Juneau

This town was first settled by Alaska natives, thousands of years ago. When the first white men, Joe Juneau and Richard Harris arrived about 1880, they found an Auk Indian fishing camp at the mouth of the Gold Creek. Chief Kaw.u helped them discover gold in Silverbow Basin and the rest is history.

Juneau, Alaska’s capital city, lies along the beautiful Gatineau Channel at the foot of snow-capped mountains Roberts and Juneau. We docked right in downtown and caught a shuttle to the Mendenhall Glacier, named for a scientist who helped survey and decide the border between Alaska and Canada. It is one of the 38 glaciers that flow from the 5000 sq. mile expanse of rock, snow and ice known as the Juneau icefields. Gravity pulls a glacier down slope, grinding the bedrock. It takes this ice 200-250 years to travel the 13 ½ miles to the lake. The glacier calves into the lake, filled with icebergs, where the ice retreats 100-150’ per year. Glacier ice appears blue because it absorbs all the colours of the spectrum except blue which it transmits. White also appears as the air pockets fracture the ice, scattering the visible light spectrum. Here you can hike trails up to the glacier. As glaciers move, they grind rock into a fine powder called rock flour, which is blown across the glacier causing it to look dirty. It also escapes with the glacier melt water to create the lakes’ murky colour. As we approached the glacier, we found a bear cub up a tree. Our driver hates them as they get into their garbage no matter what they do. You can see the icebergs in the lake. There was a great Interpretive Center that showed 2 movies. Our Native guide gave us lots of information and I was surprised by the wetlands up the channel.

We left Juneau at 3:30 and headed up Tracy Arm to the Sawyer Glacier. The icebergs were amazing and so numerous that the Captain was steering left and right going around them. We made the 'big bend' a 90 degree angle, then the S turn and were so close when we had to turn around.Too many icebergs, too dangerous. Spent a glorious afternoon on deck.