Icy Summit Lake

We woke up thinking we would hike to Gulkana Glacier this morning. But the river of ice was in the shade and it would stay that way most of the morning.

So, we postponed the hike and decided to go for a drive with the toad ... check out Tangle Lakes Campground on the Denali Highway and see if we wanted to move there on Sunday ... compare the campground to some of the boondock sites to see if one of them might be preferable.

But before we got there, we had a spectacular spot to enjoy — Summit Lake!

Seven miles long, the lake is right alongside the Richardson Highway ... making for easy viewing. The lake gets its name from its location near the water divide that drains the Gulkana River into the Copper River ... which empties into Prince William Sound. In the other direction, the Delta River flows into the Tanana ... which then joins the Yukon ... which empties into the Bering Sea.

We’d heard that Summit Lake had a beautiful setting. What we didn’t expect was all the ice floes — thin ones, admittedly — covering parts of the lake. A late break up? Or was the ice coming down one of the rivers? No one to ask the question. No one to answer the question. No matter ... we can’t resist ice ... so we dallied here for a while before continuing down the road.Read more