My friend Brad and I decided to snowmachine the Placer River Valley on a beautiful Sunday afternoon.  The conditions were perfect and we ended up going allot further than we anticipated.  Here's Brad jumping off the bank of the river.

I've heard rumors of people going up Spencer Glacier all the way to Blackstone Bay in Prince Willaim Sound but we had never tried it before.  After glassing the glacier and assessing the situation we decided to check it out.  Here's a map so you can follow our route.  This is the start of the glacier.  There are some very steep hills to climb just to get the base of the glacier which took me three tries to get up.

As you can see Spencer Glacier has allot of crevasses.  It's like going through a maze trying to find the correct route.  He had to retrace our steps a couple times.  Glaciers can be very dangerous as well.  There are numerous hidden voids beneath us.  Fortunately the snow was very solid and had not yet begun to melt.  We wore our avalanche beacons on this trip and we brought some rope.

After traveling for 25 miles on snow and ice over a thousand feet thick we came to the end of Northland Glacier overlooking Blackstone Bay.  It was an impressive site!

It was time to celebrate and enjoy the view.  We enjoyed the vista below with our binoculars.  The water was flat calm and we could see pieces of ice floating in the bay.

Here you can see Willard Island on the right, Port Wells in the far right corner, and Passage Canal in the far left corner.  I have camped in this bay with my boat numerous times.