Mendenhall Ice Caves

Mendenhall, the famously 12 mile long, 150 foot deep and half mile wide glacier melts as you watch it, and moves as much as 60-70 feet per year. The massive glacial geography and its changes over time are a sight to be seen. But it’s real beauty lies beneath. Beneath the seracs of “ice peaks” all over the glacier. Beneath the trails that wind the non-touristy western half of the glacier. Under the white outer-coating of the glacial ice itself–a beautiful if only superficial  “cover”–one finds a brilliantly colored world of ice caves unlike anything I’ve found anywhere else in nature.

Neither raging nor deep, there are two waterfalls that slip down the side of adjacent Mt. McGinnis in Juneau, Alaska. These gentle streams belie their real impact on the glacier. As one follows the flow of water down the mountain, it slips under the edge of the glacier where, over thousands of years, it has carved massive caves through the ice. Known by most of the locals but far, far off the tourist track

, these caves were an extraordinary experience–the kind that will live with you for the rest of your life. There’s simply nothing else like it.