On Thick Ice

Today, our ship stopped in the capital of Alaska where the first thing we saw out our window was a few blad eagles sitting in a tree. Juneau is the only capital that is not accessible by road; this city is surrounded by mountains and glaciers, including the one we would be visiting today: Mendenhall Glacier. When looking for excursions, we found one that involves taking a helicopter up to the glacier and then walking around on top of it. That seemed like it would be a great experience so that was how we started our day.

Neither Jess nor I have ever been on a helicopter before and we didn't really know what to expect. We arrived at the airport where the company that runs this has 8 to 10 small helicopters that can fit 5 people plus the pilot. We had a brief safety video that we had to pay attention to if we didn't want to lose our heads and then we had to get our glacier boots on (ice is slippery apparently). We had to list our weights so they could balance who was in each helicopter and then we were assigned positions to sit. We loaded up with Jess in the front and me in the back and then waited to take off.

I let the video run the entire trip out to the glacier...

It was a very different expereince from flying in a plane and I know I certaily felt closer to actually flying since you could see so much around you. We went up through the mountains and over some passes before circling around the glacier and landing in a flat spot near the terminus. There are guides there that take you around to various points of interest and they give some information and history. It's a very dynamic environment - they have to change the landing positions every so often and they said that a bunch of boulders that were near the jagged wall of ice just fell down yesterday. The ice isn't smooth but it still is slick, especially when you're moving up or down in elevation. There are very little streams of clear water running through the ice from the glacial melt and we even took a drink from it (and yes, it did taste pretty clean). The blue colors were even more pronounced on top of the glacier; I'm not sure the pictures do it justice though. It turns out we were lucky and the rain and wind held off so while it was cool, it wasn't too bad for our entire 25 minutes up there.

After the helicopter came back with the next group, we got back on and took the short ride home. This return trip is shorter and this time the wind had changed and it was much bumpier as we made the steep descent back to the airport. As we landed, the rain and wind really began and it got much colder so we got lucky once again with our timing with it being so nice for our entire time up there.

I will admit I didn't love the helicopter ride up - it was definitely more nerve-wracking than I thought it'd be and Jess agreed. That said, this was an awesome trip and we're glad we did it.

Our bus driver took us around town a little bit so we got to see the downtown area but at this point the rain really picked up and neither of us had our raincoats so we just did a little shopping and returned to the boat. The weather did clear up a little but since we only had a short day in Juneau (we had to be back by mid-afternoon), we just stayed on the ship and ate lunch here before relaxing for the afternoon. The long trip is starting to get tiring and while the whole thing has been awesome, I think we're both glad we'll be heading home in a few days.

Our last stop before Vancouver is tomorrow and it's pretty much guaranteed it's going to rain - let's hope our weather luck holds on for one more day and it ends up being pretty light.

As they say in Juneau, "There are only three ways here - air, sea or birth canal." Note: That is an actual joke our bus driver made.