Mendenhall Glacier is a glacier about 12 miles long located in Mendenhall Valley, about 12 miles from downtown Juneau in the southeast area of the U.S. state of Alaska. The glacier and surrounding landscape is protected as the 5,815-acre Mendenhall Glacier Recreation Area, a federally designated unit of the Tongass National Forest. [SOURCE]
We finished our whale watch and headed down the road for a short hike to see the Mendenhall Glacier. The forest and plant life were amazing and we followed the path the glacier has left as it retreated over the years. Carved in stone we saw the early ice limits of 1915, 1920 and 1937 the last maybe as far as a mile from the glacier itself. Global warming may be accelerating but it definitely isn’t a new phenomenon for this piece of ice. This is also where we got to see our first blue ice. Yes it is impossible to describe and the picture barely does it justice. More on that when we reach Tracy Arm Fjord in a couple of days.
