Helicopter to the Mendenhall Glacier

This is going to be the coolest. And the longest blog post ever. I apologize in advance...but the pictures are just so cool!

I've been working in Alaska for the past two and a half months at the Mendenhall Glacier in Juneau Alaska. I've got a month and a half left to go before heading back to Idaho. Last week Andrew came up and spent a whole week with me. We got to be tourists, and oh man was it fun. We'd been saving up and we managed to fit in some great things.

One of those days the weather was Juneau perfection! Clear, sunny and even a little hot in the sun. After weeks of rain, the sun was welcome!

And we decided to do a flightseeing tour on the glacier! Via helicopter... That's really the only way to get up to this part. Other than a crazy hike.

So up we went, in our first helicopter ride and our first-ever walk on a glacier. I don't even like flying in planes and I must say... I LOVED it! It was exciting, and fun! The views were breathtaking. And maybe that's why it didn't bother me as much as I thought it would. I suppose if I died, the view on the way down would be spectacular. : )

The orange tent is where the guides hang out during the day. 

Bye helicopter!

 



 

Andrew putting on his gloves. And my new favorite picture of myself (below). We were decked out in all the gear. Our tour included a 2 hour hike on the glacier! Not just a quick out and back like some other tours. We got helmets, glacier boots, crampons, an ice axe, a harness and a giant carabineer. Which really made me wonder what the hell I'd gotten myself into.

Water moves throughout a glacier, creating these beautiful scenes. And moulins, where water rushes down into a cavernous hole. They anchored us and let us walk to the edge. Carabineer use #1

 

Here's Andrew walking up from the Moulin. The Mendenhall glacier is 13 miles long. From this spot we were about 2 miles from where I work every day. It was surreal finally being on the glacier!

This pool was crazy. It was so deep and blue. This is where we filled up our water bottles with glacier water. Yum. And thankfully, we didn't get giardia. 

Carabineer use #2. Down into an ice cave. They anchored us again, this time belaying us down into this ice cave. It was awesome. I only went a few steps down...because I was scared. Andrew went farther and got the pictures.  

Andrew looks so annoyed in this picture. It makes me giggle.

 The largest erratic I've ever seen. And a bergstrom. A place on the side of a glacier where the ice pulls away from the rock. Sometime these features can go all the way down to the bottom and under the glacier. It was great being able to see the features I've learned so much about in the past couple months.

 

Up next is the helicopter ride back. We had the longer tour so we got to fly up and over the Juneau Ice Field. It was such a treat and there are even more pictures that I thought would be a little much adding them into the post too.

 

What an experience we had. I am so glad we had this chance to be daring(daring for me, at least) and do something we might never do again.



Mt. St. Helens

After having such a lovely day over at Mt. Rainier we wanted to go on down to Mt. St. Helens. The weather near Rainier was going to be rainy on Saturday and around St. Helens it was going to be less rainy. When we arrived at the visitor's center the top of the mountain was covered in cloud. Nonetheless, we could see the blast zone, and the information in the center was excellent.

 

 

We thought about going back to Rainier, but as usual, we decided to keep exploring and went to Ape Cave.

 

 

We had headlamps, so we didn't need any of the lanterns. But, how awesome is that poster?

 

After walking to the end of the cave and back, we went down the road a little ways to another hike. By this point we were almost on the other side of the mountain from the visitors center.



 

We found another suspension bridge to cross. This one allowed two people to cross at the same time. Andrew walked behind me. This one was really rickety, it bounced and swayed, especially with two people taking steps along it. It was very pretty though.

We kept driving and decided to go up to Windy Point for one last look at the mountain. We took the Truman Trail, because we told ourselves we would be able to see the mountain around the bend. Maybe 4 bends later we finally did see it! It was getting late, past 8pm, but clouds passed over the mountain and we were able to see the bulging lava dome.

 

 

It was so worth going up to Windy Point and hiking a few miles down Truman Trail. 

The "land" along the lake shore is actually logs! They are all jammed up there from the last eruption. It was incredible to witness these signs of an eruption that took place in the 80s.

 

On the way down, we saw a fox!

This whirlwind trip to Mt. St. Helens made me fall in love! So much so, that we decided to summit the peak next summer. Sometime next August, I will hike up my first mountain!