Here is some scenery at Icy Bay, to bad the sun was the wrong place on Landing but I wasn’t going to do it again for a better shot. Pucker factor was right up there. It is definitely something I will never forget.
I flew from Seward to Homer in a Twin Otter over the Harding Ice Field 28 years ago and couldn’t believe there weren’t a ton of companies offering sightseeing flights there from Anchorage. It’s absolutely stunning.Floyd, was it the landing or all of the snow/ice that gave you the "Pucker" factor?
When I first started flying, I few over the Harding Ice Field in my 172 and it gave me the creeps: ~700 square miles of uninhabited snow and ice (1100 square miles if you include the glaciers). Flight was between Seward and Homer Alaska.
I flew from Seward to Homer in a Twin Otter over the Harding Ice Field 28 years ago and couldn’t believe there weren’t a ton of companies offering sightseeing flights there from Anchorage. It’s absolutely stunning.
Went back last summer and found it’s just like I remembered it. One of my favorite places in Alaska.
The 700 sm Harding Ice field is great because of it's proximity to Anchorage. Yet, just the east of Icy Bay is the 1,500 sm Malaspina glacier and to the west is the 2,000 sm Bering glacier. Both of these glaciers, as well as Icy Bay, are fed by a several hundred miles long glacial field that flows out of the Chugach Mountains and beyond. Just flying this stretch is beyond words. If you want to explore glaciers while in Alaska, come to McCarthy in the Wrangell - St. Elias mountains. Plenty of low level flying and landing in the area, and yet it is the most glaciated area of North America and has 9 of the 16 highest mountains in North America.
Thanks for that, Eric. It will help me sell my recommended route to the team . Any advice on a good information source for back country strips we could visit? I’m sure there are plenty that aren’t on the sectionals.