The Ice Caves

Remember how I said that lately, I've been obsessed with getting good pictures of the glacier? Well, this time, I REALLY got good pictures! My friend B and I decided to hike down to the ice caves the other day. It was quite an adventure!

When hiking to the ice caves, you want to make sure you go with someone who knows the way, otherwise you might get lost. The trail is a little unclear in places, and it can be quite dangerous. Unfortunately, B and I had both never been there before, so I made sure to ask someone with experience for some good directions. I was told to follow the West Glacier Trail, which I have taken several times before. Once you reach the first lookout point with a wooden covering, you take an unmarked trail to the left and follow it alongside a pond dammed up by beavers. The trail is not well-maintained, so it may be hard to locate through the shrubs. You end up walking across the peninsula in Mendenhall Lake, keeping to the left. Eventually, you reach a rocky area and must follow cairns, which are piles of stones left by other hikers that tell you where to go. After scrambling over some rocks, you should reach the glacier.

Sounded easy enough!

So this is the sign that I saw marking the small trail leading off from the main path. I just had to take a picture of it!

After following the trail for a bit, it became increasingly difficult to find. It was really overgrown with shrubs and we kept having to backtrack every time we reached a dead end. Eventually we got to an area that looked like this:

This is how the terrain looked from the peninsula in the lake. B and I noticed that the closer we got to the glacier, the younger and younger the vegetation became. The large spruce trees became very small until we stopped seeing them altogether. Even the alders and deciduous plants became scarce. We kept going further and saw this:

Our entire surroundings became nothing but bare rock. Most of it didn't even have any lichens or moss growing on it. This land is in the beginning stages of succession. It was a tough climb, but it was definitely worth it! At first, we had trouble spotting the cairns. Most of them had been knocked over and were a pretty good distance apart. Plus, with all that bare gray rock, they blended right into the mountainside!

This was a cairn we found right in front of the glacier. At this point, we didn't need them to tell us which way to go. You can't really miss the glacier! It's huge!

It sure was amazing to get up so close to it! Most of the really good caves had just recently collapsed, so we couldn't really enter into any long tunnels. There were some interesting archways, however, which we did manage to crawl through. If you're very quiet, you can actually hear the glacier creaking and cracking as it slowly moves toward you. It slides forward between a 1 ft and 1.5 ft a day!

Ice caves form from glacial runoff water. The water runs underneath the glacier, but can also flow through holes or cracks in the ice that have formed over time. This melts and erodes the ice away, forming tunnels and other chambers large enough to walk through. This is dangerous, however, for the ice can collapse without warning. One must take extreme caution when entering these caves.

The deep blue coloration in the ice is breath-taking. Water incessantly drips from the ceiling and walls of the caves into the pools below.

Here I am enjoying a particularly blue cave!

These walls of ice are gigantic and powerful! It was certainly humbling to be near them!

Just ducking into this cave for a moment got me all wet with dripping glacial water!

After we were done exploring the caves, B and I decided it was time to head back. I was forewarned about venturing onto ledges that were too narrow on the rock cliffs. "These tiny ledges are for mountain goats, not for people," I was told. Unfortunately, B and I lost sight of the cairns while scrambling back up the rocky mountainside and we started to descend in the wrong area. It was difficult to find footholds, and we were getting tired as it neared 8 PM. Luckily for us, the sun doesn't start to set until almost 10 PM, so we still had some time.

We tried as hard as we could to lower ourselves cautiously from these jagged cliffs, but it was no use. There was no safe way to descend here. It was then that we saw it- mountain goat scat right on the ledge! We shouldn't have been anywhere near there.

With aching muscles and tired feet, we slowly climbed our way back up the cliffs and walked until we caught sight of the cairns once more. We were finally able to begin a safe descent back onto the peninsula and head for home as the daylight grew dim.

I can't wait to revisit the caves again soon! They change every week, so you never know what you're going to see. I'll let you know next time!