Its weekend and time to play. This time V takes us out to Hatcher pass, to climb, to trad climb on granite to be more precise. A shows us the moves on lead, before he races back to town.
Then it’s our turn. My left arm is far from recovered and I hand over my lead to V. Its only 3 pitches but it takes us a couple hours, while we are just sitting at the belays taking in the surrounding. I love this treeless country with no other then a good person around. This is total happiness.
But as it is with V, the good life is not over yet, he takes us out on the Knik river the next day. V is the captain, bro A is second in command and I am the navigator in front of the boat, but it feels we need more people. T is called to become our cook, M is asked for the good stuff and their friend C comes along as our client. Now it feels more complete and off we go.
From the map it looks like an interesting river with a glacier at the end of the valley. It takes us a while to leave the ATVs running in the gravel bars besides the river, and the houses and anglers on shore behind. But then we can relax and focus our view on the glacier showing itself at the end of the valley.
None of us really has any idea where we are going and we decide to go as near to the glacier as we can get. The closer we come the colder it gets and we see icebergs floating in the river. We still have no clue what is ahead of us. When we turn the last bend, we suddenly see the Knik glacier in full view in front of us. Its massive, real massive. The Knik is fed by 2 icefalls in the distance which have deposit their side moraines on top of the glacier and from the right the Colony glacier joins, filling the whole valley in front of us with ice. Ice as far as we can see, ice e erywhere. With high temperatures the last couple of weeks the end lake is filled with icebergs calved from the glacier front. The view is to much to comprehend and its good that we brought food so we can sit here for a while. T is putting an amazing meal together with veggies, scallops and salmon and we enjoy life to the full extend.
After hours trying to take this all in, there comes a time to head home. But not before we cruise along the icebergs with the boat.
V did it again, it was an amazing weekend. Thanks and all loves to you.
Dag,
Iris (Anchorage, 7013 miles)
