Kennicott River Floods Early in the Spring

Early on Thursday morning, April 16, 2026, David (Rowland) looked out his window overlooking an upper section of the Kennicott River and saw blue over the whole river. A few minutes later, I awoke to lots of loud popping noises. I had my suspicions about what the noise was, but the true clarification did not come till David left for work and drove down to look at the river and promptly came back and told us that the river is now open. 

Based on what David had seen early in the morning, he speculated that Hidden Lake may have let out and flooded the river. Then, after the river was flooded, it caused the ice shelf to break, hence making many consecutive loud popping noises. Then, after the ice broke, a smooth channel formed in the river, and the higher waters that had flooded the river were then “flushed” out. 

The girls and I put on our gear and walked out to see the river. The clean crystal blue color of the open river looked so refreshing and delicious, but I knew better than to approach the tempting waters of the river. The slushy snow leading to the open channel was not to be trusted, but as I looked over the open river, I knew I wanted to see more of what had happened to the river and the lake above.

The girls and I then went back to the house and mounted our trusted snowmachine to drive to look over the lake at the toe of the glacier. And looking out over the lake, aside from the expected overflow as you get onto the lake, the snow did not appear to be broken anywhere and looked fine, but I was not about to go down and try to cross it, knowing what had happened just around the bend. 

Well, I wanted to find where the water had broken open from this layer of “ice” and snow on the lake. So we turned our snowmachine around and headed towards the bridge. We parked our snowmachine and walked over the bridge on foot, then we started our ascent up the hill to look out over where the river comes out of the lake and see where the water begins to flow from under the snow. 

Without snowshoes, the deep snow made it a cautious climb, needing for me to crawl up the hill on my hands and knees to spread out my weight over the snow and not sink in. When we reached the top, I was able to see where the river opened from the lake.

Just the day before, early in the morning, I had the privilege to enjoy a wonderful skate ski on snow crust, which consisted of open snow along the properties that bordered the river and skiing across on the river to cross over as well. Aside from locations on the river that had been open all winter and a couple soft locations along the rivers’ edge, the river appeared to still be solid to cross for a least a little bit longer. 

David did note that he followed the open water down the river and found it to go back under the ice and snow/slush not too much farther down the river, around the other locations that I had observed were open the day before on my ski. Crossing the river on the lower area where it had not broken through was still doable but, with each day above freezing, these conditions change and will soon probably have an open channel as well. 

Many neighbors were caught off guard on Thursday when they were headed towards mail and went to cross the river, then found out they could not safely cross the river. This early flooding of the river is notable in that it is not normal to happen so abruptly, but the speculations of Hidden Lake going out and causing this early breakup of the river are just speculations at this time and have not been confirmed. Crossing the Kennicott River and the Glacier Lake is not recommended to be safe anymore due to the mass amounts of slush, overflow and the open waters. 

After the following weekend of a wintry mix of snowfall at above freezing temperatures, the stability of the snow is declining. No matter how you try to cross a deep pile of snow, it is bound to fall in under you at some place. Tuesday morning it was just enough below freezing (29 F) to make the snow a little bit crusty again, so I ventured out on our property to see if the crust was good and how the river looked. Ida woke up mid-way through my ski and asked to join me on my venture. 

The night was not cold enough to make the crust able to hold an adult’s weight, so I stuck to the already made trails mostly, but Ida was able to float on top just fine. The river, on the other hand, looks like it did get cold enough to start to refreeze again. There is a thin ice layer over most of what was a beautiful blue icy channel last Thursday. Does this refreeze trend show the river flood last week being caused by a source other than merely just the snow on the lake and river melting, such as a lake in the glacier letting out?