glacier – A Darker View

Cordova Gallery

Just a sample of travel to Cordova, Alaska…

A rainy day in Juneau as seen from the window of an Alaska Airlines flight
The fishing port of Cordova, Alaska
Lupine along the trail at Sheridan Glacier
A muddy Sheridan River drains the lake in front of Sheridan Glacier
Icebergs scattered across the lake in front of Sheridan Glacier
An iceberg from Sheridan Glacier sits in the muddy waters of Sheridan Lake
Trumpeter swans (Cygnus buccinator) forage near Cordova, Alaska
A bald eagle (Haliaeetus leucocephalus) monitors the Copper River Delta from a convenient perch
The Copper River delta near Cordova, Alaska
The fish processor Dawn unloads in Cordova, AK
Orca Adventure Resort, Cordova, Alaska
The old cannery dining hall serves breakfast at Orca Adventure Lodge
A large winch list abandoned in the brush
A small unnamed stream tumbles through the rock
The Lioness fishing boat belonging to Orca Adventure Lodge
A pole awaits a halibut in Gravina Bay
Fred Cooper fishing with a traditional northwest indian halibut fishhook
Coho salmon ((Oncorhynchus kisutch) on the deck
The author with a nice catch

Southeast Alaska has so many glaciers, but very few of them are easily accessible. Most require long hikes into wild coutry, floatplanes to remote lakes, or boating through iceberg choked waters to reach. Sheridan Glacier you can drive to.

The glacier is only a few miles from the airport reached by a short gravel road, and an even shorter trail through the woods. Not the glacier itself, as that is about a mile away on the other side of a lake. Rather you reach the shore of a lake covered with icebergs, creating a spectacular scene with the glacier in the background.

At the end of the road the glacier is just visible through the trees as glimpses of ice. A well maintained US Forest Service trial leads to a point from which some of the lake and glacier can be seen.

Sheridan Glacier viewed from an aircraft landing in Cordova

This first viewpoint has a clever feature. Here you find a simple post with a small recess milled into the top. You can place a cellphone on the post and take a photo. Sending the photo to an email address allows the Forest Service to monitor changes in Sheridan Glacier over time. Not by installing their own expensive remote camera, but rather by simply having visiting tourists contribute their photos.

Going a bit further, my brother and I hiked the short trail around and down to the shoreline looking for a better view of the iceberg covered lake. Where the trail emerged again onto the shore a small moriane offered the view we were looking for, a place to sit and enjoy spectacular scenery. From this little moraine also flew the drone to gain a better vantage for some photos.

The lovely weather would not last long, it was a good decision to use this first afternoon in Cordova to get out and see the glacier and explore further to the end of the road.

Sheridan lake with scattered icebergs from Sheridan Glacier

Bering Glacier

It is big. Really, truly big.

The glacier looked to be miles wide and flowed from deep in the mountians to where it nearly reached the sea. My view from the aircraft window allowed a perfect view on a beautiful sunny day. Unlike previous times I had passed this way no clouds obscured the scene.

It took a quick look at the map after the flight to identify the glacier I had seen and photographed… Bearing Glacier, the largest glacier in North America.

The glacier starts at an icefield in the St Elias Range, a stunningly rugged mountain range that abruptly rises from sea level to heights near 20,000ft in places. From there a five mile wide river of ice decends over 50 miles to the coastal plain, ending in Vitus Lake dotted with icebergs broken from the glacier’s terminal face. Seal River, a short, two mile long river then drains glacial meltwater into the Gulf of Alaska.

The numbers fail to capture the sheer grandeur of the that river of ice. While the view from 30,000ft was impressive, I wonder what it would be like to stand in the middle of that expanse on such a beautiful day.

Iceberg

Fishing Cordova

Summer 2025 featured another family fishing trip.

This time the destination was Cordova, Alaska. Why Cordova? Why not? New water, new adventures, new things to see.

We had never been to Cordova, bouncing through the airport on the milk run from Juneau and Yakutat does not count. The area feaures some interesting history, very scenic country, more than a few glaciers, and access to Prince William Sound for fishing.

To the End of The Road

There is only so much road to explore and we explored much of it.

Yakutat, like so many Alaskan communities is accessed only by sea or by air. Not to say there are no roads, they just do not go anywhere else, much less connect to the road network that crosses the continent.

In the case of Yakutat the furthest you can get from town is about 26 miles as the crow flies taking the road to Dangerous River and Harlequin Lake. This road is a well maintianed gravel road heavily used to access popular fly fishing rivers and hunting areas, as well as by loggers harvesting the local hemlock and sitka spruce.

Nordic Quest 2014

As is my habit, I have produced a video summary of this summer’s voyage in the Nordic Quest. Take a few of the best photos, a little video, a snippet of timelapse, a decent tune, and mix well…

Nordic Quest 2014 from Andrew Cooper on Vimeo

Having done this more than a few times now it is getting harder to be creative. Still there are always unique shots that come back from any voyage, such as the mother grizzly and cubs. There is also a sequence I had always wanted to try, a timelapse of the huge Alaskan tide change. This time I had a chance to shoot it, and had some success.

Nordic Quest 2013

Sorting through thousands of photos, dozens of video clips, and assembling time-lapse from yet more thousands of frames, all to create a mere five minutes of video. It is quite the chore, but also a lot of fun. In a way I relive the voyage, each photo a cue to recall all of the little experiences that make a great trip.

Having another couple photographers along provided a great source of material, it is not all of my photos. Randy and Nancy sent me some of their best, which have been woven in to create a better video. We got lucky on the weather, while it was cloudy and rainy for much of the time, we had a glorious day for visiting the ice at the top of Glacier Bay. We were lucky with wildlife as well… Orca, grizzly, humpback whales bubble netting, mountain goats, eagles, even a set of fresh wolf prints on a beach, all of the big game.

It was fun…

Nordic Quest 2013 from Andrew Cooper on Vimeo.

Postcard from Alaska – Over the Ice

Touring around a sunny Juneau you might not suspect that something completely different lies above the city. But here and there you can see hints. Atop the ridge that lies behind the city you can see ice, suggesting that what lies beyond Juneau is something a little more wild. Look above the Costco and there is a little glacier atop the ridge. Just a bit further north and you will find the Mendenhall Glacier, the terminus of a river of ice a mile wide with a photogenic lake at the face.

Take a plane or helicopter above the high ridge that rises above the city and you find ice, thousands of cubic kilometers of ice. The Juneau Ice Field is 140km (86miles) north to south and stretches almost 90km (55miles) into Canada. In places it is over 1400m (4600ft) thick, a sheet of ice that remains from a time when the world was colder.

When visiting Juneau it is worth the time to see this place. An air tour from town climbs over the ridge an into another world. Once over the ice the scenery is dramatically stark, ice everywhere, with bare rock and rugged mountain peaks punctuating the white. You would think you are over Antarctica, indeed the Juneau Ice Field has stood in for the south pole in a few movies.

Postcard from Alaska – Mendenhall Glacier

A massive river of ice flowing down from the high ice fields above the city. When visiting Juneau go visit the glacier, only a few minutes drive from the airport and worth the visit. if you have the time and can make the arrangements take an air tour of the ice field. An fantastic flight, cross the ridge above the city and you are over the Juneau Ice Field, an enormous expanse of ice punctuated by spires of rock. From below there are only hints of the ice, from the air it becomes an unworldly experience.

Tag: glacier