Few places can you experience every stage of the water cycle all at once. But there's magic in the Mendenhall Ice Caves, where water runs over rocks under blue ceilings, the inside of a partially hollow glacier.
The Mendenhall Glacier is a 12 mile long glacier in the Mendenhall Valley, located only 12 miles from downtown Juneau in Southeast Alaska. Federally protected as part of the Mendenhall Galcier Recreation Area, a unit of the Tongass National Forest, the glacier originally had two names, Sitaantaagu ("Glacier Behind the Town") and Aak'wtaaksit ("Glacier Behind the little Lake").
The Ice Caves are inside the glacier, accessible only to those willing to kayak to, and then ice climb over the glacier. As though in response to human discovery of its existence, however, it is shyly retreating, increasingly fast as global warming heats the oceans and temperatures rise.
Monitored since 1942 by the Juneau Icefield Rsearch Program, the Mendenhall Glacier has receded almost 2 miles since 1958, while previously it had receded only .5 miles since 1500.
Images of the caves circulate the internet with such captions as "otherworldly" and "surreal", but perhaps "melting" and "fleeting" should be used instead, as this glacier seems to literally be running away from humans as we destroy the world around it.
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