In few places
can you experience every stage of the water cycle at once. But there’s magic in
the Mendenhall Ice Caves, where water runs over rocks under blue ceilings
inside a partially hollow glacier.
The Mendenhall
Glacier is a 12-mile-long glacier in the Mendenhall Valley, located only 12
miles from downtown Juneau in Southeast Alaska. Federally protected as part of
the Mendenhall Galcier Recreation Area, a unit of the Tongass National Forest,
the glacier originally had two names, Sitaantaagu (“Glacier Behind the Town”)
and Aak’wtaaksit (“Glacier Behind the Little Lake”).
The Ice Caves are
inside the glacier, accessible only to those willing to kayak to, and then ice
climb over the glacier. However, the glacier is retreating increasingly fast as
global warming heats the oceans and temperatures rise.
Monitored since
1942 by the Juneau Icefield Research Program, the Mendenhall Glacier has
receded almost two miles since 1958, while previously it had receded only 0.5
miles since 1500. The caves are in part a function of this increased glacial
melting.
Images of the
caves circulate the internet with such captions as “otherworldly” and
“surreal,” but “melting” and “fleeting” could be used as well, as this glacier
creates incredible new landscapes while we watch it melt away.