Alaska 2024: Roll 18 - Worthington Glacier to Glacier View
For my second roll, I shot Kodak Double X and started the roll without the center filter as the clouds were still pretty thick and Kodak Double X is a 200 iso film.
I tried the shot with the large set of boulders to the left again with this film combination. I'm not sure which I prefer, the color version or the black and white.
The water the comes out of the glacier forms a small lake at the foot of the glacier that has a milky look to it because of the fine silt that is ground out in the glacier. You see this in almost all of the waterways in Alaska, milky water which is a change from Oklahoma and Texas where the water can be a deep red.
There is a walkway down to the front of the lake that we took to see a bit more before we started back to the car. It was getting ready to rain so we weren't too sure about staying out much longer but I was able to snap a few more pictures before we packed up to head down the road.
Things started to clear up a bit as we were driving north but there was a chance of rain here and there. Because the signal on our phones wasn't great, we weren't able to keep up with what the weather was doing but figured after lunch we would have clear skies when we turned east.
We stopped at the Wrangell-St. Elias visitor center again for lunch and had a few showers that kept us in the Suburban. When there was a letup in the rain the mosquitos would scare us back into the vehicle. This frame shows another one of those light leaks that I got when shooting this film in the Xpan.
We pulled over at the same overlook for the Copper River that we did on our way down to Valdez but this time I decided to bring the film camera with me.
You get a sense of the scale from this viewpoint with the wide angle of the xpan. The edge of the bank was a bit sketchy, which is why it was blocked off a few photos back. It wouldn't be fun to be here when the bank gave way.
I was the only one who ventured out for some pictures this time because everyone else was either concerned about the mosquitos or knew that the bank was a little scary looking.
We turned at Glennallen to take Highway 1 on our way down to Anchorage and the Kenai Peninsula. I had picked out a place called Glacier View where we would be staying the night that was about halfway between Valdez and Anchorage so that we could get another night in this area.
I had grand plans, based on watching YouTube videos, that we would be able to drive down close to the Matanuska glacier for a small fee. This turned out not to be the case as the operation that runs tours in this area now requires everyone to pay a full tour cost of 150 per person to get close. We elected to drive around to some different views of the glacier instead.
We took a nice hike at the Matanuska Glacier View State Recreation Site that provided us a nice distant view of the glacier.
I switched to the 45mm lens for the Xpan to get a little closer to the subject for these last two photos. I sometimes wish I had the 90mm lens that they made for this outfit when I run into situations like this. I am a fan of the wide lenses but sometimes you are just too far away from the subject.
The sun and the clouds were cooperating with me this afternoon so I shot too many photos of this same view "just in case". I won't subject you to the slight variations in framing.
We had a grand time on the hike with Kristy, Katy and I finding our way on a well marked and reasonably graded trail. This is roll number two for the day but I squeezed in some frames on another roll before the end of the day.