a black and white glacier

i used to live 2 miles from the ocean, but it took me a month and a half of living there to actually go to the beach for the first time (yeah, don't know what i was thinking). now i live 2 miles from a glacier, and it's only taken me a week and a half to visit it, so i'm doing pretty good here (and maybe that's why i've once contemplated being a glacierologist, but never a marine biologist :P).

getting there itself was quite the hike. the bus drops you off well over a mile away from the visitor center, where the glacier first becomes visible, but i missed the bus, so i ended up walking all the way there. along the way, i encountered this bad boy of a sign, whose siblings i've seen many times before ((e.g. with SR & TD in SoCal) and who always promises a good adventure (the difference was that we used to drive for hours and hours to get to this point):




then after the sign, things were much less exciting for a good 20 minutes, when i seriously felt like the snowy road would NEVER END. but thank god it did, because i finally saw this:


everything looks black and white because of extreme overcast, but the blue-tinted snowy "ribbon" in between the mountains is the Mendenhall Glacier. it stretches for ~12 miles and ends here, in a frozen lake in front.

after a while, i saw two people walking across the frozen glacial lake toward the glacier terminus:


a few minutes later, i decided to follow in their footsteps, literally. the frozen lake was covered with 4 or 5 inches of snow, and there was a couple trails with well defined footprints that lead across the lake and to the glacier terminus. i was definitely concerned about the solidity of the ice, but considering the fact that there were a few other people jogging and walking their dogs on the ice, i figured it was probably fine. the crossing was maybe a little over a mile one way, but took me 40 minutes because of the snow...and updating my facebook status...and taking pictures of these icebergs that broke off from the glacier and are now in the middle of the lake:


the bright dots in the third picture were from the falling snow, for it had begun to snow quite a bit by the time i was in the halfway across the lake, and visibility was decreasing horrendously. by the time i finally reached the glacier terminus, i was just so glad to have made it across alive that all i did was touch the edge of it with my fingers, and turned right back. i know that people take helicopters that land directly on the glacier to explore and whatnot, but this was the best i can do yesterday. i probably won't ever be doing helicopter tour, but someday, when the ice melts, i hope to be doing this!


on my way back, visibility was pretty much down to zero, and i could barely see the glacier behind me anymore:



so, very glad i got a panoramic shot of the place while it was still clear. again, i apologize for the black-and-whiteness of it all, but this is pretty much what juneau is like 80% of the time, so i wouldn't expect color photos anytime soon if i were you :P