In cold water/Facebook
Updated Jan. 29, 2020: The Jeep has been freed.
A small army of fellow four-wheel-drive adventurers helped pull it from the ice on Tuesday. Colby Davis shot an excellent video is which now posted on YouTube: click here.
Meanwhile, another member of the group posted on Facebook an aerial photo of why it’s a good idea not to get too close to these glaciers no matter how you’re traveling – by Jeep, by snowmachine, by fat bike, by skis, on foot….
The pressure ridges to the right of the trapped Jeep are caused by the glacier pushing into the Knik River lagoon. The area of active ice is far less stable than the ice on the lagoon itself.
Why the Jeep didn’t quickly disappear from sight after falling through the ice remains something of a mystery. A riverboat operator who was in the lagoon in summer reported the fathometer on his boat was showing water 500 feet deep in the area.
Original story:
Everyone was reported to have escaped safely from a Jeep that ended up in the Knik River lagoon while adventuring near the Knik Glacier on Sunday.
Photos of the half-sunken Jeep were all over social media by evening, but the driver and passengers remain unknown.
Attention has focused on skaters, skiers, hikers and fat bikers on Portage Lake, and snowmachine operators, fat bikers and skiers in the Placer River valley about 50 miles southeast of the Anchorage and the Knik valley some 50 miles northeast of the city.
People power themselves across Portage Lake to the Portage Glacier once the lake freezes over. Elsewhere, snowmachines usually set the trails to the Skookum and Spencer glaciers in the Placer valley, and the Knik Glacier at the head of the Knik River.
Fat bikers and cross-country skiers, sometimes mobs of them, flow in on the snow-packed trails. Wheeled-vehicle access is usually blocked by the November and December snowfalls.
That didn’t happen in 2019, the warmest year in Alaska’s recorded history. It rained as much or more than it snowed in the normally snowy months of November and December.Many lakes and rivers remained unfrozen or only partially frozen as the New Year approached.
As 2019 drew to a close, however, temperatures dropped and just kept dropping.
As of Sunday, the monthly temperature average was 12 degrees below zero, and though almost 17 inches of snow had fallen, it was light, fluffy and in many places quickly settled out to less than a foot.
With shallow snow and temperatures down to 20 degrees below zero making ice all across the region, at least one of the glaciers clearly became accessible from the comfort of a warm Jeep.
At least until it wasn’t comfortable.
Although cold is uncomfortable, ice is a major natural gimme.
Before roads were common (why Roman roads were forgotten is weird, but they were), rivers became important transportation corridors, in all places & times where they froze.
Ice is a windfall, an opportunity … and the early bird gets the worm. It’s like finding an acre of mushrooms, or a moose that offers itself.
There can be some complications, going out on the ice. There is a skill-set; experience & practice count.
Despite a few hazards, ice is awesome & welcome every winter, everywhere that has it.
So I know no one who actually is close to Sarah Palin expected her to be divorced and her kids were VERY shocked (took her side).
We who know her knows she had a strong marriage, amassed 10 mil in joint real estate investments and as a couple renovate homes. Only them two know each other. They admitted differences like everyone has but everyone knows they have a deep love for each other an support each other.
That said, I hope good prevails and she gets something from the NYTimes, a very bad publication in many ways. She already received a multi million dollar settlement years ago when she started a defamation suit related to her daughter’s son’s abusive father and his famous lies. Bristol’s amazin older brother was her son’s father for 6 years because Levi is such a lying piece of shit with a mentally ill sister.
Truth prevails. The Palins had amazing Christmas as a family of 7. And they’ve been happy despite a decade of abuse, all of which Sarah and Todd detailed 2 months ago when they were in Texas an North Carolina together. There is not a closer, better, stronger, more humble or kinder family. AND that is somthing no pathetic liberal or liar can erase.
I am trying to really enjoy the beauty of that surrounds that picture but, just cannot.
I took that picture lol!
“Mama says stupid is as stupid does” – Forrest Gump
The stupid is strong with this one.
Whatever it could’ve happened to anyone. Glaciers shift and shit happens.