When my wife, Lenore, and I moved to Alaska in the mid-1970s, the awe-inspiring face of Portage Glacier spanned the entire width of Portage Valley. Even the small portion of it that could be seen from ground level was one mile wide. The glacier’s sheer vertical face, flanked on both sides by the valley’s steep cliffs and punctuated by yawning crevasses and gravity-defying ice pinnacles, towered majestically above the surface of Portage Lake. Back then the glacier could be approached during winter by skiing across the frozen surface of the lake. Oblivious to the several hundred feet of frigid water below our skis, we would glide across the snow-covered ice, through a fairyland of frozen in-place icebergs, to the imposing face of the glacier.
One of those early ski trips remains particularly memorable. Since I was still a cheechako (that’s Alaskan lingo for greenhorn), I had failed to realize that the sporadic forward movement of the glacier could, like a colossal bulldozer, push against the frozen surface of the lake with unimaginable force.
I had stopped a respectful distance from the towering face of the glacier for a lunch break with our family’s first dog, Grindel. She was still a puppy at the time, and her potpourri of bloodlines (which included husky, St. Bernard and German shepherd) made her the quintessential Alaskan mutt. Before we could break out the dog biscuits and gorp, there was a sudden release of the tremendous compressed energy that the forward movement of the glacier had exerted on the lake ice. With a deep-throated sound that was felt as much as heard, the massive slab of ice upon which we rested was thrust forward by the glacier, causing it to ride up and over the ice behind us. Pressure ridges that marked the fractured boundaries of the ice slabs suddenly began to grow upward like miniature mountain ranges. Needless to say, Grindel and I recrossed those pressure ridges with great care on our return trip to terra firma.
Each summer the glacier would calve off icebergs the size of two-car garages that would drift across the lake and become beached against the near shore. With the onset of winter, and locked in place by lake ice, the icebergs became fancifully shaped play structures, complete with eerie ice-blue caves, secret hiding places and incredibly slippery slides.
Through the 1990s, as our children, Adam and Elyse, then teenagers, became busy with other things, my most reliable companion on excursions to Portage Glacier became, once again, the canine component of our family. Dena’ina, another Alaskan mutt, took particular joy in these trips, her tail wagging feverishly in the frigid air.
Now that Lenore and I are empty-nesters, the glacier face has, at least for the moment, come to rest on a recently exposed bedrock perch located up a side valley on the far side of Portage Lake. It has retreated more than a mile since we first made Alaska our home.
For the time being, the downhill flow of the glacier appears to have reached equilibrium with the amount of ice that continually calves off the glacier’s face; the glacier’s front edge, therefore, remains at the same place. The massive icebergs that had been spawned while the glacier retreated through the deep waters of Portage Lake have been replaced by much smaller ice shards that, unfortunately, make much less entertaining playground structures.
Today, when our grown children make their way back home, nostalgic ski trips to the remnants of Portage Glacier have taken on a new significance. Adam and Elyse, having experienced “outside” (that’s what Alaskans call the rest of the world), can now accompany their dad across Portage Lake with an enlightened appreciation for their birthplace, and for the uniqueness of growing up as Portage Glacier was growing smaller.
