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Exit Glacier

Kenai Fjords National Park sports a blue gem

By Leon Unruh / Alaska.com

As new arrivals move down the alder-lined trail, the glacier hangs like a blue beacon ahead of them. The 3-mile-long "river of ice," fractured and crackling, pours 2,500 feet down out of the Harding Icefield. From under the snout comes Exit Creek, a rapid gray mixture of ice-cold water and glacial flour.

Around the snout runs a high rim of fine soil. It's the moraine left in 1995 when late, warm storms melted the glacier back considerably. Although it's messy, the moraine is great to climb on for a good view of the ice and the outwash plain as it extends to the Resurrection River.

Exit is a frequent stop for Alaskans and tourists. Last year, 262,000 visited the park -- the visitor center, the back country and Exit Glacier.

Part of Exit's popularity comes from its park-and-walk approach. A hard-packed trail leads to the glacier, and other trails head up glacier-scoured rock from the moraine to a vantage point from which both the glacier and a waterfall may be seen and on to the Harding Ice Field. For the 2002 summer, says park superintendent Anne Castellina, crews will make the trails more accessible for handicapped visitors and others who need a smoother path across the gravelly outwash plain.

Ice crunched together on a slope like Exit Glacier's produces scenic pressure ridges, towers and crevasses, and it is much more unstable than flat ice, like Matanuska Glacier. Because frozen water weighs 57 pounds per cubic foot, standing where a chunk could fall is a risk you might want to avoid.

There are many stories about people killed or injured by falling ice, including a honeymooner at Exit who was fatally injured in the 1980s by a boxcar-size piece that calved onto her while she posed for a photo. That episode led to the installation of the Park Service's warning signs around the snout of the glacier. Many people, however, step over the line and climb the silty moraine to touch the ice.

"We do not allow visitors to climb the glacier at the face," said Castellina.

The warm summer of 2001 created a lot of interesting features in the glacier, such as caves and arches. "We had great difficulty with parents allowing kids to run under ice arches," she said.

"A glacier is not a stable fixture," Castellina said. "It is not a mountain."

Hiking and camping are allowed on the icefield, which is a demanding 3-mile-long climb up from the valley. Hikers are asked to hike where they're not visible to people at the glacier's face, so kids won't be tempted to climb on the ice they can reach.

Rangers lead interpretive walks at the glacier twice a day in the summer. Once a week, a ranger leads a hike onto the icefield. Rangers are also available for advice at the Exit Glacier ranger station and at the downtown office, 1212 Fourth Ave. next to the small-boat harbor.