Byron Glacier trail
— the cold the glacier sends down the creek.
Not only on a wall.
Byron Glacier trail, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
Each tile ships in a kraft box, tied with cream ribbon, with a handwritten note from the studio if you'd like to add one.
Three or five different vistas, hung together — a chapter of places you've been, or want to go.
“A short walk in the Chugach, less than a mile from the road, along Byron Creek through alder and cottonwood to the moraine below the ice. The air gets colder as you go. In July the fireweed is up along the path and the glacier still leans on the north flank of Byron Peak the way it has for as long as anyone has counted.
The place, in three passes.
Byron Glacier sits in Chugach National Forest near Portage Lake, about 50 miles southeast of Anchorage by way of the Seward Highway. The trail begins at a small lot off Portage Glacier Road, just past the Begich, Boggs Visitor Center, and runs roughly 0.8 miles through alder and cottonwood along Byron Creek to a moraine view of the glacier on the north flank of Byron Peak. The route is mostly flat and stays below treeline. It is brown bear country, and the loose ice at the snout is not safe to approach.
The air on the path is glacier-cooled. Byron Creek runs straight off the ice, and a steady downdraft moves cold air through the alder corridor even in mid-summer. Near the parking lot, just above sea level, an afternoon may sit in the low sixties, while the moraine view a half mile in feels ten degrees cooler. Ice worms, a centimeter long and black, surface on the firn at dusk to feed on pollen and algae. They are one of very few animals on earth that live their whole lives in ice.
The trail is walkable most of the year but the character changes by month. Snow covers the path into May, and avalanche debris from the slopes above Byron Peak can linger across the route into June. July and August bring fireweed, dwarf dogwood, and salmonberry along the corridor, and the longest light. September is short and clear; by late October the creek bed is freezing and a thin crust of new snow returns. The glacier itself has been retreating for decades, and the moraine view is a little farther from the ice each summer.
