Paddling Among Icebergs

Author’s Note: This week I’ve been busy leading field trips, but I’ve been dreaming of a time when I was a participant. In 2018, I spent the entire summer in Alaska, and had two chances to paddle near glaciers. Enjoy! – Emily

After hiking up to the Harding Ice Field in Kenai Fjords National Park, I wanted to do more than just look down onto the complex world of glacial ice from high above. Through a friend from Northland College, I discovered that Adventure Sixty North, a guide service in Seward, runs sea kayak trips to the toe of a calving glacier.

I was glad for my brand-new, bright green rain jacket as I boarded a water taxi the next morning in the cold, steady drizzle I’ve come to expect from Alaska. Back at the Adventure Sixty North shop, our guides, Sunny and Nick, had outfitted us with dry bags for our stuff, and supplied any other gear we didn’t already own. After two-and-a-half months in Alaska, I was well-prepared with the ubiquitous brown Xtratuf boots, rain pants, and my cheerfully green jacket.

The water taxi ride itself was spectacularly filled with sea otters, orcas, two kinds of puffins, rocky cliffs and crags, sea lions, a bristle-thighed curlew, hot coffee, and good conversation. We landed on the gravely beach of a glacial moraine about two miles from the current glacial terminus to switch from one type of boat to another. Then we began paddling among bobbing chunks of glacial ice in kayaks.

As we glided through the maze of mini-bergs, Neoprene pogies—which are little hand pockets that Velcro around the paddle shaft—kept our hands warm despite the ice water. About a half-mile from the glacier’s front we paused and floated, admiring the huge, pale-blue tongue of ice that reached down out of the clouds and into the sea.

Suddenly, thunder rumbled. A little bubble of excitement rose up in my chest. I love thunderstorms, and I’ve missed them while in Alaska. This was even better. The ice was rumbling. We searched the blue cliff at the water’s edge for movement, but found none. The movement must have been farther up the glacier, or deep within. After a few moments, thunder rumbled again. This time we watched a chunk of ice tumble into the sea. A small white avalanche of crushed ice poured in behind it, and a wave spread out from the glacier. We gasped and cheered.

Glaciers are constantly moving; that’s what makes them glaciers. During the hundreds of years that snow built up and compressed older snow beneath it, pressed out all the air bubbles, and caused the crystals to reform into dense ice, it wasn’t a glacier. Finally, when that huge mass of ice began to flow downhill or out toward their margin under their own weight, a glacier was born.

Aialik Glacier, the one we were scanning for action, moves forward two to four feet per day. Under pressure, ice can bend and flow. Near the glacier’s surface, however, the brittle ice must crack to accommodate the hidden topography below. A glacier’s speed is due to a combination of the ice’s thickness, the gradient of its valley, and the presence of water at its base. Add in the fact that Aialik is a tidewater glacier that ends in warm, constantly fluctuating seawater, and you have a very dynamic system.

We studied the heavily crevassed surface of the glacier, and all made guesses about which section would go next. Sunny had explained that the spires of ice formed by intersecting crevasses were called seracs. Three out of the seven paddlers in our group pointed to the same, precarious-looking section. Minutes later, thunder rumbled and that heavily fractured serac splashed into the sea. After several minutes more, we bobbed on its wake.

Thunderous calving into the ocean was exciting, but I still wanted to get up close and personal with big icebergs. A few days later I filled the last spot on another kayak trip, this time with Anadyr Adventures in Valdez, Alaska. This adventure skipped the water taxi and delivered us by van right to the shore of a little proglacial lake right outside town. The Valdez Glacier had scoured a deep valley, dammed one end with a moraine, and melted back. Even though this lake wasn’t affected by tides like Aialik Glacier, water still lubricated turmoil at the toe.

Our morning at Valdez Glacier Lake began in thick fog. This canoe soon launched full of four grown men, two of whom carried huge camera lenses. Photo by Emily Stone.

We launched inflatable kayaks onto mirror-calm water in a dense fog. Huge icebergs loomed in the shallows. Someone made a joke about the Titanic, but that didn’t stop us from paddling up for a closer look. Most bergs were heaped with blankets and piles of wet, brown sediments, which indicated that they were floating upright, in the same orientation as when they’d been attached to the glacier. Where chunks had broken off to reveal their inner ice, though, the crystals were huge, sparkling, and made luminous patterns of white and blue.

Up close, the broken and melting sides of the icebergs were a luminous blue. Our inflatable, sit-on-top, tandem kayaks felt very stable and maneuvered easily for a closer look. Photo by Emily Stone.

Glacial ice is dense, with very little air. As light passes through it, the wavelengths of red and yellow light are absorbed, and blue light is scattered and reflected back to our eyes. The deeper the light penetrates into the ice, the more blue it appears. Snow and ice with more air among their crystals scatter light back from their surface.

A few bergs were pure white, at least from a distance. Those had rolled over, exposing their cleaner core of ice (which gains air as they melt, making them white instead of blue), and dumping their sediment load into the lake. Today, the ice dripped placidly, melting bit by bit. Our guide, though, has watched these behemoths split, roll over, and shatter. As I ran my hand along the smooth, wet side of one berg, I was grateful for the contrasting lack of thunder on this adventure.

Although our day began in thick fog, blue sky hovered above. Seeing the lake and icebergs in both lights was a fun part of the experience. Photo by Emily Stone.

After lunch, the fog burned off and revealed a brilliant blue sky. We scrambled up a canyon wall to get a better look at the glacier. The brown and white striped river of ice flowed from around a corner and into view. At the terminus lay a jumble of broken, dirty ice chunks, in the process of detaching fully into the lake. With bright sun illuminating everything, the lake seemed small; in the fog, we might have been on an endless sea.

One of our group explored near two icebergs that have rolled over, exposing clean ice and dumping sediment into the lake. Behind the left hand iceberg you can see the deep canyon containing the Valdez Glacier. Photo by Emily Stone. 

Valdez Glacier is a river of ice, with a healthy dose of rocks and gravel mixed in. It seems to flow relatively smoothly back in the canyon, but becomes unstable and breaks up as its terminus hits the lake it created. Photo by Emily Stone. 

Ever since I discovered how to read the glaciated landscape of Northern Minnesota and Wisconsin, I’ve been fascinated by these massive forces of nature. Admiring them from afar, seeing them up close, paddling among icebergs, touching their ice…glaciers are even more amazing than I’d expected…and I’m not done exploring them!

Emily’s award-winning second book, Natural Connections: Dreaming of an Elfin Skimmer, is available to purchase at www.cablemuseum.org/books and at your local independent bookstore, too.

For more than 50 years, the Cable Natural History Museum has served to connect you to the Northwoods. The Museum is open with our brand-new exhibit: “Anaamaagon: Under the Snow.” Our Fall Calendar is open for registration! Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and cablemuseum.org to see what we are up to.

A Gift of Geology: Artesian Wells

Elliot Witscher, guest author, was a Summer Naturalist Intern for the Cable Natural History Museum last summer. Photo by Elliot Witscher.

In May, Elliot Witscher graduated from Case Western Reserve University with a degree in Geological Sciences. As part of their experience as a Summer Naturalist Intern at the Cable Natural History Museum, Elliot participated in a Wisconsin Master Naturalist Volunteer Training. This fall, they began work at an outdoor school in Illinois.

In the bright sunlight and heat of the afternoon, the cool, fresh, flowing water from a pipe in Prentice Park in Ashland, WI, was a welcome treat. I wasn’t expecting to find a unique geological feature in an unassuming city park. But walking down the hill from the parking lot, we found a plain metal pipe, surrounded by gravel, with water gushing from it.

Standing in a circle with the 20 other people also taking the Wisconsin Master Naturalist Volunteer Training, I learned from Professor Tom Fitz that this was a flowing artesian well.

Professor Tom Fitz teaches about artesian wells in Prentice Park, Ashland, WI.
Photo by Emily Stone.

This random pipe in the middle of a city park doesn’t come from the city’s water system; it taps directly into the groundwater beneath our feet. There is no pump. Nothing brings the water up to the surface except for the pressure that it’s under naturally…with a little help from the glaciers.

That day began at a gravel pit about 30 miles to the southwest, as the crow flies, near the town of Cable, WI. At the intersection of geology and industry, our Master Naturalist class learned how the gravel pit provides various sizes of sand, pebbles, and even small boulders that are used for road fill, landscaping, and foundations.

In the gravel pit. Photo by Emily Stone.

Thousands of years ago, a glacier covered this area, and this gravel was brought here by a power river of meltwater flowing under the ice, creating a sinuous ridge of material called an esker. This is just one of many glacial landforms in the area that is built from sandy, rocky materials. [Learn more about eskers from Emily Stone during a hike on November 9. Find out more at cablemuseum.org.]

Next, Tom Fitz led us north toward Ashland, and we found ourselves traveling forward in glacial history. As the ice retreated north, water pooled up to its south, and Glacial Lake Duluth formed, covering the western half of what is now Lake Superior with much deeper water. Meltwater flowing off the glacier brought clay and other sediments into the lake.

Clay particles are very small, and can stay suspended in water for a long time, especially if wind or currents keep the water stirred up. But away from shore, where the water was calmer and winter ice cover kept out the wind for long periods, the clay settled to the bottom, creating a thick layer. All around the current shores of Lake Superior, this clay layer covered the gravel that was previously deposited by the glaciers. Iron in the clay turned the soil red.

Tom Fitz teaches the group about clay. Photo by Emily Stone. 

In the uplands of Bayfield County, inland and away from the lake, the glacial gravel is exposed to the surface. When it rains, water quickly and easily enters this permeable layer and moves downhill toward Lake Superior. In the lowlands, near the lake, the layer of clay from Glacial Lake Duluth covers the gravel. The water moving through the gravel layer becomes trapped under the impermeable layer of clay. All of the water from the uplands pushes down on the water under the clay in the lowlands, and pressure builds up.

When a well, like the one in Prentice Park, is drilled through the clay layer into the gravel layer, that pressure pushes the water up toward the surface, creating a flowing artesian well—a well that flows from confined groundwater to the surface due to pressure.

These wells are amazing sources of water, but they are limited by one major reality: if too many of them are punched through, the pressure created by the clay layer will be diminished until eventually the pressure will drop too low and the wells will stop flowing. These amazing natural phenomena are limited. If we try to develop too many, they will all be at risk.

Last summer, as I explored the backroads of Bayfield County, I found myself occasionally stumbling across little handwritten signs or Google Maps locations titled “artesian well.” I smiled to myself, thinking about the geologic marvels that led to this important resource. And then I stopped, filled my bottle, and enjoyed some clear, cold water.

For more than 50 years, the Cable Natural History Museum has served to connect you to the Northwoods. The Museum is open with our brand-new exhibit: “Anaamaagon: Under the Snow.” Our Fall Calendar is open for registration! Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and cablemuseum.org to see what we are up to.

Four Out of Five Loons Agree

Author’s Note: I’m traveling quite a bit this month, which means I’ve been reminiscing about past trips. In 2018, I spent the entire summer in Alaska, and saw a few new species of loons. This article recounts those sightings. After leading Loon Pontoon Tours for 14 summers, this was a real treat! Enjoy! -- Emily

The haunting wail of a Common Loon drifted through my barely cracked window one night last May. Amid leaning towers of books and clothes that would soon be headed to Alaska, I gave a wistful sigh. Of all the things I was sad about leaving for a summer, the loons on Lake Namakagon and my duties as naturalist on the Cable Natural History Museum’s weekly Loon Pontoon Tours were near the top of my list.

A Common Loon on Lake Namakagon. Photo by Emily Stone. 

After seven years [now 14!] of studying loons’ adaptations and interpreting their behavior for visitors, I’ve developed a much deeper appreciation for these charismatic fish-eaters. Common Loons are just the most southern-ranging (and therefore the most visible) of five different species of loons, though. Despite their name, they aren’t even the most numerous!

To my delight, Common Loons were a regular fixture in lakes along the highways I traveled during my sabbatical. As I drove from Haines, AK, through a narrow arm of British Colombia, I gawked at my first treeless tundra of the trip. I also spotted two Common Loons, their bills tucked away against the cold, as they floated on a chilly lake.

It was mid-July before I added to my list of loon species. Ed Berg, a retired ecologist and geologist from Homer, had just taken me across Kachemak Bay to see the Grewingk Glacier. As our water taxi motored into the harbor, a gray-headed water bird floated around the corner of a barnacle-crusted rock. I snapped two quick photos, then zoomed in on my screen.

Pacific Loons are the most numerous of the five loon species. Photo by Emily Stone.

The profile was unmistakably loon. Their pale gray head, black and white stripes down the side of their neck, and smaller checkered patch on their back distinguished them from our Common Loons, and narrowed the ID down to a Pacific or Arctic Loon. The two species look almost identical, and Pacific Loons were only classified as their own species in 1985! The range maps for each species made ID easy, though. Pacific Loons are found throughout Alaska, while Arctic Loons are rare visitors.

Other than being slightly smaller than the Common Loon and nesting on lakes above tree line, the life history of Pacific Loons is very similar to our familiar ones. They nest on shore, eat a variety of small fish, need a long runway to take off from the water, and are clumsy on land. In a unique twist, the ones who winter off the coast of Japan have been observed cooperating with each other to concentrate schools of fish.

Having spotted one new species of loon, my interest in seeing the others grew. The afternoon that I arrived at the Toolik Field Station to prepare for doing caribou research, I took a short walk around the base to get a feel for the area. The tremolo of a loon flying overhead sent a thrill down my spine, and I watched the large bird land on the far side of Toolik Lake. Were they a Common Loon? They sounded similar. But the logo for Toolik features a Yellow-billed Loon, and I was sure the scientists would have chosen them deliberately.

During my return trip across the Toolik Lake Inlet and back toward the dining hall, I spotted a couple of loons fishing at the mouth of that little creek. Using my camera’s zoom again, I examined the black and white plumage—exactly like a Common Loon’s—and peered excitedly at the pale-colored bill where I usually see black. Not only were these my sought-after Yellow-billed Loons, but the pair was feeding their chick little minnows, in exactly the same way that I’ve watched Common Loons feed their young on my Loon Pontoon Tours! I later read that a pair raises chicks there almost every year.

Yellow-billed Loons are close relatives of our local Common Loons, with similar breeding and feeding behaviors. Photo by Emily Stone.

It’s no surprise that these pale-beaked loons feel so similar to my old friends. Scientists theorize that Common and Yellow-billed Loons only diverged into separate species during the last glacial period, 100,000 years ago or so. Ice separated loons living in the continental U.S. from loons living in the far north along the Arctic Ocean. Many of their breeding, feeding, and behavioral traits remain similar. The Yellow-billed Loon is the least numerous of the five loon species, as well as the largest. And, probably due to their larger size, they also have a deeper voice than our Common Loons.

Now that I’d seen the most similar loon to the ones I’d left back home, my last goal was to see the most different loon. Red-throated Loons were probably the first loon species to evolve their current form, about 21,400,000 years ago. They are also the smallest, and weigh only 2-6 pounds compared to the Yellow-billed’s 9-14 pounds. Due to their size, Red-throated Loons can use smaller ponds, take off directly from water or land without a runway, and breed even on the northernmost coast of Greenland.

Tessa and I had barely started our second day of driving the caribou transect together, when I spotted a suspicious bird on a puddle a mile or so south of Deadhorse. I zoomed all the way in and steadied my camera on the truck’s open window, snapping photos until the bird took off in a shower of water droplets. Eager to find caribou, we got going, too. It wasn’t until I loaded the photos onto my laptop that I noticed the loon’s red throat.

Red-throated Loons can be hard to find in the U.S., but are actually the most widely distributed loon and range across the far north of North America, Europe, Greenland, and Asia. They can get airborne without a long runway, which allows them to use smaller bodies of water. Photo by Emily Stone.

Look as we might on three more days of driving, I never caught sight of that Red-throated Loon again.

Maybe someday—while I’m out looking for gray-headed chickadees in Scandinavia, Russia, or northern Japan—I’ll be lucky enough to spot an Arctic Loon as well. In the meantime, I was happy to return home in time to see the Common Loons on Lake Namakagon. My journey has ended, and their fall migration has begun.

Emily’s award-winning second book, Natural Connections: Dreaming of an Elfin Skimmer, is available to purchase at cablemuseum.org/books and at your local independent bookstore, too.

For more than 50 years, the Cable Natural History Museum has served to connect you to the Northwoods. The Museum is open with our brand-new exhibit: “Anaamaagon: Under the Snow.” Our Fall Calendar is open for registration! Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and cablemuseum.org to see what we are up to.