Photography project retraces pioneer's tracks

Crew studying Chugach, Wrangell-St. Elias glaciers

August 1, 2006

By MARY AMES/Frontiersman

ALASKA -Before they landed to fuel up in Palmer Thursday, the geologist and the geographer had already been on the trail of Bradford Washburn, a pioneer explorer.

In what they hoped to be the first phase of a project to duplicate the thousands of aerial photos Washburn took of Alaska glaciers, Bruce Molina, a geologist with the U. S. Geological Survey, and Mike Sfraga, director of the new geography program at the University of Alaska, spent two days flying from Fairbanks to Palmer, then on to the Chugach, Wrangell-St. Elias and coastal range glaciers before they returned to the Interior.

Coming down from Fairbanks, they looked over Mounts McKinley and Foraker, Sfraga in the front seat holding up copies of old photos, Molina in the back, directing pilot Ken Jouppi, to position Jouppi's Cessna 206 into the exact position Molina needed to line up a duplicate shot.

When they lifted off from Palmer airport, they headed up the Knik Glacier, climbed over the mountains wrapped with the heads of the Knik and College glaciers that flow down the coast.

In the 1930s, when Washburn flew and photographed these glaciers, he used a large-format camera, which was attached to the airplane by a sling system. Washburn, bundled up in so much fur that he looked like a bear, roped himself to the plane also, Sfraga said. Washburn would map out a route for the pilot and then hang out of the plane, shooting photos as he went along.

Many people know Washburn as a mountain climber, but he was so much more, said Sfraga, who turned his dissertation on Washburn into the book, &#8220Bradford Washburn, A Life of Exploration,” which focuses on Washburn's life from his birth in 1910, up to about 1960.

&#8220Washburn didn't want to be known as just a mountaineer,” he said. &#8220He was an explorer, an administrator, a visionary, scientist, politician, geographer,

cartographer, photographer and educator.”

In 1938, Washburn used a Fairchild F-8 camera to complete an aerial photographic survey of the glaciers in the Chugach Range and in the Wrangell Mountains.

Duplicating Washburn's photos some 70 years later, Molina and Sfraga used digital cameras, and their challenge was to choreograph Jouppi's flight path and record the altitude and time of day when their photos were shot.

&#8220Lift your left wing, please,” Molina said often as Jouppi maneuvered the Cessna into

position.

Cruising among mountain peaks swathed in permanent ice and snow in every direction, Molina pointed to the difficulty counting Alaska's glaciers.

Alaska has about 2,000 large glaciers, he said, and about 700 of them have names.

&#8220But then how do you count all of these?” he said.

The coastal glaciers seemed to be healthy and holding their own, Molina said.

&#8220Harvard Glacier is one of the few that's advancing,” he said. &#8220Smith is holding it's own. It keeps sticking out of the water. Meares is another one that's advancing and seems to be doing quite well. This is the way it's supposed to be.”

About an hour's flight time from Palmer, Jouppi flew the scientists over the Columbia Glacier.

&#8220The Columbia is pouring ice today,” Molina said. &#8220Back then, the glacier was at Heather Island. It's really retreated a phenomenal amount.

The Columbia Glacier wasn't melting, he said. It lost contact with its protective moraine that ran across the middle of the bay, which resulted in &#8220catastrophic calving.” The Columbia has lost more than 1,000 vertical feet in 20 years, he said.

The Columbia Glacier's calving is part of a normal cycle of some tidewater glaciers, he said.

&#8220It's a small hiccup in behavior,” he said. &#8220It calves until something stabilizes it.

Molina, who wrote the Alaska Geographic book &#8220Alaska's Glaciers” and lectured at the Juneau Icefield Research Program for many years, saw something new. On the surface of Columbia Glacier, there was a circular &#8220collapse feature.” Sfraga had not seen anything like it either.

&#8220It looks like whirlpools formed them,” Molina said. &#8220I've never seen that before.”

Molina commented on the Columbia's &#8220beautiful, blue calving face,” and asked Jouppi to descend to 3,000 feet to match an old photo. The beautiful blue comes from the hexagonal shape of the ice molecules, he said. The shape absorbs all colors of the spectrum, but reflects back

only blue.

After the Columbia was surveyed, Jouppi gained altitude again and the men flew over the Shoup Glacier, which once was in Valdez Arm, Molina said. All that is left of the Shoup in the Arm are two little recessional pools. As the Cessna continued up the Shoup to the head of the Nelchina and Tazlina glaciers, Molina pointed out the vast difference between the glaciers that flowed north rather than south.

&#8220Here are fine, classic examples of rapidly disappearing glaciers,” he said. &#8220Everything to the left is ice-free and losing the battle.”

When the clouds moved in about 3 p.m., Jouppi turned the plane back to the sun and headed for fuel in Cordova.

&#8220Back to the sunny coast, he said. &#8220That's a switch.”

Contact Mary Ames at

352-2284 or mary.ames@

frontiersman.com.