June 11th, 2014 – Juneau, AK – 0 road miles
As I said before, the primary reason for our inconvenient detour through Juneau was to see Mendenhall Glacier – today was finally the day.
I’ll be the first to admit that I have a bad habit of planning for the best and then improvising when things inevitably fall apart. But I still wasn’t excited to wake up the next morning to a voicemail and email from the Alaska Ferry System saying that our ferry out of Juneau the next day had been cancelled. Seeing as you can’t ride out of Juneau, we’d be stuck for another day, meaning we had one less day to make it to Anchorage to get Vy back to the airport.
Though I had enough service to pick up the voicemail at night, that morning I didn’t have any, so I explored the ship to see if I could use a phone. Found this cool internal one, but it wouldn’t really help me with my needs.
Turns out that a ferry had broken down in Bellingham, Washington and so the system was scrambling to make up for it. We didn’t have any other options besides waiting a day – so why fret about it? We got housing through the University of Fairbanks – apparently there weren’t many spaces left, but the guy who runs summer housing is an ex-motorcyclist who went out of his way to help us out.
Time to enjoy the glacier. Seeing as I had no idea what I was doing, I hired Above & Beyond Alaska for a private guided hike for the 3 of us up to Mendenhall. Short story? I highly, highly recommend them and would be glad to answer any questions you might have about them. Here’s our incredible guide, Annie. We were huge fans.
I took way too many pictures of the hike, so I’ll try my best to keep it short here. First you hike through forest, on well-maintained paths.
Every once in a while you get something steeper, but it’s pretty basic for about 90 minutes.
Our first peek at the glacier.
The hardest part is a little rock scramble…
that gets you to some great views.
Can’t say I remember the exact amount of time, but I’m guessing about 2.5-3 hours in, you start getting close to the glacier. Annie said that Mendenhall’s about a mile wide, which I didn’t believe.
But then when I zoomed in 16x, I saw a group of people. Considering how tiny they were, one mile wide didn’t seem unrealistic anymore.
Apparently this bird was a tasty snack for some animal.
Get used to Baby Jack photos – there’ll be a lot of him. Here he displays his ice climbing prowess. Once you get to the glacier, Above & Beyond provides cold weather gear, pickaxes, and crampons that strap on to your boots.
Bui utilizes that gear to scale a steep hill.
I get a little excited with the axe in my attempt to send some ice flying.
A different perspective of the glacier.
Our guide set up an ice screw so that we could lean into a large hole,
which led to a view like this.
Just a few moments later, we got to the good stuff: the opening of the ice cave.
And we’re in. Here’s a few shots of the inside of the Mendehall Ice Cave.
The glacier was apparently about 3 times longer just 10 years ago, and some people believe that the cave will be gone in just 5-10 years. The entire glacier has been melting at an alarming rate, and from a tourism perspective, companies are hoping that the melting will at least open up another cave as the current one disappears.
Obligatory Baby Jack photo.
I mentioned earlier that Above & Beyond provides some gear, but they don’t provide gloves. I made sure to bring along my Alpinestars Archer X-Trafits, which worked surprisingly well in the snow and ice. Here’s my corny photo to prove I actually brought them into the ice cave. Eventually I’ll write up a formal review on them, but in general I’m a fan.
The cave opens up at the end, and Bui got this great photo of a rock eroding its way to the bottom.
Making our way back – the trail is well kept and even has ropes for tiny descents like this one.
Annie tells one of her trademark silly jokes. This one was along these lines:
“Two whales walk into a bar. The bartender asks them what they want.
The first whale replies: WOOOOOOWWWWWW WOOOOOOOEEEEEEEEEEE WOAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAAAA WOOOOO (the key is to make it as long, awkward, and semi-‘whale sounding’ as possible)
The second whale says: “Go home, Frank. You’re drunk”.
There’s some sort of wood joke here that I won’t make.
Bullshit!
After a long day of hiking, I relaxed with some salmon and beer at Twisted Fish, an excellent dining option with plenty of beer options from Alaskan Brewing Co.
We got back to our dormitory, where Vy found some paintings of marine life. After having a laugh at this painting of a seal, we called it a night.
Continue on to Day 9
June 12th, 2014 – Juneau, AK – 0 road miles
Go back to Day 7
June 10, 2014 – On the Ferry, 0 road miles