Day: 11 August 2016

7 August 2016.

Today I drive from Glenallen to Chitina. Chitina is the gateway to the Wrangell-St. Elias National Park. The park is enormous: the size of Switzerland or about several Yellowstones. It is also one of the coldest places on Earth. But is an amazing region, beautiful and remote. I barely scratch the surface as venturing into the park is an adventure on its own, and not something that could be attempted fully in a couple of days. One of the park guards tells me about a pilot who has been flying over the park for 20 years and reckons he only knows about a fifth of it.

After Chitina the highway becomes a gravel road. The park guard at Chitina suggests not to attempt it without a full-sized spare tire. The rental doesn’t have one (just a small tire version which they call a donut). Apparently the main risk of driving there is not potholes, but into the rusty rails that were left behind when they converted the old rail line into a road. Being there I cannot resist, and decide to drive anyway. I just need to get into the park itself. The weather looks foul, and after 15 miles I reach an old bridge crossing an enormous gorge. The Kuskulana Bridge was built in 1910 to allow trains to transport the mineral riches extracted from the Kennicott and McCarthy Mines, sixty miles from Chitina. It takes me a long time to get to the bridge as the roads are rough, and I am wary of not puncturing a tire. Along the way I see a red fox, an eagle, and some ptarmigans. The place is amazing!

But instead of camping in the Park, I decide to aim for Valdez where I need to catch a ferry on the 9th.

On the road I see a very terrible accident that happened just ahead of me. I see a cloud of smoke raise in the curve ahead, and as I turn, I see the crash between an RV and a tourist bus. The RV is in the middle of the road, but the bus has gone on to smash on a hill on the roadside. People are badly hurt and I stop to help. Some people are jumping out of the windows of the bus. The RV has the front destroyed and the people there are still trapped inside. A dog in the front seat howls. It makes me terribly sad but I cannot do much. The police arrive soon after and I leave. I thinkk of the poor people and their families that are ending their Alaskan trip in such a way. I’m sorry for them.

I continue driving towards Valdez, and in the evening I see Whorthington glacier and approach it to almost touch it. The glacier is dreary in the cold rain, yet beautiful. The ice of a glacier seems to always shine of a special blue colour. Then I drive through Thompson Pass, and can almost see the peaks of the mountains behind the thick fog and cloud. In Valdez, the city has been completely covered with fog. But now and then I glimpse the Valdez glacier and the amazing mountains. It is rainy and cold. And for the second day I have not seen any monkeyflowers. As this bleak day ends, I set up my camp near the glacier.

6 August 2016.

The 6^th of August was our last day in Unalaska. Jannice and I managed to resample one of the populations (UNA) to get the seed that was unripe when we saw it in the first day. It was a rush through the Overland Pass to Summer Bay in a cold and foggy morning. We found a few plants with seed and headed back to the hotel to check out and pick up Josh. The small plane at the airport arrived soon before our departure, exchanging passengers between Anchorage and Dutch Harbor.

At Anchorage we part ways. Jannice and Josh head back home, and I will stay a few more days to try sampling monkeyflowers in mainland Alaska. These populations will be useful as markers to compare against the monkeyflowers of the islands (Kodiak and the Aleutians) and Alaskan Peninsula. If our hunch is correct, the Scottish monkeyflowers should group closer to the Aleutian and Kodiak samples than to the ones I hope to find in mainland Alaska. But finding Mimulus in mainland Alaska is harder. They may not be as common as in the coast and islands further west.

After picking up a rental SUV I drive for a few hours east on the Glenn Highway. After passing the town of Palmer two mountain ranges rise up: the coastal mountains in the south and the interior mountains in the north. The road follows more or less the Matansuka River, and soon I read the glacier of the same name. The landscape is impressive. Unlike treeless Unalaska, the mountains here are forested. The glacier snakes down the valley reaching the river plain. Soon after a new range of mountains rises up in the north. These mountains are made of gypsum, coloured red in the evening light. The gypsum of these red mountains is witness of the volcanic activity that shapes Alaska. Around eight or nine in the evening I decided to stop and set camp. I find a campsite in Glenallen, a small roadside town that has few attractions except its beautiful surroundings. I fall asleep among the sound or rain and strong winds. For the next days, Alaska has decided to release some wet and rough weather to make the monkeyflower search more interesting.