Nature
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The Nenana River joins the Tanana River sixty miles downstream, and both are part of the vast Yukon River watershed that ultimately empties into the Bering Sea, with a drainage area larger than Texas. Many Alaskan rivers carry glacial silt created as massive glaciers move down mountainsides, grinding rock and ice against bedrock; when the glaciers melt, this fine sediment enters rivers and streams and turns the water cloudy gray or milky white. In nearby Nenana, people mark the end of winter with the Nenana Ice Classic on the Tanana River, where ice typically exceeds thirty inches thick in winter and a wooden tripod connected by a three-hundred-foot rope to a clock on shore falls when spring melting breaks the ice. Since 1917, locals and visitors have placed bets predicting the exact date and time of the break-up, down to the second. Even with significant glacial silt, the Nenana River and its tributaries support salmon, Arctic grayling, Dolly Varden trout, and other interior Alaska fish, and heavy sediment loads also create braided rivers such as the Tanana.
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Healy, Alaska · United States
