Exploring Ice Caves in Juneau, Alaska
By Naomi Judd
There is something alluring about ice so vividly blue. Like a blue-raspberry popsicle, its not hard to imagine a stained tongue if you were to give it a taste.
It wasn't until I saw a glacier with my own eyes that I knew it didn't need Photoshop to look the way it does. The Mendenhall glacier, in the Tongass National Forest is one of the most visited attractions in Alaska and though many people see it by helicopter, not many get to venture inside the ice. That exactly what my partner Tim and I were about to do.
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Hiking Across Mendenhall Lake
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We started out from the Mendenhall Glacier Visitor's Center, just a 15 minute drive from downtown Juneau and a 5 minute drive from Juneau's International Airport. From early January to March the Mendenhall Lake is frozen and offers a playground for cross-country skiers, hikers and even kite skiers. The frozen lake provides a winter gateway to the terminus of the glacier which spills into the lake. In the summer, trekkers and climbers can access the glacier from the side via the Forest Service's West Glacier Trail and flight tours glide overhead, but the glacier's face is guarded by water hundreds of feet deep.
The morning was clear and cold; one of Juneau's few days that there wasn't some sort of precipitation falling from the sky. We shouldered our day packs, heavy with cameras and crampons, harnesses and rope should we want to step on top of the glacier. I strapped on gaiters over my winter hiking boots and donned sunglasses (a rare thing to use in the temperate rain forest of Southeast Alaska). In 1962 when the visitor center was first built, travelers could almost touch the ice from the parking lot. On this day in 2009 we hiked through 2 miles of snow across the lake to reach the glaciers face. The wind spilled off of the glacier, making spindrifts twirl off of Mt. Bullard to the east where I had seen a large avalanche the day before. The spires of ice which made up the front of the glacier seemed to grow larger as we grew near. They are cathedral-like in their stained-glass glow, rising more than 6 stories above the lake and plummeting nearly 12 stories below.
We stopped for a moment, 15 yards before these blue, obelisk spires of ice. All was quiet but for the wind and my pulse quickening with what my eyes took in. I reveled in the view before me - it seemed so still, though I know it traveled 13 miles from the Juneau Ice Field to get here and moves several hundred feet each year. Continuing on, we made our way to the west side of the glacier, and were tempted to remove a layer as we hiked up a small rock outcropping where the ice crumbles into boulder-size chunks against the earth. We weren't sure what we would find - glaciers change every day.
We skirted around the ice chunks capped in snow, following a boot pack to the side of the glacier. Around the next bend I spotted it; a tunnel-like opening down a snowy embankment. I hesitated for a moment. Should I wander down there where the ice makes all the rules?
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The Author at Ice Cave Entrance
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I didn't wait long before making my way down to the entrance of the surreal, glowing cavity. Blue, black, and green ice gleamed off of brown and grey rock in this quiet room created by the ice. Not even Alice could call this an ordinary wonderland. I carefully stepped in, watching my boots on the slick floor of the cave. The walls were built of ice so dense I could see three feet into them. Little bubbles and cracks were preserved in the ice which was at once clear but also blue and black against the dirt behind it. The dense crystalline structure of the ice absorbs all wavelengths of light except blue which, being a very short and fast wavelength, it reflects. My fingertips found their way to the smooth, glass-like surfaces around me, making streaks in a thin layer of dirt on the see-through ice as if on a car window.
We grinned wide, snapping pictures and venturing further into the cave. This one was only about 20 feet deep, but by far one of the most marvelous I had ever seen. A beam of white-yellow light shone through a hole in the top; a skylight working to melt the wavy shaped ceilings. The ice we saw in this cave started out as snow in the Juneau Ice Field about 150 years prior. It snows over 100 feet each year in the Rhode Island-size ice field and with gravity, becomes solid and travels down through the mountains, carving peaks and valleys. I felt grateful that in all the time this ice had been around, I happened to enter it on this day when it happened to form this beautiful cave.
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Inside the Ice Cave
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We climbed out of the cave as a local, recognizable by his studded brown rain boots, skittered in and nodded hello. Continuing up the boot packed trail we came to yet another marvel; a tunnel with 4 foot long, fang-like icicles playing sentry at the entrance. This formation had most likely been carved out by a river moving through the ice (the glacier is full of them) and then as it moved along over the months, hollowed out and was pushed up onto this dry, rocky floor. As if making my way through a museum of fine art I walked slowly through, following the sculptural arching walls.
We strapped on our crampons and harnesses before climbing onto the snow laden glacier but we didn't travel far or do much ice climbing. The snow was deep, the sun bright. We felt, on this day that we had already seen some of the Northwest's finest.
