Valdez

The road into Valdez was spectacular to say the least, we had a lovely sunny, cool day and drove by glaciers, waterfalls, over a pass and dropped sharply down into the sound.

Another glacier dropping down from Mt Witherspoon. The Valdez Glacier also dropping from Mt Witherspoon surrounded old Valdez, it split into two as it came down to the sea and that was where the gold prospectors were dropped from the ships when the gold rush started into 1898 as it was the easiest to access the glacier up which the prospectors climbed to get through the mountains onto Dawson City, in the Yukon.

The decent down into the sound, engine brake working overtime,  those  poles are not street lighting but are to mark the edge of the pavement for the snow plows in the winter.

Bridle Veil Falls.

Our camp site over looking the upper reaches of the sound. Old Valdez at the foot of the Valdez Glacier was hit with a 9.2 measured earthquake for five minutes in 1964. The water front, wharf and 62 people lost their lives as the tsunami hit in three waves.  Buildings on the waterfront were washed away and water flooded the rest of the town.  Within three years they moved the town down the inlet two miles onto solid ground as liquefaction destroyed what the water did not.  Some of the buildings that survived were up rooted and rolled down the road to a new site. It was also here in 1989 that the Exxon Valdez filled and ran aground as it exited Prince William Sound.