Knik Glacier @ Lake George NNL

What an adventure this was!

When I read about the Knik Glacier Tour written by blogger friends Mona Liza and Steve, I knew this was our best chance to give Deniz a chance to see a glacier.

I waited to book the tour after we got to Anchorage as I wanted to be sure we had a good weather day. The forecast that was showing full overcast turned out to be completely wrong. We had lovely blue skies and big, puffy character-clouds ... with lots of sunshine. I know overcast is better for glacier-viewing, but I’ll take blue skies any day.

I can write reams and reams of words about today’s tour. I’ll give you the condensed version. Suffice to say that it was awesome, fantastic, glorious, and any other synonyms you care to add.

This is not a tour for anyone who has a bad back. Otherwise we would heartily recommend it. We met up with Tom, the tour operator, at his tour office. Here we were joined by another threesome, and a young guy from Alaska, traveling with Molly, his extremely well-behaved Siberian Husky. We welcomed his four-legged companion and off we went.

First a 20-minute ride over a non-existent road that looked like a glacier outwash to me. The website said a 4WD van ... we were actually in an old troop carrier truck with a snorkel that allowed us to ford rivers. Bumpy is not the word to describe the drive ... bone-jarringly bumpy is. But it was all part of the adventure, so we didn’t mind ... too much. Bonus: moose in reasonable proximity ... but quickly hidden by the trees.

Then, a 20-minute ride in an airboat powered by a 500HP engine. Noisy, yes. But we were provided with heavy duty headsets to block the noise. Normally, you go one way by airboat and one way by speedboat, but this early in the season, with few tours going out, we were on the airboat both ways. Bonus: another moose on a gravel bar ... but distant enough that I did not bother to take out the camera.

Knik Glacier is part of Lake George National Natural Landmark...an area that Tom would like to see become a national park. He’s even willing to pull his business out of there should it become a reality. In any event, the glacier is one of the largest in the area.

When we arrived at Lake George, we were greeted by a “necklace of icebergs” blocking our way to the inner lake and the terminus of the glacier. Tom said the winds determine access to the lake, which was open yesterday.

No matter, a slow cruise along the edge of the glaciers was delightful. And then, we went ashore at Glacier Camp to play on the shoreline, and climb a short trail up the lateral moraine to get to the small camp. Hot beverages and snacks ... good conversation with our fellow tour-goers ... more time playing ashore ... watching crazy stunts being pulled by some of the pilots doing flight seeing over the glacier and lake ... simple solitude ... the squeaks of the ice breaking up. Simply amazing!Read more