Vistas of Coal
Posted by Erin on 26 Jul 2010 | Tagged as: trip preparation
Coal seams on upper Lignite Creek
It seemed a little odd that a trip that seemed so work-like attracted such a crowd. Beyond me, Hig, and Katmai, we had my mother (visiting for the summer), our friend Kendra, and her 14 year-old dog. All for a 5-day trek whose basic concept was to hike a big circle around Usibelli’s coal mines.
Our route promised some ridgeline walks and mountaintop views. And at 5 days, in open terrain, with a smattering of 4-wheeler trails and roads to help us along, it also promised to be relatively easy. But the trip was nearly back to back with our Chuitna expedition. And in the few days of chaotic preparation and the long drive to Healy, I hadn’t really managed to work up much excitement about the journey.
Climbing Jumbo Dome
On a map of Alaska, my eyes are drawn to the glaciers and fjords, coastlines, and dramatic topography. The only thing that stood out about Usibelli was the coal mines. Coal mines?
This was a trek to look at coal. Coal in the ground, coal being dug up, and the landscapes left behind. We spent the winter writing about coal in Alaska, and began the summer with a plan to trek through landscapes where coal might be mined. I thought we would be remiss not to visit Alaska’s only coal mine. But I wasn’t sure how much we would learn by doing so, or how interesting these vistas of coal were likely to be.
Shrubby Cinquefoil
The Unwilderness
Bypassing Denali Park, and the string of tourist-luring shops along the highway, we turned off where the long-idle “Healy Clean Coal Plant” towered into the sky. It lives up to its name. The only clean coal plant is the one that’s not running.
Stripes of shiny black coal stood out against the light grey and brown of the surrounding rocks, shifting to brick red where the coal seams had burned underground. We climbed through a twisting canyon, its soft rock sculpted into wavy ridges and improbable spires, with spruce trees and wildflowers perching on their peaks.
From the 4-wheeler trail on the ridge, shifting spots of sun lit up the river valley to the east, along with an old abandoned mine. To the north, Usibelli’s giant earth mover “Ace in the Hole” swung slowly back and forth in the distance, gleaming yellow-orange against the grey and black of Two Bull Ridge Mine. The tall peaks of the Alaska Range were obscured by clouds, but we were surrounded by lesser mountains. Rain squalls came and went as we walked among the wildflowers. Rainbows touched down in Gold Run Pass Mine.
Two Bull Ridge Mine is the main place where Usibelli Coal Mine gets its coal.
In the 5 days of our trek, we could nearly always see a coal mine. Mining roads and 4-wheeler trails looped along valleys and ridgelines, forming a significant chunk of our route. It was the most un-wilderness trek I’ve done in Alaska. In spite of this, it was… awesome.
Middle of Nowhere vs Middle of Nowhere
If I expected a look at Usibelli to give me a sense of what might happen at Chuitna, or at other coal prospects across the state, I was mistaken. Joined only by the presence of coal, one piece of wilderness is not a model for another.
Oil in a spring along Lignite Creek
Usibelli is a dry feet kind of place. I’m used to wading through swamps, and rivers, and slush, and creeks… Here, the biggest river we encountered was calf-deep, and most of the creeks were non-existent. On the plus side, mosquitoes were rare. On the minus side, drinking water was equally rare, and we were forced into filling our bottles from puddles and pools – searching for the one puddle on a ridge that didn’t have moose poop actually in it (we sterilized the water). One attractive looking spring turned out to provide only salty water, while others oozed sulfurous smells and bright colors that kept us from even trying them.
This rock is partially melted and stained red and black, probably by a natural coal fire in a seam near it.
I couldn’t imagine a more different ecosystem than Chuitna. Beaver dams, marshes, and grassy meadows between birch trees were replaced by tundra ridges of wildflowers, and forests of slender cone-shaped spruce. At Chuitna, we walked into a different environment every 20 minutes. Here, the tundra stretched for miles. It was less wet, less lush, less green, less diverse. Even when we did walk through former wetlands, many were quite dry, and thick with young spruce seedlings. We wondered if there once was permafrost beneath them, now melted and drained.
Each of Usibelli’s mines is smaller than the pit planned for Chuitna. And Usibelli is a different company than PacRim Coal. But more importantly, the north side of the Alaska Range is nothing like the west side of Cook Inlet.
Near Jumbo Dome we encountered a fledging Great Horned Owl perched on a coal seam. It posed for a good ten minutes while we took photos.
Coal everywhere
In Chuitna, we looked hard for a photo of “coal in Alaska.” We never found it. But here, coal was everywhere. Barren bluffs of grey and tan were shot through with stripes of gleaming back. Coal chunks, and cinders from natural coal fires, are scattered along river beds. A just-fledging owl perched on a coal seam, watching us nervously.
Walking through an abandoned mine, our feet crunched on shards of fractured coal. I passed Katmai a fragment, and he promptly stuck it in his mouth, smearing the black crumbs around his face.
Coal is so easy to find… I wonder if this is why the area was mined so long ago – the coal was obvious to anyone walking by.
A moose wandered across this settling pond at the partially reclaimed Gold Run Pass mine.
By planting grass and terracing slopes, reclamation crews are attempting to reduce erosion in the closed Poker Flats coal mine.
Most of Usibelli’s reclamation sites don’t look like much right now. Gullies erode deep furrows into mountains of grey overburden. Grass mix grows on planted slopes, followed by patches of scrubby willow and alders. Eventually large trees will grow, and forests will replace the silty gullies. But I suspect that even 100 years from now, the outlines of the mines will be obvious from the air.
Coal is our dirtiest fuel, and both mining it and burning it have substantial costs over other forms of energy – from the large footprint of the mines, to the global warming impact of burning it (more CO2 per unit energy than gas or oil), to the mercury and pollutants it puts into the air. But if you’re going to have a coal mine, the Healy area seems like a pretty good place to choose. Erosion is high. The few streams that have water are full of silt, and often have strange colors and smells from the minerals leaching into them – both upstream and downstream of the mines. The piles of loose silt and rock left behind by the miners are glaring to the eye. But in their drainage and erosion, they’re similar to many of the slopes already here.
Are we Allowed?
In a trip whose whole purpose was to circle active coal mines, we were necessarily much less remote than usual. Which meant that a good part of the route, and the worry, was figuring out just where we were supposed to be.
The trucks went by one after the other, seemingly every minute, sending up great clouds of dust on the main Lignite Creek road. We approached nervously, crouching in the bushes to watch the traffic pass, then scurrying down to cross the road.
“Don’t look furtive!” Hig warned. “Look ignorant!”
We watched machinery pull coal out of Two Bull Ridge mine during a tour after our trek.
No one saw us. Down in the creek bottom and away from the road, I breathed more easily. Truthfully, I wasn’t really sure if we were legal or not. Much of the area leased by Usibelli was state land – public by default. Clearly, it would be illegal (and reckless) to go anywhere near the active mining. And other than that quick road crossing, we were well away from any activity. The abandoned mines were more of a grey area. No longer a safety hazard, did they revert to public access? I doubted even Usibelli’s workers knew. As hikers, we were not troubled by road gates, and we approached things from unusual directions. We were never forced to answer the question.
Poor Dog
I doubt I’d recommend our route to a fellow adventurer with no interest in coal issues. But in the end, it was a great trip, and not just for the energy geeks.
Here along the north side of the Alaska Range young spruce are sprouting out of marshes. This may be evidence that these marshes are draining as permafrost melts out beneath them.
But while all five human participants generally enjoyed the adventure, I’m not so sure about poor Sam. In hindsight, bringing a 14 year old out-of-shape dog on a 5 day backpacking trip seems more than a little stupid. But Kendra (Sam’s owner) didn’t really know what she was getting her into. We should have known better.
In assessing backcountry expeditions, Hig and I both suffer from the problem of a seriously skewed baseline. Consciously or not, I measure every trip against our epic year-long journey (and the shorter but still intense ones that came before). Everything we’re doing now seems easy in comparison. Low key. If it’s a trip fit for a toddler and a pregnant lady, it must be doable for pretty much anyone, right? Several days of thick bushwhacking and difficult navigation between Lone Ridge and the Beluga River? No problem. Scrambling up and down the steep sides of Jumbo Dome on a field of boulders? No problem.
Fire left this forest a tapestry of colors… black charcoal, red and yellow singed leaves, and green untouched forest.
Sometimes I forget that 10 years ago, I was a fit 20-year-old who considered herself a backpacker. Yet, I’d never been out for more than 3 or 4 days at a time. I’d never been away from a system of well-marked trails. My one and a half year old has done more. We talk almost apologetically about our trips these days, trying not to invite the comparison with what we’ve done before: “Well, it’s nothing that big, but we’re taking our toddler out for a week long backpacking trip… And we’ll be out in the Arctic for a month this summer – going pretty slowly” Maybe we ought to be a little more proud.
