Bird’s Eye View of Upper End of Skilak Lake

Upper end of Skilak Lake! You can see the Kenai Mountains that go on and on. At the end of the lake if you look closely you can see the glacier flats. Carved out from the glacier many years ago, it leads to the Skilak glacier about six or seven miles distant. Back in the mid 80’s, we walked right up to the glacier and picked ice off the glacier wall and ate it. Ice as old as the millennium.

Interesting story: We learned just a few years ago, that the glacier has receded and there is now a huge lake in front of the glacier that is approximately a mile wide and one or two miles long (I’ve heard that is just an estimate and it might be smaller) and I was told that it is very deep, approximately 1700 feet. This just amazed me when I found out about this newly formed lake at the base of the glacier. It was the contributing factor that inspired me to put the chapter “Gold Under That There Glacier” back into the book. I had previously cut it to keep my page number down. However, after hearing of this massive (global warming) geological change in just the few short years since we left Alaska, I had to put that chapter back in the book!