Mendenhall Glacier

A great view of the Mendenhall glacier from the trail!  At Juneau we hiked up the side of the mountain and explored some abandoned mine equipment.  Everything was grown over and returning to nature.  It was amazing to imagine how the equipment was transported to the site in consideration of its size and weight.  Mules or other draft animals and pure human toil apparently prevailed over gravity and rough terrain to lug the equipment at various stages of disassembly to the site and put it together for gold mining.

When we crossed over the top of the mountain and walked down the other side, we viewed the Mendenhall glacier and took this photo.  This glacier is now receding and forming the lake at its base.  The face width of this glacier in the picture is one mile wide.  The relative size of objects in these wide open spaces is often difficult to imagine.

As fate would have it, we saw very little wild life on this hike but were lucky enough to see a young bear in the parking lot just 5 minutes prior to boarding the bus for the return trip to downtown Juneau.