Volcanic overflow ruins salmon return on Alaska river

King Salmon River on the Alaska Peninsula: "No bears, no birds, no fish. It's like someone dropped a bomb on the place."

A new 1,300-foot-wide crater lake near the 7,005-foot summit of Chiginagak, a little known volcano, gushed through its glacial rim earlier this summer and spilled a foul slurry of volcanic sediment, water and ice, said volcanologist Janet Schaeffer. In addition to damaging the upper King Salmon system, the water also leaked into an unnamed drainage on Chiginagak Bay in Shelikof Strait, on the Cook Inlet side of the peninsula.