My Birthday on the Glacier!

Today was a really special day- my birthday! And for my birthday, I decided to do something special. I called and found a place on a helicopter tour! That's the great thing about working in the tourist business- if there's room on other tours, I get to go for free! So hold on for some fun and enjoy the pictures!

This was our helicopter.

All ready for liftoff.

Starting off near the Mendenhall Wetlands.

Soaring over Juneau.

Herbert Glacier.

There was SO much snow up on the mountains! It was an unusually snowy winter.

Some closeups of the ice.

A deep blue lake on the ice.

This area is Suicide Falls. Already it's starting to swell with water underneath the ice. Last year, the ice holding back the water broke and a flood came pouring out from the Mendenhall Glacier. It looks like it might happen again!

More beautiful blue water.

The landing site!

Walking around.

On top of the Mendenhall.

Trekking on the glacier.

More blue water.

Ice closeups.

Having fun in my snowshoes!

It's SO much easier to walk in snow with these things on!

A beautiful view over the Gastineau Channel.

And if you'd like to see these images in motion, check out this video! It's a little long, but I'm sure you'll still enjoy it.

Click here to see the video!

See you next time!

Perseverance Trail Hike

Last month, Jonny and I decided to try the Perseverance Trail. It was a really rainy day, and we had a lot of fun! If you would like to see some of the drive, click the link below!

Click here to see the rainy drive through town!

Because the day was so rainy, and I only had my phone to use as a camera, I had to put it inside a plastic ziplock bag. These photos aren't the best quality, but you get the idea of what the trail is like.

Here's the trail head!

This trail is right downtown, and you can see a lot of old mining ruins along the way. 

We're all ready to go in our rain gear!

A spooky old abandoned mine shaft! 

Here's the different routes you can hike.

We had a lot of late snow this year, so the trail was still pretty snowy. You can see the huge avalanche chutes and mudslides along the sides of the mountains.

Jonny walks ahead on the trail.

More snow!

Some of the plaques have old-time pictures from the mining days. Here's one of some people driving along the road. This road was built in 1889 to extend the route into Silverbow Basin to allow for better access to the gold mine.

Because of all the erosion and slides along the treacherous road, it has been rebuilt several times. You can see more slides here.
 

A waterfall from snow melt along the sides of the rocks.

A huge rockslide blocks the trail. We had to climb over it to continue.

Jonny stands next to an avalanche.

The rest of the trail was pretty snowy. There were still several feet on the ground, and it got worse the higher we hiked.

Jonny post-holing along the trail. The snow here is up to our knees!

It was getting pretty hard to continue at this point!

Eventually, we just had to turn around and go back. The snow was too deep and we weren't prepared for it! We'll have to try this trail again later. Hope you enjoyed it as much as we did!