial as there are only two other ways to reach small towns scattered all over Alaska: by boat if located on a coast or navigable river and one has lots of spare time, or by plane. I mentioned the large number of pilots and small aircraft in the state in an earlier post. Still, it's something else to actually see virtually every little lake doubling as a seaplane base.
The series of pics above is from a much larger set. Alaska State Highway 3 crisscrosses the tracks at multiple points. Not all stops are equal, but the classic Dodge in mint condition above is memorable, as is our first view of Mt McKinley in the distance. Our tour guides are marveling at how fortunate we are to be able to actually see so clearly as it is overcast a substantial part of the time. Our luck is holding.
It's not clear exactly when our car guide started drinking heavily ;-).
Another implication of the general lack of transportation is the fact that the Alaska Railroad is a whistle stop train. All anyone in any of the towns needs to do to get onboard is to signal their intent and the train will stop to allow them to board for a set fee. This happened in Talkeetna and elsewhere. The snow plow train on a siding in the vicinity is a reminder of what it takes to keep this line open in the winter.
In the meantime, we get another view of Mt McKinley at still closer range.
We are told there are two kinds of river in Alaska: snow melt and glacial melt. As you look at the pics below, you can tell the difference based on the clarity of the streams and the existence of glacial silt. Snow melt streams are clear.
Glacial melt, on the other hand, shows the signs of glacial movement. You have to start with the shear mass of a glacier; hundreds and thousands of feet ice. And not just any ice, but ice compressed by successive layers of snow and ice which formed on top of earlier layers. It is so compressed, all the air is squeezed out of it, leaving a very pure, uncontaminated kind of ice that is also very hard and very dense. Such dense, compressed ice actually absorbs all the colors of the rainbow except a vibrant blue which you'll see below in this post, and also in College Fjord and Glacier Bay later.
For now, though, we're looking at the resulting rivers. This immense, hard glacial mass is grinding along on the underlying rock, much like a mill turning wheat into flour. This process results in rock turning into very finely ground silt. It also generates heat which causes melting to occur. The melting picks up immense amounts of silt and carries it downstream.
How much silt? Look at the picture above. See all the sandbars in the river? That's all silt. We were told that beyond a certain point, salmon will not go into glacial streams because the silt is so dense they cannot breath through their gills. Some silt bars are so thick that one cannot walk on them without sinking in like quicksand -- a deadly outcome in some cases.
Compare a glacial river to the pic of the river at the bottom of Hurricane Gulch (which is about 300 ft under the tracks on a bridge). Clear water. The further downstream one goes the more chance there is of mixing the two, diluting the silt, but from what we could see the silt stays suspended even with a substantial flow of snow melt.
As we continue north, we clear one range only to see another on the horizon.
There is a place on the route where north and southbound trains pass each other. Our car guide explains that it is just simply rude not to offer the passengers in the other train a true Alaskan greeting. Alice demonstrated a real aptitude and flare for this apparently most Alaskan of greetings.
Dan, on the other hand, had some difficulty mastering the mechanical and cultural subtleties.
It's been a long day but I have to say if you need to travel, a train like this sure makes it a pleasurable experience.
The bus to the helipad is running a bit late so it turns out we have a little time to explore a bit. The main lodge sits on a little bluff overlooking the Nanana River. This pic is from just outside the bar and grill. We'll be white water rafting down this river tomorrow.
Eventually the bus arrives and we get our first look at our ride. It's a Eurocopter. We're told is has a lot of features that appeal to this company, not the least of which is fuel efficiency. From our viewpoint, it's main feature is a good ride and a great view. We're divided up into groups of six.
I've not looked into helicopters much, other than to checkout the requirements to get a helo rating and the cost. It's still on my list of things to get around to someday. Some things are pretty standard, though. They do a rigorous mission plan and briefing, including a weight and balance. They even check everyone's shoes to make sure we'll each have enough traction on the glacier so as not to be a danger to ourselves. Those that don't pass muster get overshoes with a better sole.
All this is good aviation discipline. I'm going to have to check to see if W&B is more or less critical in a helicopter than in a fixed wing aircraft. In the latter, after a while you get a pretty good idea of what your preferred aircraft will do, how much weight she can take, and how it needs to be distributed. In our 182, there is a lot of room to pack things in before you need to do a double check. For this trip, they've worked out the W&B to put the lighter pax in front, and the four heavier bodies on the four-seat bench in the back.
Ann is ecstatic for a variety of reasons. For once she "has" to be in the front seat for an aviation reason. In addition, on top of this being her "most anticipated" event on the trip, I'm in back with the baggage and she's up front with the lightweights.
Eventually we set down next to a small pond. Ann is just bursting.
You can see the characteristic color of glacial ice in the bottom of the pond above and in some of the ice behind Ann below.
We spend about a half hour on the glacier. We're warned to explore only on the whiter portions as the darker snow it likely covering chasms which could go hundreds of feet deep.
Our pilot is very smooth. Ann notes that all he ever seemed to do with the controls is make the slightest moves and we were moving in that direction. I have to agree, he had good hands. The ride was also helped back here in the mountains by the inherent capabilities of a helicopter.
In a prior post about our western trip last month I mentioned how much time we took to figure out how to get from Colorado Springs CO to Phoenix AZ. The problem was that winds of around 20 - 30 knots or more passing over mountain ridges will cause strong updrafts on the windward side, and a lot of turbulence and downdrafts on the leeward side.
While on the glacier I asked our pilot if they had wind-based limits for their flights into the mountains. He said they did not. This surprised me, but as he explained it, and if you think about it, it makes sense. The bumps we get in a fixed wing are caused by hitting verticly moving air at anywhere from 100 - 150 kts. In a copter, there is no fixed wing. The average copter tops out at right around 100 kts, and the rotor has a different impact on the surrounding air. It's still subject to updrafts and downdrafts, just not so sensitive to bumps.
The last two pics are just plain beautiful -- an altogether great way to finish a spectacular day. And just think, all we've done so far is take an airline and ride a train and copter. Still over a week to go.
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