June 25

June 25 - Skagway: Helicopter Ride and Meade Glacier Adventure

A few years ago Kim and I took a helicopter ride to the Mendenhall Glacier and it was an amazing experience to be hiking and exploring on a glacier.....and the helicopter ride to get there had been a thrill as well. We considered repeating that adventure with Sue and Dan, but the one thing Sue had said she really wanted to do was to go whale watching....and the only way to do BOTH a whale watching tour and a helicopter/glacier expedition was to do the Juneau Evening Whale Watching experience and then do the helicopter/glacier here in Skagway. Well, as you have seen, the whale watching excursion was S-P-E-C-T-A-C-U-L-A-R!  So, I was curious how this would compare to the Mendenhall Glacier experience. I had looked at videos online because none of the information indicated what kind of gear they provided (unlike the Mendenhall Glacier). The initial glimpses I had seen did not appear as though this was as picturesque a glacier. But I could not have been more wrong! While much of the glacier (see above) appears on the whole to look like a dirt road, as you walked on it it was clearly a sheet of ice with a lot of stones and dirt trapped within it. And some parts of the glacier were as spectacularly blue as what I had remembered from our last trip. 

Meade Glacer Adventure Highlights

We had found out before we left that we did get special boots to put over our shoes and a vest. Would the vest be warm enough? We all took coats and gloves, but it was very comfortably warm in town without them. When we arrived at the helicopter station the girl told us that it would be about 10-15 degrees cooler on the glacier.

Dan and I both decided to leave our warmest jackets behind, and Kim left her one thermal shirt behind. Sue, as it turned out, was the smartest of the bunch! We were given our vests and boots and then sorted by weight with another couple (for a total of six passengers) for the helicopter trip. There were four helicopters in all heading up to the glacier and we followed one-after-another in single file, with our helicopter being the "caboose to the train." It was pretty unique to see the others flying ahead of us :) The take-off and initial flight quickly matched my expectations that this would indeed be an "E-Ticket" ride (reference to old Walt Disney World Magic Kingdom tickets for those of you too young to remember such a thing!). We climbed up the mountain side and flew through magnificent valleys - saw other glaciers in the distance, so cool. We flew right up to the top of one mountain and over before beginning to bend around the mountain and then down to the Meade Glacier. It was a GREAT ride.....oh so smooth! My only "issue" during the ride was the same as on my previous two helicopter trips (and the bi-plane to the top of another glacier in Denali National Park on our last Alaskan trip) - that is, while I very much wanted and enjoyed the window seat, my knee was resting on the release handle which would spring the door open in mid-flight. That thought flashed through my mind MANY times today, just as it had on the previous trips. I guess it's just part of the overall thrill! :)  When we arrived on the glacier I won't swear about the actual temperature, but if you watch the video (and you can tell from several photos) it was REALLY windy. And it was a very, very cold wind! We exited the chopper and met up with our guides who gave us a few safety tips, offered us walking poles, and then headed out on a 45 minute hike over the glacier.  We stopped at a huge boulder first and the guide explained this boulder, like all the others were being carried down the mountain by the glacier. He pointed out to us that the glacier had been several miles farther down the mountain just a few years ago but was a "retreating glacier" and was receeding at several hundred feet every year. You could also see the treelines on the mountains surrounding the glacier a very distinct break between large, tall trees and small shrub-like growth (visible in some of the video shots). Right above the shrubs marked the level that the glacier had at one time been; so not only was it receeding but was sinking as well. Pretty remarkable geological stuff was presented to us from start to finish. We hiked around quite a distance - and throughout the expedition the wind was really stiff and cold! But, like the others, I would have been disappointed had it NOT been so cold! I mean, after all, we were ON A GLACIER, duh!

Some patches of free-flowing water and crevices in the glacier were a spectacular blue. Amazing stuff. We were encouraged to taste some of the purest water on the planet Earth (I did, and it was water.....I don't know what else it might have tasted like!). At one point (which I captured on the video) the group was gathered around a crevice that we were told was some 75-to-100 feet deep - with water at the bottom going another several hundred feet down. The geologist guide tossed a big boulder into the crevice and it was a significant number of seconds before you heard it hit near the bottom and splash. What was truly amazing was that they told us just a few weeks ago this large hole in the glacier had been the size of a tennis ball! When you see the pics and video you will easily see why this was so interesting!

We eventually headed back to the "base" as our helicopter rides were on their way back to pick us up (and drop off the next group). Our guide was so nice to take a nice shot of us with the helicopter and mountains in the background - just the shot I had envisioned months ago for today's adventure! And while it's true the expedition and excursion was over, the flight back on the helicopter was equally as spectacular as had been the flight to the glacier. I wish we'd been able to go for a longer time as the two hours just flew by!