{"id":729,"date":"2026-04-17T08:35:32","date_gmt":"2026-04-17T08:35:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sstutor.com\/writings\/?p=729"},"modified":"2026-04-17T08:47:44","modified_gmt":"2026-04-17T08:47:44","slug":"usa-2024-part-27","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sstutor.com\/writings\/usa-2024-part-27\/","title":{"rendered":"USA Part 27 – Change in plans"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Around 10 am, we were supposed to be at the ice hiking office. Moorthy and I were up by 8.
\u201cMan, this pain has got worse,\u201d Moorthy said.
\u201cWhat happened? You fell at night?\u201d
\u201cNo. Yesterday I tripped in Whittier.\u201d
I recalled the incident when he tripped over a cable protruding from the ground. It seemed like an innocuous incident back then!
\u201cI didn\u2019t have much pain yesterday, but today it\u2019s bad. Can walk but steps may be hard.\u201d
Rakesh came down the stairs.
\u201cWe\u2019ll get something for breakfast?\u201d
Since Raghav wouldn\u2019t have breakfast, the three of us decided to eat something and be back.
\u201cLet me test walking on the steps.\u201d
And he was wincing in pain the minute he put his weight.
\u201cLet\u2019s have breakfast, and then we can take a call.\u201d
Rakesh drove the car so that Moorthy could rest his knee; we drove back to the downtown area we were in last night and parked over there. There was a restaurant called Zudy\u2019s Cafe that was open, and on the way, we crossed the Alaska Sea Life Centre. I ordered a salmon breakfast sandwich; Rakesh had Belgian waffles, and Moorthy had egg and cheese. There were quite a lot of diners in the place, and some large groups as well. Seemed like a popular morning spot. This setting also had that old-school feeling of the 1980s – nice, quaint cafe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n
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Our cabin<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Zudys<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Breakfast<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

At 10 am, we were back in our cabin. Moorthy was still in pain, and so we abandoned the hiking plan.
Raghav talked to the operator, but they said nothing could be done.
\u201cIs there some wheelchair assistance available?\u201d 
We knew we were pushing our luck, but no harm in asking. This was meant to be a hike.
\u201cWheelchair will be available, but can\u2019t be used for the hike.\u201d
\u201cIs there anything else that we could do?\u201d
\u201cThere is a flat trail that we can have a guide for you.\u201d
I guessed that it was one of the initial hikes that were listed in Exit Glacier – just that they\u2019d have a person along with us providing commentary. We opted out of that.
\u201cCan you provide a refund?\u201d
\u201cUnfortunately, since there is no time for someone else to fill up the position, we won\u2019t be able to do a refund. And there are no names on the waiting list. But if someone does come, then we\u2019d be able to refund.\u201d
They took only a small group on the hike each day. If no one is already on the waiting list, it is unlikely that anyone will sign up within the next hour.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI can just wait down while you guys go and come,\u201d Moorthy said.
\u201cBut it will be around 5 hours or more, and you\u2019d just be waiting.\u201d We decided it wouldn\u2019t be right – if it were an hour or two, it would have been ok, but 6 hours alone would just be extremely boring.
\u201cWe\u2019ll figure out some other alternative.\u201d
\u201cMaybe can get a knee brace. Might help to some extent in reducing the pain and giving support.\u201d
\u201cAny medical shop nearby?\u201d
\u201cI saw Safeway. Surely they\u2019ll have.\u201d
I knew Safeway was a popular supermarket in Canada; I hadn\u2019t seen one during my US trips so far. But then Alaska is bordered by Canada. Moorthy had to return the brace because the size wasn\u2019t right; instead, he got a crepe bandage and tied it around his knee in the car.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The city<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Safeway<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

We then headed to the Exit glacier hiking operator\u2019s office since it was nearby. The place also doubled as a store, and they had a lot of hiking-related gear available for purchase. We enquired at the front desk about any options we had, but it was pretty much the same as what Raghav had heard on the phone.
\u201cLet\u2019s just go to the exit glacier and see what\u2019s there.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was a 20-minute drive to the place – the road runs parallel to the Resurrection river and as you drive down this road you can see what is called \u2018exit glacier\u2019 – we had seen some pics online and we could get a glimpse of it from the road itself; the Exit Glacier is part of the Kenai Fjords National Park (it\u2019s a park of some 600k acres – not the type of parks we tend to think of – these are massive areas of the state that are designated as park areas). Exit Glacier is one of the glaciers on the \u2018Harding Icefield\u2019 – a large ice sheet that covers a significant part of Alaska, and from this sheet, 40 glaciers flow out (called Harding after the name of the US president who visited it in the 1920s).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And if you are wondering what a glacier is, it is a large accumulation of ice\/snow that originates on land and moves down (moving ice). Happening over multiple decades, this leads to glacier ice (with more snow accumulating than melting over these decades).\u00a0
https:\/\/www.usgs.gov\/faqs\/what-glacier<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was 12:30 pm when we landed outside the Exit Glacier Nature Centre. There were ranger-led walks, but we decided to skip that since we didn\u2019t know how far Moorthy\u2019s knee would hold up.
The notice board had a post-it note from 5 days ago about a female bear and her cubs spotted in the area! 
\u201cThere are 3 trails – the Glacier View Trail looks ok.\u201d
\u201cYeah, it says wheelchair accessible as well. Should be flat terrain then.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Visitor’s center<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Icefield and the glacier<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Warning<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Another trail was the Harding Icefield Trail – the board said it was a strenuous, steep hike one way for 4 miles (6.5 kms) with an elevation of 1km. It said plan for 6 to 8 hours! They did mark a couple of points earlier on the trail that could also be used as turnaround points. Seemed an interesting route – you\u2019d get to see what an ice field looks like – from the pic it seemed like you\u2019d see an endless cover of ice under the blue skies on a sunny day.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Around 10 am, we were supposed to be at the ice hiking office. Moorthy and I were up by 8.\u201cMan, this pain has got worse,\u201d Moorthy said.\u201cWhat happened? You fell at night?\u201d\u201cNo. Yesterday I tripped in Whittier.\u201dI recalled the incident when he tripped over a cable protruding from the ground. It seemed like an innocuous […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-729","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-travelogue","category-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sstutor.com\/writings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/729","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sstutor.com\/writings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sstutor.com\/writings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sstutor.com\/writings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sstutor.com\/writings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=729"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/sstutor.com\/writings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/729\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":740,"href":"https:\/\/sstutor.com\/writings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/729\/revisions\/740"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sstutor.com\/writings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=729"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sstutor.com\/writings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=729"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sstutor.com\/writings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=729"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}