Juneau, land of ice and beer

AlaskaFest 2005 - Saturday, June 11, 2005

An Amazing Adventure in the Span of a Day

A lot to do, and so little time. Now, let's jump back in time a little bit. OR a lot, who knows? But back in the day, an old friend of the family, Jean Bell, had told me and my folks about her Alaskan cruise and her amazing side trip on a helicopter to the top of a glacier, at which she got to walk around and stuff. I was able to completely visualize and imagine what it was like and determined that I wanted to do something like that myself one day. Guess what? That day was today. So we called up the Temsco Helicopter company and scheduled two seats on a glacier flight to Mendenhall Glacier at 1pm that afternoon. But how to kill the morning? We had talked to the Malaspina Forest Ranger and she had recommended the Mt Roberts hiking trail to us when we got to Juneau, as it's a beautiful 2 mile hike right out of downtown Juneau, and once you get to the top, you can buy $5 worth of crap at the visitors center and get a free ride down to Juneau on the Mt Roberts tramway. We were so there for that. So we drove out to Juneau, parked at the trailhead, and did some morning hiking! It was actually quite a long 2 miles - lots of steep sections, and lots of back and forth switchbacking. I didn't think the damn 2 miles would ever end, and when we got passed by a guy freakin' RUNNING up the trail, I realized that I am really not in all that good of shape apparently. Or maybe it was just that that guy was in REALLY good shape. We finally did make it up to the top of the trail, saw a bald eagle, got on the scary tram (I always hate these types of trams - they're too damn scary), walked around Juneau a bit and finally back to the car, and got back to the room so we could get ready for the big part of the day: a helicopter adventure to Mendenhall Glacier!

Juneau & Hiking photos

Looking south from Juneau

Cruise dock area of Juneau

The city of Juneau

Me in the tramway

Not too thrilled to be there

Jason in the tram

The tramway from down on the ground

Jason and the station

Me too

There's the display concerning the tramway

Exciting downtown Juneau

Jason and the only bear we ever managed to see

Oh yeah, McD's is calling

The Mendenhall Glacier Helicopter Trip

It was time to go! As we were getting suited up at the Temsco terminal, we discovered that two other people going up with us in this helicopter were on the ferry with us from Bellingham. It was certainly an amazing coincidence, what with the many many flights leaving that day, and to run into two ladies who we had been traveling with all this time. Anyways, it was then time to get on the helicopter, which is something I'd never had the opportunity to ride in before. The initial disorientation of lifting off in a chopper soon gave way to amazement as the pilot steered the helicopter up over the mountains right by the airport. We stayed somewhat low to the ground as we flew right over mountain ridges, eventually cresting a ridge to be presented with the amazing sight of the Juneau ice field. This is what feeds into the Mendenhall Glacier, among other glaciers in the area, and is just an amazing view of mountains covered in white. We flew around the ice field a bit, and then headed to the top of the Mendenhall glacier. We then flew along the track of the glacier to our landing spot at the bottom of the Suicide Ice Falls (Thanks to Dani for the correction!), which is an amazing formation of blue ice cresting over a cliff, and always falling over the edge. We didn't see any of the ice falling, but apparently it does all the time. After landing, we then got out of the helicopter and met up with our tour guide, Heather. She then spent the next half hour leading us around that part of the glacier, showing us amazing crevasses that led deep into the glacier. There were all sorts of cool pools of blue water - literally blue water. It is really surreal to see water so blue. But eventually, the time ran out, and it was time for a helicopter to come back and pick us up. We then had an awesome flight back to the airport, at which point it was just disappointing to see the scenery from afar and not be on it. But it was great to have finally done this.

So what do you do after climbing around on a glacier? You get a beer! So we went to the source - the Alaskan Beer Brewery. We caught the 'tour', which consisted of one of the very happy workers telling us about the brewery in one of their larger rooms, which was decked out with a bajillion bottles of beer from all over the world. Anyways, I wanted beer, and as anyone who has been on a brewery tour, you get free samples. And sample I did. I did try all the beers available (6), and I must say, Alaskan Beer rocks, especially by these guys. I especially liked the Alaskan ESB, but the Amber is also very good and is available here in Vegas. Woo hoo!

After that, we then had dinner at the world-famous Red Dog saloon - I had never heard of it before, but apparently, it's world-famous. Kinda over-touristy, and Jason and I were probably the youngest people there. But oh well, we went there and we saw stuff and ate some food and drank some beer and then came to the realization that we were really freakin' tired. So we went back to the room, crashed, and eventually just realized that the day was over. We had an early morning start the next day, as the ferry from Juneau to Haines left at 6 in the morning.

The Mendenhall Glacier Trip

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