Williwaw, Whittier and Girdwood

The Williwaw Campground is at mile 4 of Portage Glacier Road on the way to Whittier, AK. It is an idyllic area, sitting beside Williwaw Creek near the town of Girdwood, Alaska and where we would spend the weekend before returning to Anchorage. We all arrived on Saturday, July 20th and found three campsites together and close enough to hear the waterfalls from the mountains above the creek.

The campground sits in the Portage Valley of the eastern Kenai Peninsula in the Chugach National Forest. The Forest, spanning 5,361,803 acres is comprised of arid tundra wilderness, jagged mountains, deep fjords and glacier-fed rivers that surround the Prince William Sound.

The area is a great place to view numerous glaciated valleys and the Portage Glacier. Over the past 80 years, the glacier calved large icebergs into Portage Lake, located just east of the campground. We traveled here to visit two very different places.

If you drive the Portage Glacier Road heading east from Williwaw Campground for about 3 1/2 miles you pass through Anton Anderson Memorial Tunnel, the longest combined vehicle-railroad tunnel in North America. On the other side of the tunnel you arrive at the pristine wilderness at the head of Passage Canal and find the city of Whittier nestled between breathtaking mountains, emerald forests, and a sparkling blue sea. Whittier is a gateway to the mesmerizing wilderness of the Prince William Sound and each summer, thousands of visitors arrive at this magnificent city by ship, train, or car. We visited Whittier for just the afternoon, driving in after setting up our campsite back at the Williwaw Campground.

The town of Whittier has a colorful history but really got established just before the second world war. Shortly before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, Simon Bolivar Buckner Jr., the American general in charge of Alaska’s nascent Defense Command, began looking for a location for a secret military installation to ferry troops and cargo to the growing hubs of Anchorage and Fairbanks in the Alaskan interior, where strategically important airfields and army facilities were being built. Buckner’s proposed base had three provisos: access to an ice-free deep-water port, natural protection from airstrikes, and radar-unfriendly topography. The rugged nodule of land at the head of Passage Canal, with its seemingly omnipresent clouds and impassable mountains, fit the bill perfectly.

Indeed, the mountains around what would become Whittier were so impassable, the military first had to blast a hole through them to link the proposed port by rail to Anchorage, 60 miles away. Although there was already a rail link from Anchorage to Seward, 58 miles to Whittier’s south, the existing line was in poor condition and subject to avalanches, sabotage, and winter closures.

The genius behind the tunneling operation was Anton Anderson, a New Zealander who came to the U.S. in 1914 as a surveyor before graduating from Seattle University with a degree in civil engineering. By 1916, Anderson had installed himself in the U.S. territory of Alaska, where he played a key role in the development of the burgeoning Alaska Railroad. The Whittier project was a trickier proposition. Two successive tunnel segments were needed to connect the planned military facility to the main Seward–Anchorage railroad along a 14-mile spur.

Tunnel digging began in November 1941 and, despite two-story snow drifts and subzero temperatures, was completed a year later, six months ahead of schedule. The project had taken on a new urgency in June 1942 when the Imperial Japanese Navy took aim at the Aleutian Islands—bombing Dutch Harbor on Unalaska and invading the outlying islands of Attu and Kiska—and turned Alaska into an active theater of war. The volume of traffic on the Alaska Railroad quickly tripled as defenses were shored up to prevent a full-scale Japanese attack of mainland Alaska, with fortifications taking shape at Fort McGilvray near Seward, Fort Richardson close to Anchorage, and Ladd Field outside Fairbanks.

Some fun facts about the Anton Anderson Memorial Tunnel include:

1. (13,300 feet or 2.5 miles). Longest combined rail and highway use tunnel in North America. First U.S. tunnel with jet turbine and portal fan ventilation.

2. One way traffic. Whittier Tunnel traffic alternates direction every half hour. You can enter into Whittier at the bottom of the hour (at the 1/2 hour mark). Traffic leaves Whittier on the top of the hour.

3. It takes approximately 6 minutes at 25 MPH to travel through the tunnel at a cost of $13 round-trip for Class 'A' vehicle. With our RV (Class B2) the trip is more expensive and would be $32 not including the cost of an RV site.

Whittier isn't very large, so visiting the town is an easy day trip. We only spent a couple of hours there to eat lunch, ice cream and purchase gasoline for our generators back at camp. Princess Cruises had a ship in port and it appeared that many of the passengers from the ship boarded the Alaska Railroad for the day. We returned through the tunnel past some impressive views of the Portage Glacier Lake on our way back to camp.

On Sunday, we realized that this would be the last day to spend with Jeff and Dana Guidi before the end of their Alaska adventure. They hadn't seen much of the Alaskan wildlife, so we made plans to visit the nearby Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center in the morning.

The Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center (AWCC) is a sanctuary dedicated to preserving Alaska’s wildlife through conservation, education, research and quality animal care. Most of the animals that have come to AWCC have either been orphaned or injured. With consent from the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, animals taken in by AWCC are cared for by animal care staff and are given a permanent home at AWCC.

Admission was $25 per person and overall a bit of a disappointment for all of us. The roads into the Center are poorly maintained for the amount of vehicle traffic they receive. Unfortunately, many of the animals were difficult to view in their enclosures. Either they were hiding, sleeping or just difficult to see past the natural plants inside their habitats. A raised viewing platform was available over the bear enclosure which was a welcomed feature. Other raised walkways would add benefit and a recommendation I would suggest. Even though I didn't really enjoy the experience, I felt some satisfaction about the money going to a worthy cause helping either orphaned or injured wildlife. But I couldn't escape the impression that we had just visited a low-budget zoo. The irony for me frankly was I had seen more wildlife in the "wild" over the last six weeks than we did at the AWCC facility.

Following our visit to the Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center, Karen and I along with Jeff and Dana drove up to the town of Girdwood, Alaska for lunch. Karen needed to connect to the internet to do some work for an hour, so we left her at a small, local coffee house and went exploring further up the road. We found the Alyeska Resort, a premier year-round destination, featuring over 300-rooms, many fine dining experiences, a saltwater pool, ski mountain and bike park along with the new Nordic Spa.

The resort facilities also include an aerial tram that take a seven-minute scenic ride from Alyeska Resort to the top of Mt. Alyeska. At an elevation of 2300 feet, one can witness frosty views of the Turnagain Arm, up to seven “hanging” glaciers, and endless peaks deep into the Chugach Mountain range.

Had I known more about the resort we could have had lunch at the deli at the top of the tram! Bummer Karen wasn't with us too. She could have worked there instead. We only looked around but I made a point to remember this resort for a future trip back to Alaska. This is a bucket list item for sure!