Alaska

If the sun is shining in Juneau on a weekend and you are staying home, you need help. So I grabbed my backpack and took a bus to the Mendenhall glacier. Juneau’s transit line stops about a mile or two from the glacier, and the fare is only $1.50 one way. While there will be a direct shuttle during the summer, it’s a nice walk to the visitor center.

In April, there are very few outside tourists here . Mostly it’s the locals jogging, biking, walking their critters, or in case of college girls from UAS - never shutting up.

No offense, ladies.

The most boring thing you can do is just stare at the glacier, as nice as it is. The visitor center built around it is very impressive, in fact, to the point where it takes away the “wilderness” aspect of it.

There are a couple of notable trails around the glacier - the East trail and the West trail. The East trail is the easy one, the West trail is the cool one (ice caves, Juneau ice field views). However, the latter is longer, and more difficult so, as an amateur Alaskan hiker, I took the East Glacier Trail first…

It was nice to be able to plow through so much snow after being deprived of any major snow storm in two years in the tri-state area. As I always say - if you are able to find your car, it’s not real snow. Here your car won’t get lost, but do keep Fluffy on a leash.

I actually spent a few minutes just stomping snow in. While being incredibly fun, it will confuse the hell out of other hikers as well.

Just as the loop trail starts turning around, you do not want to miss the “scenic overlook” sign to your right, since that’s the whole point of this trail:

The experience is much more impressive in real life, since no picture can really convey the scale of anything Alaskan. It’s hard enough to judge distances when you are actually there, let alone in a 2D image.

I loitered here for about half an hour, while hearing multiple micro-avalanches rumbling in the distance. If you spend enough time downtown, you can actually catch a lot of these happening during the day, and the deep rumbling noise resonates across the city, while the locals go to the supermarket, paying no mind, to buy potatoes and some tomato juice.

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