Through a Railroad Tunnel to Whittier

We traveled back through Anchorage on Sunday morning, then along the shore of the Turnagain Arm of Cook Inlet to the Portage Valley where we took up residence at the Williwaw Campground in the Chugach National Forest. It was hard to believe this is a National Forest campground; the sites are huge and spaced far apart, built to handle the largest RV’s on the road today. The interior roads and campsite parking are paved, and there are large picnic tables and fire rings at each campsite. No electricity, of course, and the only water was by hand pump, but one of the nicest Forest Service campgrounds we’ve ever seen. After setting up camp and enjoying our usual “happy hour”, we traveled about 15 miles back toward Anchorage to the small town of Girdwood and the Double Musky Inn for a wonderful dinner. The Inn must draw diners who are traveling to and from the Kenai, because it was jammed with customers.

The next morning dawned bright and beautiful. The mountains are usually wrapped in clouds, but when they’re not, the view is spectacular. We hopped in our cars and headed for Whittier, about 5 miles away. Whittier was developed as a military facility during WWII, and the only access was by sea. The area is called Portage because this narrow isthmus that connects the mainland with the Kenai Peninsula was used as a route to carry goods or ‘portage’ from the Cook Inlet to Prince William Sound. In the early 1950’s, the army dug a 2.5 mile tunnel through a mountain to provide rail access to the base. The town was almost destroyed after the 1964 earthquake when the fuel depot shook apart, then burned. The army moved out of Whittier in the late ‘60’s and the town became nothing more than a cargo facility and a stop on the Alaska Marine Highway. In 2000, the single-bore tunnel was paved and a computerized traffic control system was established, allowing vehicles to get into Whittier without being shipped on rail cars. The tunnel is open to traffic from 5:30 AM until 11:30 PM daily, with inbound vehicles traveling on the half-hour, and outbound vehicles traveling on the hour, except when a train is scheduled for the tunnel.

A number of cruise ships use Whittier as an embarcation/demarcation point to change passengers since the town is served by the Alaska Railroad. Both Princess and Holland America have rail tours for their passengers who travel to other popular tourist spots in Alaska. The Island Princess was in port, the ship on which we sailed through the Panama Canal in 2003.


Once in Whittier, we booked a 5-hour glacier tour of Prince William Sound on a sightseeing boat. Although the weather had turned cloudy, the sea was very calm which made for a good trip. We saw a number of glaciers as well as sea otters, harbor seals and eagles, and stopped at a salmon fish hatchery. Like California and the other west-coast states, Alaska is experiencing a severe decline in the King Salmon population. Other species of salmon seem to be doing OK, though. We also saw the fishing fleet in action. The actual fishing boats are small gill net boats that lay their nets, weighted on the bottom, in the sound, then after a few hours, retrieve the nets and harvest their catch. They then motor over to a larger ‘tender’ boat which takes the fish, cleans them and packs them in ice. I’m not sure how it all works, but I believe the tender operator buys the fish from the fishermen rather than simply storing it for them.

We went into Harriman Fjord and spent some time close to Surprise Glacier, a tidewater glacier that extends to the water. There we saw seals resting on floating ice, and were able to watch the glacier ‘calve’, as chunks of ice fell into the water. Glaciers in Alaska number over 25,000, but almost all of them are receding fairly rapidly and have been doing so for about 100 years.
Global warming or a natural cycle? They really don’t know for certain.

Leaving Whittier in time to catch the 5 PM tunnel opening, we headed back to camp and dinner. This dinner mostly consisted of leftovers from the Double Musky, as the portions they’d served were huge!

The next morning we were kind of lazy, but did manage to walk to a salmon viewing platform near the campground. No fish to see, but a nice walk, anyway. Later in the day we drove a mile or so to the National Forest Visitor Center on Portage Lake where we watched a movie on glaciers and enjoyed the many exhibits. That, of course, was followed by time spent in the gift shop before returning to our camp. That day was Diane and Bob’s 41st Anniversary, so we celebrated by returning to the Double Musky and another fine dinner.

We got up early (like 4:30 AM) the next morning to begin our 2-hour trip to Seward, which will be our home for the next 11 days. The campground in Seward is owned and operated by the city, and there is great demand for waterfront campsites with electric and water hookups and no reservations. We wanted to get there early enough to grab spots as other campers packed up and moved out.

We’ll write more about our visit to Seward in the coming days.