Ice, Ice, Baby

Maddy and I made a key, and lucky decision yesterday morning. The day before, I had switched Maddy and I to the Helicopter Tour and Glacier Trek, Level 2 from the Whales and Rainforest Trails. Torie and Carol had wanted to stay with the Whales/Trails. Well, Maddy and I talked ourselves into switching to Level 3 – which is the extreme tour – including ice wall climbing, rappelling, and roping.

I stood in line for 20 minutes or so, but got the last two slots. We met at 1pm in the Vista Lounge, and headed for the tender. The ILWU (International Longshoreman’s Worker Union) was picketing, to no sympathy, on shore for the right to captain and handle the tenders. Besides raising the cost and slowing down the tenders, with fewer tenders, it’s probably not a bad idea. You know, if you want to pay more money and get less quality and fewer quantity.

We boarded the shuttle van. I grabbed the front seat and chatted a while with the driver. She had moved to Alaska 20 years ago with her husband when they were both in the Coast Guard – and they’ve both stayed and loved it. Just after I asked about bald eagles – she pointed one out. Apparently they like to hang out near the town dump. Well, maybe not their proudest moment, but most of us take a fast food meal now and again.

We got to the helicopter part of the Juneau airport, went in, and put on winter clothing. The boots they gave us were amazing – later, when Maddy and I walked through rushing streams of glacier water that was cut right through the ice, our feet stayed dry. Remarkable. Anyhow, we put on the equivalent of ski pants, then something that covered the lower part of the pants/upper part of the boot. Once we were mostly geared up, we headed outside for the safety briefing.

The briefing dealt with the helicopter – going to and from it safely, and riding in it. So, it was relatively short – basically “color inside the lines” type of thing.

So we trekked over to the airport. With the boots and the winter suit, we were walking like a bunch of astronauts swaggering to the launch pad. Although not quite that dramatic. But, now I know why they swaggered – it’s not just that they were about to be the coolest people in the universe for strapping on a powerful rocket with carrying them into space with a seldom created level of force, their suits caused them to walk that way. Although some of it was probably swagger.

Anyhow, Maddy was put next to the pilot, but I did get an end row seat in the second row (there were seven of us total – four in the back, and three up front – including the pilot). The pilot’s name is – supposedly – Cooper. It was probably something more commonplace like Jeff, but to be a helicopter pilot in Alaska you need to jazz it up a bit. All these years he’s been living a lie. But, I digress.

Anyhow, he took us the long way to the landing zone on the glacier – kind of going in the side door to Mendenhall Glacier. There was no MacGyver theme being played. Which is key, because the only other time we’d been on a chopper, in Hawaii, the pilot dipsy-doodled us around a bit and none of us (with the exception of Julia) got off the copter (that’s what us expert copter passengers call it) without feeling some degree of nausea. Neither Maddy nor I felt any nausea this time, and while it was a gentler ride, he did zoom it around a bit, showing off the glaciers.

The cloud cover was low, but it wasn’t raining. The glacier ice was either a Caribbean beach blue – stunning – or white, or brownish – from where it was chewing up the land underneath. There were two long tracks of brown that I thought may have been two “roads” – but instead it is where the three parts of the glaciers come together.

We landed on this moonscape of ice – they had three landing zones, and a large Mountain Wear orange tent that was tethered tightly to huge rocks (not boulder sized, but they weren’t going anywhere). Since the glacier moves a little bit each day, strapping it to the ice wouldn’t work.

There, we got our ice picks and crampons put on – our three guides that for us – so no mistakes could be made. The key safety advice was – keep your feet far apart so the crampons don’t lock and trip you, stay with the group, and don’t sit down. Apparently, anyone who sits down goes sliding for some scary distance, with the chance to end up in a crevice or deeper.

Even just walking on the glacier is exhilarating. Even though it is the “extreme” tour of the three they give – level one is advertised as a “helicopter glacier walkabout” for a non-strenuous hour. Level two, which Maddy and I had initially signed up for – is listed as a glacier trek with two hours of hiking. Level three gives three hours of “hiking and climbing over the rugged terrain of the glacier.”

And that was true – although there was no extended forced march. We would climb and hike for a while, then they would stop and show us techniques. We were supposed to spend three hours on the glacier, but it seemed like more (in a good way – the scenery is indescribable – but I’m going to try.)

When we first got off the helicopter, one fellow and I had the same thought, and voiced it together – “Ice, Ice Baby.” That was worthy of a chuckle.

There were waves and waves of ice, some shimmering tropical blue (from the way the light refracts through the ice), others just a cold white. It climbed in stories, and looked at parts like frozen tsunami waves. It was a big hill of glacier – and we didn’t even climb to the top.

The whole glacier is about 12 miles long, ending dramatically at Mendenhall Lake as it comes out of the mountains. It starts at the Juneau ice field and runs close to the town of Juneau.

At one fifty foot high ice wall, we stopped and they set up ropes for climbing. The ice curved back over us, so there was a bit of an overhang. There were three routes set up by the guides. Maddy and I tackled the intermediate one first – she did quite well, although she did have a tough time getting the ice axes into the ice wall face. I started quickly, but couldn’t reach the top either. My calves were burning at points, so when I was most of the way up, I repelled back down. This may be shocking news, but I’m not the most graceful repeller.

Maddy was the youngest of the eleven, and I was – by far – the oldest. Everyone else were in their 20s and 30s. Several of the ship’s crew – including the quartermaster – were on the tour – and they enjoyed it.

(Brief side note: it’s 7:14, and we are turning into the bay for Sitka – today is sea kayaking – although not quite what we’ve done in La Jolla and Costa Rica.)

Then we tackled the easier route – Maddy made it to the top. I was doing well – until I got stuck. I probably made it around 80% of the way up, but my mind said, whoa! I know I was roped, but I had no desire at that point to go higher. Well, at least I gave it a shot (or two). All and all, it was still fun.

The best was yet to come. We hiked higher up the glacier, and came to a 50 foot waterfall through the ice. We went downhill a bit, and then climbed down into the stream (our feet stayed dry despite warnings they could get wet!). We hiked up the stream to the waterfall, which had carved its own small amphitheater for us in the ice. It was a dramatic showing by Mother Nature – amazing.

Literally next door was a chasm carved by the stream before it shifted course, so we walked around and marveled at that. Very dramatic setting. It was hard to leave.

Keep in mind, all around us were dramatic views – down the glacier to the lake, towards the mountains covered in the bright green of the world’s largest temperate rainforest, across the jumble and waves of the glacier. We used Maddy’s camera to take lots of photos, but they don’t do justice to what is in our mind’s eye.

We also drank the cold, clean glacier water – great stuff.

The final part of the journey – heading back to the tents to wait for the helicopter – included a new route that they roped for us – so we headed down the ropes. After Maddy and I went down together – although we had to go one by one down the ice stepped they had hacked out – they started tying everyone to the rope as they went down – we were going hand over hand. At one point I slipped, but held onto the rope no problem. Otherwise I might be typing this one-handed!

We then stopped at a crevice, and went silent as our guide chipped ice away at the top – you could hear it bouncing off the walls of the crevice before finally hitting the icy stream below. She reckoned it was about a 50 foot drop.

Every so often, Maddy and I would high five, or look at each other with big grins – like we couldn’t believe how lucky we are to be on this adventure.

After scampering around the ice some more, we got back to the base camp. (So I asked one guide what the name of the base camp was, and he noted, “base camp.” Picking up on my point, he then observed that it needs a cool name – like “Alpha Bravo Charlie camp” or something. Exactly!) Our crampons came off, we laid down our ice picks, and posed for group photos.

The three copters came at the same time, giving a MASH-like feel to the place. I felt like running out to help unload the stretchers, but we just reloaded. Cooper flew us straight back to the airport (btw, feel free to use air quotes when talking about the Juneau airport – don’t think of a conventional airport like Reagan or Charlotte.)

Even the trip back was interesting – there is one small lake with houses on it – and they each had a floatplane (not a boat) parked in the water by their house. That was definitely an Alaska moment.

It’s amazing how big this state is – and we’re only scratching the surface of it.

Hopefully tomorrow I will be able to post some pictures – I’ve been very busy with work and not been able to devote as much time to the blog as I would like.