Rock & Ice
Yesterday, between watches I slipped up onto the bridge to get a view of what was happening around the ship. The day had been quiet, the ship plying across the Gulf of Alaska on a mission to get the crew home in time for Thanksgiving dinner. Our path was interrupted only by the occasional passing pod of porpoises. The cloud layers were unique this afternoon; a low ceiling hung on the far horizon. There was also a higher ominous layer. A large winter storm barreling down upon us.
As I scanned around on the hushed bridge, nestled between the cloud layers, my eyes caught the unmistakable alpine glow over rock and ice. Immediately captivated, I took a bearing to it through the port alidade, 135T. Back to the chart room. I plotted our position on the chart and aligned the Weems with the bearing. As my eyes ran the length of the straight edge it almost felt like slipping my finger beneath wrapping paper of a gift on Christmas morning. The Weems intersected a point on the chart 130 nautical miles away; Mt. Saint Elias.
This fabled mountain caused wonder and excitement to boil over from inside of me. At more than 130 miles distant the mystique continued to grow. My feet carried me down a deck to my stateroom where I had a copy of “Alaska: A Climbing Guide” by Colby Combs and Michael Wood. The curled pages of the book rapidly flipped under my thumb—I knew about where the Saint Elias Range section of the book would be. A black and white image of the mountain took a full spread it was the same face I was looking at now. A black line overlaid on the image squiggled its way up the southwest ridge from the head of a glacier on the flank of the peak. Immediately below the description reads “a walk-in from the ocean has huge potential but would take an incredible amount of strength and determination.”
At this point, the watchstanders on the bridge were almost openly laughing at my childish excitement—a state that they do not often witness. Most of them were skeptical that there was a mountain looming in the distance, that is until I thrust a pair of binoculars into their hands and told them to look for the orange glow that radiated between the cloud layers. Almost as quickly as the spectacle started, the summit was obscured by a massive lenticular cloud. In the waning light of the 3 o’clock sunset, I was left in wonderment as I tried to catch a final sight of the mountain.
Maybe someday my strength and determination will be tested by walking from the beach onto the Tyndall Glacier’s toe and up to the summit of Mt. Saint Elias, a quick 18,000 feet above. Let’s call it added to the bucket list.
**Note that the cover image is from Resurrection Bay near Seward, AK and not Mt. Saint Elias. I was unable snag any pictures of the big mountain.
