Alaska Part IV
Jun. 25th, 2007 09:38 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
Monday - Tony Knowles Coastal Trail
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Anyway, back to our story. We came back to the hostel after lunch and asked the owner to rent bikes. We got two bikes and two helmets and one lock.
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On Good Friday, 1964, G-d decided to remind a few million people the true wonder of Good Friday. So G-d had the North American Plate move against the Pacific Plate. When this happened, there was a huge (read: 8.7 but some are talking about upgrading it to 9.4) earthquake. It is the largest recorded in the Northern Hemisphere to date. So what were some of the results of this "Good Friday Earthquake"? Well, aside from your usual wanton destruction [my spell-checker tells me that I can't make a written pun about havoc in Chinese soups. It also tells me that spell-checker is not a compound word, but I think it at least deserves hyphenation.] including train cars welding together and tsunamis as far out as California, the land actually moved. I mean of course it shook, but things actually MOVED relative to, let's say, Fairbanks. Also, thanks to a lot of weak spots along the water, the coastline changed. A lot of the coast around Anchorage fell out, and lots of salt water came in. Trees tried to drink the water by their roots, and wound up killing themselves with saltwater ("Water, water everywhere, but not a drop to drink," works for trees, too). Many were cut down by the Army Corps of Engineers who spent some serious time cleaning up Alaska after the quake, but many stand to this day - bright white ghost forests - testaments to impermanence of the earth beneath your feet. Also, much of the land has become super-saturated mud flats. There are signs along the coast saying "Dangerous Water and Mud Flats," which is shorthand for: "If you step in the mud, you might get stuck. If you get stuck, the tide will come and drown you. If you can get to someone before high tide and they send a helicopter to rescue you, your legs might get ripped off as they pull you out." I'm not sure how much is urban legend, but my coworker out there says that every year some (or some two) dumb kid goes out there and dies.
Anyway, so there a whole park dedicated to the results of the earthquake and teaches about various local flora, and there's also a cool planet walk which we didn't look at at all. I think the Smithsonian has more thorough planet stuff, but a to-scale walking model is a pretty cool idea.
Anyway, the bike ride was really cool. We got to see some amazing views of the Chugach Mountains, and the Kenai Peninsula across the bay. Wow. We were so fascinated by the mountains in front of use that we just kept biking. We went through another park (Something Hill??) and saw a Cold War-era missile silo, and kept going. Eventually we saw this funny looking plane ahead of us which looked so ridiculously-proportioned, I thought it was the Spruce Goose, but it turned out it was a military transport plane. Oh, it also turned out that we had biked significantly off the Tony Knowles Coastal Trail trail and were now by the airport. Yes, Ted Stevens Int'l - the place where we came in. So much for renting a car, we totally could have biked to the hostel. Anyway, it was getting late (10 or so), so we were concerned it would start to get dark soon (and we hadn't eaten dinner). So we took a quick break for trail mix and to watch the mountains, swapped bikes and headed back. I understand why
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On the way back, we passed a family staring off into the distance.
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Anyway, we got back to the hostel well before 11:30 sundown, ate, and I said minchah at about 11. According to
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And it was evening, and it was morning, the second day.
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Date: 2007-06-25 07:09 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2007-06-25 11:39 pm (UTC)mud flats urban legend
Date: 2007-07-17 11:32 pm (UTC)No one that I have ever heard of has had their legs ripped off by helicopter. The last person to die out there got stuck at low tide and rescuers were unable to get her out in time before cold water rose above her head. They gave her an air bottle to breath from but she got hypothermic, weak, and drowned. They removed her body at the next low tide.
We now use a water-injection system which liquifies the mud and silt even more around a trapped person's legs, then we pull them onto a wooden board we lay nearby. Since we have used this method we have 100% success rate. The old air-injection system did not work very well.
Don't get me wrong, the mud flats can be very dangerous, but the stories of people dying every year and getting legs ripped off by helicopter are the stuff of myth - hopefully it will stay that way.
Hope this info helps.