RoxReels

Time for another beautiful port day during our Alaska Cruise adventure! Our day in Juneau, Alaska was glacier day! We booked a tour with Above And Beyond Alaska to hike to Mendenhall Glacier. Similar to our whale watching tour in Icy Strait Point, this tour was booked directly with the local tour company and was not available through the cruise line (do you sense a trend?).

 

Our hike took us over 9 miles of moderately strenuous terrain. The trek began in the Tongass National Forest, transitioned to bald rocky mountain faces, tread through rivers and muddy banks, and led all the way up to the face of Mendenhall Glacier itself. This tour normally ends with a hike on the glacier itself, but we weren’t able to traverse the ice as it was receding (melting) at a rapid rate and getting up onto the ice wasn’t safe that day.

 

This hike is actually something you can also do on your own if you have a car and drive to the trailhead, but I would still do it with a guide as the trail is poorly marked in many areas and the rock scrambles are much easier with an experienced guide showing you the way.

I really enjoyed this hike and its many scene changes! The beginning of the hike was in the lush, mossy Tongass National Forest filled with indigenous plants beloved to the native Tlingit tribe. One of our tour guides was a self-described “tree nerd” and taught us about these native plants, showing us which were edible or otherwise useful. He showed us how to dress a wound with antiseptic sap of the fir tree, how to chew the stems of the willow tree for its anti-inflammatory properties (similar to Aspirin), which plant had leaves that taste like watermelon and cucumber, and how to determine the age of the mosses growing over everything in the forest.

The first portion of the trail reminded me of our hike through the Spring Trail in Maine’s Acadia National Park. The greenery then gave way to rocky mountain faces, requiring careful foot placement to avoid sliding and falling on the unsure terrain full of loose rocks.

Along the route were posted signs marking the points to which the glacier extended in previous years and it was striking to see how gigantic the glacier used to be and how much has receded. Even though we weren’t able to walk on the ice (yet another reminder of the glacier’s perishable nature), our hike and glacier experience were absolutely amazing and we felt grateful to have spent time with that beast. Mendenhall Glacier has been melting away for hundreds of years, but recent decades have seen stunning amounts of glacier recession due to the warming climate. Our guide informed us that the 1,200 foot tall glacial ice wall that we hiked to would be completely gone by the year 2030, just eight years from now. By 2099, 2/3 of the entire Juneau ice fields are expected to disappear due to melting. It was at once sobering and gratifying to be in the presence of this wondrous and ancient beast.

After a pretty wicked rock scramble and more elevation gain, the Mendenhall Glacier was upon us. While we couldn’t safely climb onto the ice itself, we were still able to hike up to and touch the glacial ice and explore the ice cave at its base. Our guide even helped us wash a piece of the glacier and taste it!