Fictional Story – Backpacking in Alaska

Author’s Note: This part of a weekly series on geology for a class I am taking this semester at BYU-Idaho. This week’s prompt required students to write a fictional story that incorporates terms from the textbook regarding groundwater and glaciers. Other posts from this assignment can be found under the “Geology 111” category. Because of the nature of this post, it will be deleted at the end of the semester.

We started our backpacking trip at the base of one of Alaska’s many mountain ranges. Luckily, we had a friend in Anchorage who was willing to drive the 200 miles it was to our trailhead to drop us off. We walked the trail on the eastern shore of the fjord until the slopes became too steep for the trail to continue northward. The trail turned uphill and when we rounded the first switchback it went from well-maintained to something that better resembled a game trail. It was clear to us that people hadn’t ventured into the hanging valley above for quite some time.

We caught glimpses of a waterfall plunging from the valley above as we hiked through the dense conifer forest, but it was mostly obscured from our view. Good thing we would be hiking along the creek, though, because we planned to filter water straight out of streams and pater noster lakes to lighten our load. Upon entering the valley, stopped to admire the view from the meadow.

In the fjord, which was now nearly 1,000 feet below us, we could spot icebergs further to the north. The glacier that provided these floating masses through calving was around a bend several miles away, much too far away to see. That was okay with us, though, because we would be crossing the ice cap that served as the source of the glacier in a few days. When we turned our view upstream, other formations coming from deeper ice cover during the Quaternary period were visible. The mountains had clearly not been spared, with many of the older ones being shaped into horns. It wasn’t much farther before we approached the first lake, and we decided to set up camp there.

The following morning, the increasing light from the sun showed us that the lake had partially formed due to damming from an end moraine that impeded the flow of the stream toward the waterfall. As the ice melted long ago, there must have been a decent pause that allowed this small ridge to form.

We were looking forward to continuing onward when we got a urgent call on our satellite phone informing us that the small earthquake we felt in the middle of the night was caused by freshly increased activity at a nearby volcano and that an eruption large enough to endanger us was imminent. This volcano was outside of our view, but many of the valleys on the south side of our hanging valley lead to its peak. We decided to turn back to the trailhead, and our friend from Anchorage again made the 400-mile round trip to get us.

Our friend dropped us off at a different trailhead and we again resumed our adventure. While on a mountain peak three days later, we witnessed the cataclysmic eruption of the volcano and decided to set up camp to watch as it continued for hours. It was a good thing we left when we did, because the eruption sent massive lahars into the valley we were in, completely decimating the wildlife. The mixture of mud, water, and rock came down with such force that the end moraine we camped by the first night had been completely washed into the fjord.

Lucky for us, the eruption ended before our trip did, allowing us to fly home to the Pacific Northwest without any delays due to the volcanic ash in the air.