Kenai Fjords A Stern and Rock-Bound Coast: Historic Resource Study

Glaciers

The glaciers of Kenai Fjords National Park are an inescapable presence. These rivers of ice formed the focal point for establishment of the park. The glaciers that emanate from the Harding Icefield influence the land and climate.

As recent as the beginning of the twentieth century, some of the fjords were completely filled with tidal glaciers, producing a dramatically different natural landscape. Throughout the course of prehistory, human activity in the area responded to many periods of glacial advancement and retreat. With each glacial stage, the amount of navigable water and land available for exploration and inhabitation dramatically fluctuated, thus creating an ever-changing landscape. In 1905, Grant reported that many of the glaciers had reached terminus positions and had begun to recede. Although other glaciers in the region continued to advance, some researchers speculate that the size of the glaciers in the late 1800s and early 1900s had little resemblance to what they may have looked like one hundred years earlier.

Rice observed that the Dena'ina vocabulary included many words to describe the glacial surroundings. Some of the more pertinent terms are: "ti" for glaciers, "titeh" directly translating to "among the glaciers" or icefield, "tizaq" for crevasses, "tivena" for terminal glacial lake, and "ti tnu" for glacial river. Some of the Dena'ina terms persist in altered form on present day topographic maps. "Dghili" or "Dghelay" means mountain and is printed as Truuli on USGS quadrangles to label the highest peak in the southwest portion of the Kenai Mountains. "Dusdebena ti" translated into English as "peninsula-lake glacier." Currently written as Tustumena Glacier, the name describes the largest land-based glacier that flows northwest from the Harding Icefield. [16]

Two of the park's most spectacular and active glaciers had dramatic retreats in the late 1800s. USGS maps based on 1909 fieldwork documented the McCarty and Northwestern glaciers flowing out the length of the fjord and actively and visibly calving into the Gulf of Alaska.

In the early 1930s the USC&GS reported that McCarty Glacier had retreated about one quarter of a mile in the fifty years prior to 1909. During that period the glacier had reached its terminal position "since the growth of the present trees." [17] By 1927 McCarty Glacier had receded one and one-half miles from its terminus; the most intense calving began after 1925; surveyor Paul Whitney noted that "From 1925 to 1927 the retreat was rapid, the front falling back a full mile in that time." [18] The 1964 Alaska Coast Pilot indicated that the glacier had retreated another ten and one-half miles during the ensuing thirty-seven years.

Regarding Northwestern Glacier, Davidson deduced from Teben'kov's 1852 measurements that the glacier was two miles in width and "coming directly into the water." [19] In the mid-1800s Teben'kov's maps depicted the glacier extending far out in the fjord "reaching almost to the sea." [20] Grant and Higgins estimated the end point of the glacier to be one-quarter of a mile past its position in 1909. This maximum advance would have been reached approximately ten to fifteen years before their expedition. [21]

Impressed by the size of Northwestern Glacier, the geologists described it in detail. They wrote, "This glacier is one of the largest ice streams of the Kenai Peninsula and is in full view from the open ocean, forming, with its surrounding lofty peaks, the most striking scenic feature of the southern shore." [22] In 1976 a joint U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and NPS survey team observed that Northwestern Glacier had receded a mile or more in the last twenty years. [23] As the ice has receded, Sitka spruce and western hemlock forests have slowly reclaimed the newly exposed land. The glacial retreat has created habitat for many of the park's land mammal species.

Grant and Higgins recorded the majority of local names for glaciers and other features within the park. Between 1909 and 1911 the team concentrated on glacial formation in the region. Among the names they applied was Bear Glacier, at the park's eastern boundary. Located at the mouth of Resurrection Bay near Bulldog Cove, the glacier is oriented to the southeast. It is the only coastal glacier that has yet to form a fjord. Exit Glacier, northwest of Seward and north of Bear Glacier, flows east off the Harding Icefield. In 1968, the first group of climbers to cross the Harding Icefield descended by way of this glacial spur. [24]