Saturday August 19 – Juneau (Capital of Alaska)

Today’s excursion was to see the Mendenhall Glacier, Nugget Falls, salmon hatchery and Glacier Gardens. The day was overcast with low cloud, and cold (9°). We had numerous layers on!

Mendenhall Glacier is retreating, like all the others we have seen so far. It is one of 38 that form the Juneau Icefield, and travels 13km to the Mendenhall Lake. Chunks that calve away from the glacier become icebergs in the lake, until they melt.

We only saw the glacier from nearby, rather than actually being on it. The Nugget Falls was to one side of it, but we couldn’t walk to it because recent rain had flooded the path. So we enjoyed the film in the Visitors centre after taking photos, and reading the information provided. Other members of our group had paid the extra to fly by helicopter to the glacier, land on it and take a ride on husky sleds.

The bus then took us to a salmon hatchery, where we saw hatchlings and adult fish. There is a ‘ladder’ there to enable salmon to climb up to the hatchery – an experiment many years ago which now sees salmon come to the hatchery each year to spawn. We spotted a few seals in the water fishing for dinner on the salmon that want to come in.

salmon 'ladder' from river into the hatchery

seal in the river having salmon for lunch

looking down into the hatchlings' tank

fish tank in the visitors' centre

large crab in the tank

From there we went to Glacier Gardens, a garden up a hill, built from a landslide that destroyed a dairy. In order to prevent further landslips the owner has planted gardens, and used the fallen (now dead) trees as plant umbrellas. He planted the trees upside down in the ground, half in half out, with the roots on top. He then used fish net, moss, and planting mix and hundreds of plants to create aerial hanging gardens. These look so pretty – in some way they reminded us of the huge structures in Singapore in the Gardens by the Bay. 

The owner then acquired extra land, some of which still belongs to the local American Native tribe, and built a road up and down the hill, and added ponds, water courses, waterfalls and more gardens up the hill. The part that is ‘on loan’ has been left as natural temperate rain forest (a very high yearly rainfall here), and any trees that fall have to be left where they fall unless it is across a road (and then only that bit over the road can be removed). There was a nice view from the top, 200m up the hill. They also have a bald eagle’s nest in one of the trees, complete with fully-fledged chick. They have installed a camera in another tree to watch the chick, and it plays 24/7. It was so cool watching, to soothing music, this chick stretch its wing occasionally and the wind ruffling its feathers. [People aren’t allowed to build within a certain distance of an eagle’s nest, but there is nothing stopping an eagle building its next near human dwellings!]

this moss only grows in pure air - won't grow in polluted air

view from the lookout

bald eagle chick in its nest

bald eagle chick seen in its nest via 'eagle cam'

It was cold and wet, so we just went back to the ship rather than seeing a bit more of the city. We later attended a talk by Libby Riddles, the first lady to win the famous Iditarod husky sled race in Alaska, back in the 80s. She gave a really interesting talk, and led us to believe that anyone who does that race has to be insane! She had 15 dogs for that race (finishing with 13), and on the first day lost her team! She caught up with them after another competitor caught and tied them off. She then decided not to rest at night but to keep going, even in a blizzard where her lead dog kept her on route. This put her miles ahead of the other competitors. Cra-zee! We also met one of her dogs, a mixed–breed husky that has been bred to run. The dog (Cancan) was pale short-haired, with pale blue eyes (looking a little demonic) but she was a sweetie!