Juneau What I Mean?

As we sit here, buried by an amount of snow clearly unfathomable by most Daytonians (no, you don't measure snowfall by the height of the plow drifts), I have to laugh that, 9 months ago, we were standing on top of a glacier in Alaska ... in the kind of beautifully sunny, balmy weather that would make any San Diegan feel at home.

Which is kind of a long way to tell you that the rest of our day in Juneau was GORGEOUS! We arrived back at the ship and had enough time to take in a leisurely lunch and wander around town before having to meet our excursion group at the dock. The day turned out to be one of those days that everyone in Southeast Alaska longs for: the sun came out and the clouds dissipated, the temperature started to rise, and the mountainside town took on a bit of a warm glow.


Juneau is, of course, the state capital, but it also may be the least accessible of all of the large towns in Southeast Alaska. Juneau is surrounded by either mountains or glaciers, the presence of which make the construction of a highway impossible. So all transport into the capital must be either by air or by sea. Which doesn't seem like a big deal until you consider the weather, which is unpredictable to say the least. The city's harbor routinely gets iced in, the weather is often so bad there are no flights in or out for days ... no wonder legislators are in favor of moving the capital! Anchorage and Fairbanks are the two largest cities in Alaska and are therefore the two prime candidates. Too bad no one from Fairbanks would ever vote for an Anchorage capital, and no one from Anchorage would ever allow Fairbanks to take the title either. And moving the capital to a third "impartial" city would cost the state billions in infrastructure ... and thus Juneau remains the capital city of Alaska.

Two other 20-somethings from our ship were signed up for our tour, and we were all transported to the airport where we were given a safety briefing, waterproof and windproof pants and jacket, and boots. As we all waited outside for the helicopters to be ready, the college-aged staffers scooted their chairs into the sunshine and basked in what I can only imagine was one of the few-and-far-between perfect sunny days of the season. Even in the shade, with all of the warmth being absorbed by the tarmac and us trekkers decked on in glacier-appropriate gear, it started to get a bit warm. But just as we sensed imminent sweating, we were called over to the flightline to board our helicopter.

Lucky Duck Sinnokrak, aka The Bald One, was positioned up front in next to the pilot (pilot on the right, Nick on the left), I was behind the pilot with two good-sized windows to my right, and the two other fellas from our ship were next to me. The seat assignments were given to roughly balance weight and we didn't have a choice; it's a damn good thing I got a window seat, or there might have been hell to pay! ;-)

We took off and buzzed around to head out toward the Juneau Icefield, which comprises several glaciers including Mendenhall, the sinuous tidewater glacier that is closest to Juneau:

Our actual trekking site was to be just beyond the bend in the glacier, just out of sight in the above picture. But rather than head straight from the airport to the base camp, we took a 20-25 minute flightseeing tour in and among the mountains and glaciers:

Just about every mountain peak had not only snow but hanging glaciers. From above, they had a texture that I continue to describe as "crackly." It was like a little surprise to see peeks of blue under the snow.

We saw tidewater glaciers calve ... but I'd love to see chunks of these crackly edges of the hanging glaciers break off and crash down the mountainside.

We followed the first helicopter of our formation of two and from my side I could occasionally catch glimpses of the lead:

As we rounded some peaks, we got CLOSE. Looking at this picture, I get goosebumps thinking about how cool it was to be that close to a mountaintop.

A little self-portrait of our bird:

Rounding the towers, we saw sweeping vistas of the mountains:

And then we finally began our approach into base camp, situated on Mendenhall Glacier. It's that little orange dot!

Once we landed, we were given crampons to attach to our boots and pickaxes to facilitate the trekking. The base camp tent was probably a 20- or 30-minute hike from the cascading ice hills in the background here. Look very closely: about 2 inches to the left of the top of the tent was a group on an extended glacier trek and they were rappelling down one of the 30+ foot sheer faces in that ice hillside.

A closeup of the glacier "hills":

Hey! I know those two ...

We began our trek and immediately started seeing crevasses and moulins of all kinds of sizes.

We trekked across plenty of standard white ice, but we'd also walk across these glittery blue ponds that made it feel like we really were walking on water:

I won't lie - it was a little freaky at first. It looks like you should fall right through - the texture is a bit mushy and there's a whole lotta melted water in there. But the half-melty thing is also why it's blue ... so ... gulp ... ignoring things like this ...........

My man the adventure sport king:
*sputter**cough*

The guides led us to a huge (HUGE!) moulin and while one guide spent a few minutes positioning an anchor in the ice, the other distracted us with crevasses and ice. When the anchor was positioned and tested, they led us back to the moulin and, one by one, we were allowed to hook our harnesses onto the anchor and lean over to view the formation.

Moulins are holes in the glacier caused by draining or rushing water and can be as deep as the glacier itself. Unlike crevasses, which become unstable and collapse once they get too deep, moulins take on a circular formation that is self-supporting and therefore can be deathly deep. As one of our guides said, if you fall down a crevasse, they can get enough rope down to you to pull you up. But if you fall into a moulin, they're just going to throw down a couple of sandwiches, 'cause there isn't enough rope to get down to where you'll be.

Anyway, this moulin was freakin' genormous. We could only see a bit of the pool at the bottom, but the rushing waterfall feeding it was thunderous. And there were formations carved into the walls as well - caves and caverns.

And the pool down there was big enough to hold a VW bus.

The running water not only formed moulins and crevasses, but also rivers:

AND CAVES!

The cave had this little hole in the ceiling - in a few more weeks, it would have expanded to the point where the cave would no longer be enclosed and therefore would no longer really be a cave ... so we experienced something that almost no one else on the planet got to see. How cool is that?

By this time, we were on a serious high from all of the moulin-and-cave-and-flying-and-ohmygod-overload.

But. We were not done. We still had one more very important thing to do!

We had to get a taste of glacial water.

You know how water should taste like nothing but somehow still always tastes like, uh, WATER? Well, I am happy to report that GLACIAL water tastes like ... drum roll please ...

ABSOLUTELY NADA. It just tasted like cold and wet. Maybe the most refreshing thing I've ever tasted in my life, too. We each filled our bottles before we moved on and relished our tastes of cold nothing for the rest of the trip.

It was late enough in the afternoon that the sun had moved across the sky and we were about to lose sight of it over the mountain peaks. In the shade, the blue water in the crevasses was even more intense.

And the last beams of filtered light made the glacier sparkle like diamonds. This particular section seemed to roll like foothills, and I could almost imagine that we were looking at a lunar landscape or sand dunes made of quartz.

We headed back toward base camp, and I loved looking back at the same part of glacial ice hills we saw at the beginning of the trek. In the shade, they looked like someone had brushed the tips with hints of pink.

The helicopters arrived sooner than we ever would have wanted ...

And before we could say goodbye, we were back up in the air headed on a direct shot for the airport in Juneau.

That late afternoon sun was absolutely scrumptious and lit up the mountains on our return.

Bliss. So happy. The heli-trek was definitely the peak of the vacation - the buildup from Hubbard Glacier and Sitka plus our amazing morning in Tracy Arm ... we truly could have ended the vacation right there and we would have had the biggest vacation high EVER.

Our ship wasn't leaving Juneau until late - 11 pm. So we had plenty of time to get dressed for dinner, eat a fantastic meal, and then go for a long walk around town. Juneau is a beautiful city, built on the side of a mountain. Historically, there were a few roads that zigzagged up the mountainside, but it was often more convenient to use sets of stairs that residents built from one street up to another. Eventually, the stairs were assimilated as part of the public street system and are now maintained that way: they are shoveled in winter, repaired by the city, and are named as streets. We walked up four or five flights to get up to the Governor's mansion. We realized later that we were actually there on the last day of Sarah Palin's run as governor!

And we confirmed: you can't see Russia from her house.

We began to head back down to the ship around dusk (~9:30pm) and had to stop and laugh at this shed. There was just enough light left to be able to take the shot without having to resort to the flash (I HATE THE FLASH!)

Late to bed, early to rise ... we had an early morning excursion the next day in Skagway. But we slept very soundly that night, comforted by memories of the fabulous day we shared in Juneau!!