Flying over the Juneau Ice Field

Jeff’s brother, Rick, strongly suggested that we do a float plane ride over the Juneau Ice Field and said it was well worth the cost.  With a recommendation like that, we felt we couldn’t pass it up, and went for it!  This first image (above) is of the Taku (Ta – KOO) Glacier, only one of several that the Juneau Ice Field feeds.  I thought it was very cool to see the clear delineation between the glacier and the water that it, in turn, feeds.

This is a shot of the actual Juneau Ice Field, or rather, a very small piece of it. Altho we did fly over it, we did not fly over the entire ice field. It’s bigger than the state of Rhode Island, and we didn’t have that sort of time!

I couldn’t resist including this shot!As I looked down as we were flying over the Ice Field, I saw the shadow of our little plane, and just had to snap this shot!The blue that we’re flying alongside is NOT water.It’s just very, very compressed glacial ice with almost no oxygen or anything left in it – just pure ice.

This is an interesting image.The little marks on the glacier are the very beginnings of crevasses in the glacier. They look like tiny bird’s feet markings right now, but can grow to at least a couple of hundred feet deep when they are complete.Of course, not each and every one of them will get that deep!

One of the other glaciers that we saw was the Mendenhall Glacier.Many folks talk about being able to walk on it (actually, I don’t know that you can do that anymore, since there’s a lake between the visitors center and the glacier, I hear), but we took a different approach.We flew over it and down it toward Juneau!

Here’s another great shot of the blue (very compressed) glacial ice.I have to admit, I just love the color of it!

Enjoy!