The Fuhr Five: Portage Glacier

Last weekend was spent celebrating Aaron's 28th birthday. We had a great three days of celebrating with friends and as a family. Ethan says, Happy Birthday Daddy!

Spring has arrived in Alaska and everyone has been hit with spring fever. We have had over a week straight of clear days and lots of sun and the temps have warmed up to mid 20-30's. Snow and ice are melting! People are so giddy they literally walk around the town smiling. We all try and remind ourselves that the cold and snow aren't over yet, but its hard to believe when we've had such great weather.

On Sunday we got a few friends together and took a hike across frozen Portage Lake to get up close views of Portage Glacier. It was an awesome day!

This is Ethan preparing for our 10k trek. He understands the importance of hydration from an early age! (on a side note, this is also his favorite way to drink water - from sports bottles. funny kid.)

It was a gorgeous day to be out. The sun is rising very high in the sky now, so by mid day it warmed us up nicely.

We were a little nervous at first, taking our kiddos out over a body of water. Once we got going we could see the ice was over two feet thick and we weren't in danger of falling through. Although, it was really creepy when the sun was high in the sky and it started to warm up. We would hear huge, booming crashes that sounded like thunder. Everyone would stop and look at eachother, wondering if the glacier was calving (bad news for those of us in the center of the lake) or the ice was cracking (also bad news for those of us in the center of the lake!). We think the sun was just warming the lake and ice was moving a bit.

This is the view we saw as we came around the corner of the lake, it was breathtaking. Glaciers are such beautiful things! (this great picture, the one below and the view of the inlet above was taken by my friend Jami)

I felt like we were walking into the Emerald City from the yellow brick road, except it was Glacial Blue instead of green! (And I had my baby E instead of my little dog Toto.) Its hard to see in the pictures, but the ice had neat ribbons of different colors of blue where you could see how the ice formed in layers. I wish the pictures could capture just how blue and bright this ice is.