Tag Archives: Richardson Highway

Alaska, Landscape Photography, Science

Watching a Glacier Die

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Drop a few ice cubes in your drink before you start reading this, and consider the question : how many licks does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop? Now, while you are thinking about that illusive answer, consider how many days it takes to melt a glacier. Just how fast does it happen? My several trips to Castner Glacier over the last 15 months provide interesting evidence into this impossible to answer question. Let’s take a look!

April 2014

When I first visited Castner Glacier in April 2014 a monstrous, multi-chambered ice cave shook me to my core. The ice cathedral hung over my head an estimated 80 feet above. The walls and ceilings of it were composed of blue, transluscent layers of ice and closer inspection of the walls showed that the clarity of the ice provided a window deep into the glacier of the sediment suspended in it. A chimney was cut into its ceiling allowing light to illuminate the icy floor of the glacier.  It was awe inspiring!

Castner Glacier Face April 2014
This was the glacial face (moraine) as I found it during my April 2014 visit. Clear, blue ice was found in the face, and particularly in the caves.
Castner Ice Cave Cathedral
Once you walked through the ice caves, this cathedral was found on the other side. I guess, based on my height in this picture compared to the ceilings, that the cave was 80 feet tall!
Castner Glacier Chimney
This chimney was found in the ceiling perhaps 20-30 feet above the glacier floor in April 2014. It was very narrow at the top, but the bottom is much wider than this picture would suggest. The icicles at its base suggest that some melting was occurring in it.

This video was taken in April 2014 during a walkthrough of the ice cave and captures the scope of it. Instability of parts of the video was due to the slippery ice floor!

August 2014

The next time I visited the rainiest summer recorded in Fairbanks was coming to a close, and the rain had reshaped the ice in unimaginable ways. Water ran down the glacier in small rivulets and opened the chimney to a yawning mouth. It degraded the ceiling so extremely, that large chunks of the cavern had crashed down. If you stood close to the mouth of the cave many rocks fell dangerously from the ceiling as they melted from their icy tomb of thousands of years. The rapid melt had removed the beautiful transparency from the ice. It was now silty and gray.

Castner Glacier Collapse
When we returned in August 2014 we found the result of the constant rain over the summer. The chimney had melted so rapidly that the roof of the ice cave had collapsed.
Castner Glacier Ice Cave Backside
This image shows the degradation of the chimneys from the top and back of the glacier. Although I didn’t take an April 2014 photo for comparison, this image is especially revealing when compared to June 2015 (upcoming images)
Castner Ice Cave Scale
My parents stand next to the ice cave’s face for perspective. The large blocks that stood in front in April were now gone, and the top of the cave is much, much thinner than just three months earlier. 
Castner Ice Cave Front 2015
This image from the front of the caves shows a large section of ice which caved off the front. The scale and setting of this picture is similar to the April 2014 image of me standing in front of the broad ice cave.

The rapid melting that we witnessed inspired me to create a different type of video for Castner. This video documents the fall (August) stage of plant life around the glacier, and then documents the progression of drops of water from the glacier which eventually build into the silty and fast-flowing Castner Creek.

June 2015

When I visited the Castner Ice Cave in June 2015, it was just a shadow of its former self. Only a small arch of ice remained of the once huge cave. Castner Creek ran through the remnant of the ice cave, where previously it had run to the side. In just fifteen months, unquantifiable amounts of ice from the glacier had transformed into water, carrying with it many tons of silt to the broader river valley that Castner Creek flowed into. The glacier was rapidly changing, dying.

Castner Ice Cave Back June 2015
This image of the Castner Ice Cave was shot in June 2015 from the back. The thin, collapsed chunk of ice in the foreground is all that remains of most of the ceiling of the cave.

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Castner Ice Cave Back Panorama
This image of the back of the Castner Ice Cave can be compared to the images taken in August 2014 and April 2014. The trailing edges of the large ice cathedral that I stood in can be seen in the back right. The arch of the glacier is thin, and a new chimney shows that it continues to degrade.
Castner Glacier Backside Panorama
The trailing edge of the ceiling on the right is all that is left of the ice cathedral from April 2014. Large piles of debris and silt have been deposited, and the floor where the cathedral was is much higher now.

The answer is two hundred fifty-two. At least that is what students at Purdue concluded to the center of a Tootsie Pop. But why does it matter that Alaska’s Castner Glacier and the state’s other glaciers are melting so rapidly? Alaska Dispatch News recently reported on a new study demonstrating that Alaskan Glaciers are losing 75 billion tons (75 gigatons) of ice each year, and that 94% of that loss is occurring on inland glaciers like Castner. This means that Alaskan glaciers will continue to contribute a significant amount to global sea level rise, especially in light of a warming climate. They end the article with a quote by study co-author O’Neel. “This is probably going to be a pretty tough year for a lot of the glaciers”, he stated. It appears he is right, and Castner’s included.

Birds, Mammals, Wildllife

Birds and Rainbows on the Denali Highway

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This post follows Kassie and my pelagic bird trip to Seward. For our trip back to Fairbanks, we decided to bird the Denali Highway which extends 135 miles to connect Cantwell to Paxson. The unpaved road curves south of the Denali Range surrounding it with incredible mountains. The shrubby, tundra habitat is prime real estate for several arctic bird species rare to most other areas of the state.

During our 12 hours on the Denali Highway we observed behavior of many exciting birds. We also saw a few moose and heard from one other traveler of a wolf only a couple miles down the road. The road is a transect through one of the very remote areas of interior Alaska. The end of our drive was punctuated by full rainbows arching over the mountains. As the sun and the rain played across the landscape we observed lasting rainbows which waxed and waned. The birding for the day was incredible; each stop was filled with singing birds. The cutest moment of the day was a spruce grouse poult which jumped up along the road, and fluttered into a tree. After trying to hide in its branches, the little poult finally listened to its mother, who cooed and bobbed her tail until the young chick became brave enough to fly to her and its siblings. Along the way we encountered Arctic Warblers which are North America’s only “old world” warbler. Other populations of this warbler breed in Eurasia. We also were privileged to see many of the “Denali Highway Specials” including Gray-cheeked Thrush, Red-necked Phalarope, Long-tailed Jaeger, and Arctic Tern. Incredibly, Arctic Terns migrate 25,000 miles per year, earning them the longest migration of any bird award!

An Arctic Warbler trills from the top of its spruce tree to any females in the area.
An Arctic Warbler trills from the top of its spruce tree to any females in the area.

This video captures in timelapse the beauty of the rainbows, the cuteness of the polt, the joy of singing warblers and the scenery of the Denali Highway. I hope you enjoy!

This list has most of the species that we observed for the day. Of course there’s PLENTY of birding to do between each of the miles listed, but these are the spots we stopped at.

Milepost Species
127 Fox Sparrow, White-crowned Sparrow, Gray Jay, Wilson’s Snipe, Unknown Duck
119 Arctic Warbler, White-crowned Sparrow
113 Wilson’s Warbler, Yellow-rumped Warbler, Blackpoll Warbler, Gray-cheeked Thrush, Fox Sparrow, Unk. Raptor, Spruce Grouse and Polts, Raven
105 American Robin
103 Immature Golden Eagle
90 Scaup, Ring-neck Duck
89 Ring-neck Duck, Widgeon, Gadwall, Yellow-legs, White-crowned Sparrow
81 Tundra Swan, Unk. Duck
80 Widgeon and Ducklings, Scaup, Northern Shoveler and Chick
74 Bufflehead, Ring-neck Duck, Rednecked Grebe
50 Ring-neck Duck, Mew Gull, White-crowned Sparrow, Arctic Warbler, Savanna Sparrow, Wilson Warbler, Yellow Warbler, Blackpoll Warbler, Scaup
49 Mew Gull, Arctic Tern, Merlin, Red-necked Phalarope, Bufflehead, Ring-neck Duck, Tundra Swan, Blackpoll Warbler, Sandpiper, Wilson’s Warbler
40 Bank Swallows
36 Long-tailed Jaeger

 

A spruce grouse female calls to its barely fledged chick sitting in a spruce tree...
A spruce grouse female calls to its barely fledged chick sitting in a spruce tree…
... and the spruce grouse chick laid low in the spruce tree waiting for Mom to tell him the best time to scram!
… and the spruce grouse chick laid low in the spruce tree waiting for Mom to tell him the best time to scram!
Western Roseroot (Rhodiola integrifolia). This flower blooms in sub-alpine regions and is in the sedum family.
Western Roseroot (Rhodiola integrifolia). This flower blooms in sub-alpine regions and is in the sedum family.
A gray cheek thrush calls in its unique voice from the top of the spruce.
A Gray-Cheeked Thrush calls in its unique voice from the top of the spruce.
A Red-necked Phalrope stretches its wings
A Red-necked Phalarope stretches its wings. These birds breed in the Arctic and may migrate to Eurasia and to the southern hemisphere.
Mew Gull
A Mew Gull flies over a lake somewhere along the Denali Highway.
An American Widgeon female paddles along with her small children
An American Widgeon female paddles along with her small children. This was one of many families of ducks we observed on the lakes. Families of Widgeon, Northern Shovelers, Teal, and Gadwall were all observed.
Common Goldeneye Female
A Goldeneye Female wakes up from her nap floating on the lake.
Wilson's Warbler
A Wilson’s Warbler pauses briefly from grooming itself to take a look around. Their black cap and yellow body are beautiful!
Arctic Tern
An Arctic Tern sits on its nest. A Mew Gull was pestering this tern who was defending its chicks. The chicks can be seen in the video above. Arctic Terns’ claim to fame is they have the longest migration of any animal on earth. Incredibly they migrate from AK to Antarctica… 25,000 miles!!
The scenery of the south side of the Alaskan Range is never ending! Snow capped mountains are reflected in the waters and cut the horizon to the north at all times.
The scenery of the south side of the Alaskan Range is never ending! Snow capped mountains are reflected in the waters and cut the horizon to the north at all times.
Posing for a quick photo underneath the Roy G Biv.
Posing for a quick photo underneath the Roy G Biv.
A rainbow arches over the mountains along the Richardson Highway.
A rainbow arches over the mountains along the Richardson Highway.