Helicopter Glacier Tour

This past week we found out that as a perk of Andy's job we get a steep discount on tours with some other local operators, so we decided to take advantage and go on the Temsco Glacier Tour. We were surprised to find out that they had room for us the very first day we called, especially since it was a beautiful sunny day. Sydney was pretty excited to ride in a helicopter and loves hiking to the glacier-the best of both worlds! After a safety briefing, they gave us glacier boots to wear and even had some yaktraks for the bottom of Sydney's shoes to help her walk around on the ice. She got to sit in between Andy and the pilot on the ride up and down, and even though she doesn't look excited, she was! It was kind of a tight fit, but she wasn't scared at all. While on the glacier we walked around taking pictures/ and they told us about it.

A few fun facts about the Mendenhall Glacier:
The Juneau Icefield, located in the Coast Mountain Range, North America's fifth largest icefield, blankets over 1,500 square miles of land, and stretches nearly 85 miles north to south and 45 miles east to west. It feeds 38 large glaciers, including the Mendenhall Glacier. (Which is why there are no roads to Canada - just a mere 30 miles from Juneau...see picture below)

The four peaks you see in the distance are called Devil's Paw and the other side of this mountain is in British Columbia.

The Mendenhall Glacier is 12 miles long and 1-1/2 miles wide where it stretches across the Mendenhall Valley. Its ice can be 400 to 800 feet deep.

Why is the ice blue? Glacial ice appears blue because it absorbs all colors of the visible light spectrum except blue, which it transmits.

They are standing on ice although it looks like water :)

Sydney's favorite part of being on the glacier was getting to taste the water. They said the glacier moves about 1 1/2 feet a day which causes all sorts of cracks in the ice and new rivers and holes to form and close daily. As a result, there were lots of rivers of melting ice running down to the lake below (See picture, the lake is the lake you see full of icebergs in previous posts). They said on a hot day like that (It was 30 degrees on the glacier, haha) they lose up to 100,000 gallons a minute, however most of it freezes back up into the glacier in the winter.

We had a fun time. Sydney was sad when we pulled her away from that freezing glacier water; she liked drinking it. It was an awesome experience and just one more reason everyone should come visit us in Alaska :).