Time for outdoor adventures. As the weather forecast had predicted, we had drier weather on Friday-- not sunny, but not raining. That was great from our point of view, since it fit with our plans to visit Mendenhall Glacier. After breakfast in the hotel, we walked to the waterfront and caught one of the "Blue Bus" Glacier Express buses which took us the 13 miles to Mendenhall Glacier. The buses run every half hour. We could return at our leisure.
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| Map of the short walks and hikes around Mendenhall Glacier. There are many more longer more demanding trails, but those were more than what we were interested in for this trip. |
Steep Creek Trail. The bus dropped us into the U-shaped parking lot on the map above, so we headed for the Steep Creek Trail. As noted below, it is one of several easy flat trails. We were hopeful we would see bears feasting on spawning salmon. The trail is constructed with raised boardwalks above the creeks so people can be close to the bears but remain safe.
Portions of the trail were closed in anticipation of the bears (dashed lines on the maroon trail above), but there were only a few salmon in the water and no bears.
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| Sockeye salmon in Steep Creek at Mendenhall Glacier |
The salmon begin to return in earnest in August and we were apparently just a bit early (it is July 29). We were told their return was also slowed by extremely high water. The high water is due to the recent heavy rains and especially warmer weather that was leading to faster snow melt. The fish know where to return to spawn based on imprinting to the minerals and other things in the water. Larger amounts of water dilute the mixture and apparently confuse the fish.
Mendenhall Glacier. Of course the main attraction here is the glacier. Our first good view of the glacier was from the pavilion. It looks 'small' from here, but it is supposedly 1.5 miles wide and is 100 feet high at its terminus.
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| View of the glacier from the pavilion. |
We headed down the trail to Photo Point.
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| At Photo Point. |
Panning to the right, you can see how high the water was.
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| Mendenhall Glacier and Nugget Falls from Photo Point. |
We proceeded on down the trail towards Nugget Falls. The water was even beginning to creep up onto the trail in places.
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| On the Nugget Falls Trail |
We had intended to go all the way to the falls but stopped at an impromptu overlook about 400 feet away. The sandbar at the foot of the falls was considerably smaller than normal and no longer accessible.. The people that had made the closest approach were climbing out on slippery wet rocks. We decided we probably didn't need to be doing that.
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| Nugget Falls |
We made our way back down the trail and followed the tunnel to the elevator up to the visitor center.
We were going to walk back to the parking lot to catch the bus, but I had been interested in a geocache, GC2ZQCJ, that looked to be just behind the visitor center off the Trail of Time. I thought it was interesting, because the cache showed pictures of the glacier from that same spot over many years starting in 1958. To claim the cache you needed to take a picture from the same spot. We found out that the Trail of Time started out the back door of the visitor center, so off we went. Unfortunately what I thought from reading the cache description might be some slippery rocks to climb turned out to be a granite wall. This log on August 5 includes a picture of the wall we would have had to climb which seemed a lot higher when we were standing at the bottom. No matter how high it was, these two geezers were not climbing it. However, the detour did get us started down this new trail, which turned out to be a true delight.
Trail of Time. I had noticed the name of the trail but did not understand its meaning until we started to see markers for the extent of the glacier over the years.
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| Ice Limit 1937. The moss is trying to reclaim this area, which is a vertical rock wall which was presumably scoured by the moving glacier. |
As we went further up the trail we encountered more markers for earlier ice limits and the location of the original parking lot. We also came across a CCC structure completed in 1942. At the time of its construction, the glacier was only a three minute walk from the shelter and clearly visible from the shelter's open sides. Now the shelter is deep in the woods and the glacier is so far away and behind some hills that it might not be visible even without the trees.
According to wiki, the glacier has retreated 1.75 miles since 1929 when Mendenhall Lake was created and over 2.5 miles since 1500. Looking at Google Earth as a function of time after returning home, we decided the recession is accelerating with the glacier likely moving out of view of the visitor center in another decade or two.
Interestingly I discovered a report that the remnants of ancient forests began to be revealed under the retreating glacier in 2012. The trees found there were as much as 2300 years old when they were sheered off by the glacier more than 1000 years ago.
Not only was all of this history along the trail interesting, but we loved the beauty of the entire area.
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| Steep Creek from the Trail of Time |
There were huge plants everywhere.
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| My hand was for scale. Luckily I did not touch the plant. It is Devil's Club and is apparently very nasty stuff. Just brushing against the leaves, let alone the stem, could have been disastrous. |
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| Ferns everywhere |
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| All types of mosses covering huge areas |
We did not see many critters. I was hoping to see a porcupine, but probably did not know where to look. We never encountered mosquitos or any other insects except for a beautiful dragonfly on a pond near the road.
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| Female paddle-tailed darner ovipositing |
Conveniently the trail led back to the parking lot where we got a bus for the return trip to the cruise dock. Although I did not get any pics, the bus driver pointed out eagles sitting on most of the light fixtures as we made our way back to downtown.
All in all it was a great morning of sightseeing at Mendenhall. My only regrets were that I did not take more pictures along the Trail of Time (I guess I was just enjoying myself too much!) and I wish we had had the Trail of Time brochure which I found online after returning home.
Juneau swarming with cruise ship passengers. Since the bus unloads at the base of the tram on the cruise dock, we thought we would grab a quick bite to eat then take the tram up the mountain. However that was not to be as the entire waterfront was swarming with tourists from the multiple large cruise ships in port. Supposedly the ships were only 70% full at best. I can't imagine what the Juneau waterfront would be like at mid-day when multiple full ships are in port. In retrospect we probably could have taken the tram up the mountain and eaten on the top, but we did not realize how large the restaurant on top was until we were there later in the afternoon. Instead we wandered back to the hotel room and reheated the remainder of the huge sandwiches leftover from lunch the day before. Problem solved!
Goldbelt Tram and Mount Roberts. It was not the clearest of days for sightseeing from the top of the mountain, but today was realistically going to be our last opportunity to make it to the top. Rain chances were to increase tomorrow which was also the day we were to board our cruise ship, so off to the tram we went.
The Goldbelt Tram begins at the cruise dock and takes six minutes to rise 1800 feet.
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| The observation deck and loading/unloading area at the top of the tram. The restaurant and store are through the covered walkway that extends towards the camera and to the right. Gastineau Channel is barely visible through the fog and mist below. |
At the top is a restaurant, theater, retail store, raptor center, and connections to various trails. The restaurant and store were larger than I had expected. However, we were there to check out the trails. Our goal was to make it to the observation decks that overlook the channel. We also hoped to see some of the open alpine scenery.
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| Geocaching topo map of the top of the tram area. The top of the tram/restaurant is the gray blob on the left. Not sure of the scale, but the loop in the middle is about 0.5 miles total |
The trail started off in trees. Some were very interesting in shape and, like at Mendenhall, there were many mosses and lichens.
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| Interesting tree along the trail as the trail begins to climb |
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| Pendulous Wing Moss and Witch's Hair Lichen (not only do these look cool, but I love the names!) |
The smiley face on the geocaching map above is the first observation deck over the Gastineau Channel where we recorded a geocache, GC1EQTX .
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| Cruise ships along the cruise dock in Gastineau Channel from one of the observation decks |
We turned around at a second observation deck just beyond the smiley face where the trail makes a sharp turn to go due east. The trail was just too steep for the slippery conditions today. We did get to see some of the open alpine area and even saw a marmot, but he did not hang around long enough to get his picture taken. After returning home I found an excellent description of this area on top of Mt. Roberts, including detailed descriptions of the flora and fauna (Click here).
Overall it was a fantastic day. Our goal was not to catalog flora and fauna, but we did post numerous things on iNaturalist to help us identify them--almost all of which were new and unknown to us.(Click here for our pictures that we posted on iNaturalist. Click on the individual pictures for more detail.)
Our adventure has just begun but we have already seen so much!!
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