Flats Panoramics

Some final panoramics of the south end scenery from our recent float trip.  Such big country, and so empty.

Another cool aspect of the scenery is that since it is part of the Kodiak Refugium, and hence not glaciated during the last glaciation, the mountains are more 'rolling' and less rocky than on the rest of the archipelago.  The mountains lack the cirques, tors, aretes, nunataks, hanging valleys and other glacially created features that are so common elsewhere on the island.

However, while the area may not have been covered with ice you do see plenty of evidence for the last glaciation.  As I mentioned in an earlier post the area was covered with huge glacially dammed lakes, and today these lake beds are the ubiquitous swampy plains - our 'Mordor'.  But you can also see evidence for HUGE rivers that once drained glaciers and that no longer exist.  The ancient rivers carved out deep valleys and then ceased to exist when the glacier melted somewhere else and created a new channel to the sea.  And on the margins of the Refugium you can still see evidence for the glacial moraines that marked the edges and ends of the ice sheet that covered the rest of the island.

When the ice sheet finally retreated it stopped blocking up the rivers that created the big lakes.  It was like removing a dam all at once and there were massive floods when all the water in the lakes flowed out to the sea in just a day or so.  The landscape of the lower portions of the Ayakulik River show evidence for such floods.  There the massive floods dug a canyon and even created islands in the canyon that could only have been created by a massive flood - the water was flowing on both sides of the 'islands' during the flood.  It would have been as if the Ayakulik River held the water of the Mississippi River for a day.  Imagine watching that river pouring into the ocean 18,000 years ago!
Patrick