8-19

8-19-05
Juneau, AK. Everyone in our group was scheduled to do fantastic adventures. LeAnn and Travis were going to helicopter to a glacier and then go dog sledding ON the glacier, four of us others were to helicopter over another glacier to really see it well, then land on it and get to trek around a while. But the weather was so stormy that all excursions involving flights were cancelled. So instead we took a bus out to Mendenhall glacier, walked out as far as possible on a trail to look at it across the lake, then went to the visitor’s center to view it further from dry indoor comfort and watch the video about it. They also have a few high-power binoculars set up on tripods to look through. I had the bonus experience of looking through the things just as one of the kayak guides across the lake took what he thought was a moment alone away from the rest of the party to relieve his bladder – turned away from them, of course – and right at my sites. I was in denial that this is really what he’s about to do until he proved me wrong. Special. And he will never know of that moment of intimacy that we shared.

Mendenhall Glacier - view from the visitor's center

Click on this- in the middle of the base of the waterfall (on a sandbar) are tiny people for a size reference to this place - and one of them is my friend, Urination Man.

The glacier is melting at a quite impressive rate – it receded 800 feet last year, which has really picked up over the last few years. So as you stand and look at it, they tell you exactly where it used to be over the past few decades, and imagining that big of an ice cube melting and breaking apart that fast is very… adventurous. As we waited for our return bus, we stood near a creek watching Salmon lay eggs and checking out the dead ones that bears have pulled out of the stream and left remnants of. The salmon really are amazing, as they spend their first couple of years hanging out in the freshwater stream they were born in, then they morph to be able to handle salt water and head out into the open ocean. After 4 or 5 years of that, the internal clock goes off and they head back to where they were born, because it’s time to spawn and die. Some of these guys go hundreds of miles up streams, after swimming really far in the ocean to the mouth of their particular river, just to get back to the same place. I think it’s a bit odd – what’s wrong with spawning somewhere more convenient down stream, maybe? Take your first left, you know? Most of Alaska pretty much looks the same… But that’s just how the system was designed, and I am sure it creates a perfect system in many ways I wouldn’t even think of.

The real deal - salmon back home.
These are about 2 feet long