On the Root Glacier in Wrangell St. Elias National Park and Preserve in Alaska looking southwest. By Stephanie Reighart
I was on the trip with the National Outdoor Leadership School and part of their policy is that no one is ever alone on the ice. A glacier can be a magical landscape. It is literally a frozen desert. Nothing grows there, except ice. Barely anything lives there, just some bacteria. Certainly not humans without bringing in all our supplies for survival.
But just as magical places are beautiful and captivating, they have many unknowns and can be dangerous.
Before my NOLS trip, the school used to allow students to have independent travel on the ice. Which meant, that small groups of students — after a considerable amount of instruction — were allowed to trek about on the ice without instructors. Until one student fell into a moulin while getting water.
A moulin is a long, vertical tube that carries melt water from the top of the ice down below the glacier. They can be great sources of fresh water. But they can also be very deep — miles deep in some cases — and deadly if you fall into one.
After the death of the student, NOLS ended its independent student travel on glaciers. Therefore, I had never spent any time alone on a glacier.
Until Alaska.
I was having a rough day. My spirits were low. I was utterly exhausted. My appetite was missing and I just felt like being alone.
Fortunately for me, Richard and Dan found some vertical ice to play on and I was able to set off on my own. I didn’t go far. But part of the magic of a glacier is that they’re not flat. They melt and grow depending on many factors, and simply by walking 50 feet away from other people, you can be out of sight and hearing of your companions.
That was my goal: wander about; enjoy the peace of the ice; be alone with my thoughts — however melancholy they were that day; and get my senses back in line.
I was in Alaska! What was there for me to be grumpy about?
Turns out, changing four time zones, getting very little sleep and heading out into the Alaskan backcountry make me very tired. And a tired Stephanie, is an irritable and combative Stephanie, as my travel companions were quick to discover — sorry, Guys.
The good news is that I achieved my goal.
I wandered the ice in peace. I walked slowly, but without direction. I stopped to take photos when I felt like it. I breathed deeply. I thought about nothing. I tried to stay completely in the moment.
Being alone on a glacier is something I had never done before and the new angle to a familiar experience was invigorating.
By the end of the day, I was in a far better mood and my appetite had returned. (My foot pain was still present, but that’s another blog post.)
The undulating landscape of the Root Glacier in Wrangell St. Elias National Park and Preserve in Alaska. By Stephanie Reighart
