“The Woz”

The Woznesenski Glacier is a 5 mile long chunk of ice that spills off the icefields 4000’ above the shore of Kachemak Bay State Park. The glacier is tucked away amongst many of it’s brothers it in a remote area of Alaska’s Kenai Peninsula. It’s proximity (and prominent visibility) from the town of Homer make it a fantastic destination for an adventure….and adventure we shall.

Over 10 years ago, I was fortunate enough to visit Halibut Cove, located directly across Kachemak Bay from the town of Homer. It was a wonderful little art focused island rimmed with boardwalks, and presented a simpler way of life. As satisfying and beautiful as Halibut Cove was, I schemed how to access the ice no more than a couple miles away. Years later we visited the area again utilizing a water taxi on an adventure that pushed our wilderness skills of the time to access the opposite shores of Kachemak Bay and the sprawling Grewingk Glacier. So…long story short: I knew it was good over there…I just didnt know how good.

Flash forward 10 years, we have now spent a decade learning new skills, obtaining new equipment. We now had packrafts and we had cut our teeth in the Wrangells in 2017 and 2018 on back to back wilderness packraft traverses. We’re getting better at this games and were looking for a good adventure and perhaps an introduction for combining skis and packrafts.

The “Woz”, as the Woznesenski Glacier is affectionately known by locals, presented itself as low hanging fruit in the area with an acceptable landing zone for a float plane from the nearby float base a mere 20 miles away in the town of Homer. It also had a relatively straightforward looking outflow river, only 11 miles long, with splashy, but not scary looking whitewater. After a comprehensive search of the net I was surprised to have come across three critical trip reports that describe the area. This is a luxury rarely afforded in these remote wilderness areas. None of the articles were particularly forthcoming on exacting details but by georeferencing a few photos by lining them up with Google Earth, I got a pretty good idea of what I was looking at.

The Wizard of Woz

Kenai Backcountry Adventures

Joe Stock

After combing through satellite imagery, internet sources, topographicals, the plan was to fly to the Woznesenski outflow lake via float plane. Set up a base camp, leaving the packrafts down at the beach. We would then ascend the glacier to the 3000′ range on ski and set up a basecamp. After a day or ski touring we would descend to the boats and float out the Woznesenski River to the salt water and a waiting water taxi.

Problem! Mere weeks before we were to arrive, I accessed the most updated imagery of the area (only 2 days old) via the Sentinel Satellite data and discovered a MAJOR PROBLEM. The glaciers boundaries, clearly pictures in the satellite imagery of Google, Bing, and ESRI, was absolutely incorrect. The terminus of the glacier, in the time since those aerial photos had been taken, has essentially collapsed and now is over a mile further back that the non-dated imagery presented on google/bing/esri and a huge glacial lake stood in it’s place. Big problem.

Unfortunate weather lead to a delay of departure from the float lake in Homer. Furthermore, the forecast continued to look bleak throughout the duration of the trip. An untimely soar throat started to set in as an unpleasant tickle that I noticed just hours before I flight. UGH! With the forecasts as they were, we were forced to abandon the idea of skis very quickly. Camping and skiing in pea-soup is something I’ve done many times and find somewhat unpleasant…. especially when it appears that your becoming increasingly confident that you have contracted a cold with every hour that passes. Anyways, we set out now with the intention of basecamping at the lake and visiting the toe of the glacier rather than skiing high up on it.

Just as the sentinel sattelite imagery had suggested, the terminus of the Woz has experienced rapid deflation and retreat. From the boundary of where Google imagery had suggested we would be walking on ice, we threaded our packrafts through the icy remnants of the toe of the Woz. Of note, walking alongside the banks of the now lake, looked darn near impossible due to the freshly exposed, steep, chossy banks. Honestly, the paddle through the maze of icebergs choking the waterway below the glacier was a novel experience, however, the were so tight it’s hard to fathom doing so with a boat loaded with gear. The agility required to quickly turn and sneak through a tight passage to more open water behind it would be considerably more challenging in a fully loaded packraft.

After a little bobbing around at the toe of the glacier we made our we back to camp and then out to Kachemak Bay the next morning. The Woznesenski River was a pleasant class 2 float. As I remember it, there wasn’t a tremendous amount of consequence and it was just some good old fashion splashy fun. The float took a couple hours, becoming very braded near the bay itself.

The water taxi was right on time, as planned. We piled on and dreamed of lattes and a hot lunch. And for me…I was most interested in some cough & cold medicine which I had unfortunately forgotten. Interestingly, when the gate on the water taxi dropped a pleasant old dog jumped off the boat to greet us. He had a familiar look about it and after we reviewed some old photos from 2013 we confirmed that it was the same boat, and the same dog!!! everyone was just a little grayer.