Exploring the Valdez area, July 12, 2010

With the forecast of being sunny today, we decided to stay another day here in Valdez to check out some local sites.

The forecast was right,  so up the hill we go,  back to the Worthington Glacier with a couple of stops along the way.

Bridal Vail Falls on the left and Horsetail Falls on the right.  To me the names should be reversed, but no one asked.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We continued to travel up through Thompson Pass, 2768’, soon we arrived at the Worthington Glacier.

  Being no official trail to the glacier, you just follow the social path and/or make your own trail up to where the ice begins.

 

 

 

Here Bob is with one foot on the moraine and one foot on the glacier.

Below I am sitting on a rock much closer to a crevasse than I thought, yikes!

 

 

After lunch on the glacier, we headed back to Valdez.  Stopped at where the Old Town Site existed before the 1964  9.2 earthquake.  Several children died during the quake as they waited on a nearby dock for a ship to land.  The pilings in the water are all that remains of the dock today.

In our efforts to see the bears at the fish hatchery, we stopped by there on our way back.  No bears again, but we were getting closer.  Bear scat on the hatchery walkway!

What we did see were thousands of salmon trying to get upstream next to the fishery.  The dark churned up area are the salmon.

  After getting back to the coach I read from another blog that the bears come out around 11 pm, so tonight we are going to go stalk those beasts.  Time will tell if we see any!