As glaciers inch their way along, they typically push rocks, gravel, and powdered rock (flour) into a long mound called a moraine. When the glacier recedes, the melt water is trapped by the moraine, and a lake forms. Icebergs floating in the lake are chunks that break off the glacier as it melts in the summer. Perhaps Portage or one of its neighbors dug the trench that is now the Turnagain Arm of the Cook Inlet.

This pond winds beside the highway west of Portage. We're looking southeast toward the Kenai Mountains on the southeast edge of the Kenai Peninsula.