If you ever have the opportunity to take a helicopter ride, do it. Super fun. Even more fun is a helicopter ride to a glacier. I was on an Alaskan cruise a couple of years ago and had the opportunity to take a helicopter ride out of Juneau to the Mendenhall Glacier.
We used Temsco Helicopter Tours and it was great. Our guide was a former military helicopter pilot so he had probably seen a lot worse conditions than what we had that day. Before you leave base you are fitted with glacier boots to give you traction when walking on the glacier. My ASIC running shoes would not have cut it.
Five little helicopters took off together and flew in formation over the mountains. There were some thick patches of fog, which really added to the experience in my opinion. As we glided smoothly over the tree tops, alpine ridges, and glacial valleys, it had a real video game like feeling to it.
There were 7 of us in each helicopter with four in back and a pilot up front with two passengers. My wife was nice enough to give me the window seat so I could take photos through the smudged glass window.
The scenery getting to the glacier was just spectacular.
Even though the windows were smudged, the photos didn’t turn out too bad though. I had my Sony A7ii with my wide angle 16-25mm GMaster lens and I just kept clicking through the short 15 minute flight. Below you can see where the glacier drops off the side of the mountain.
As we approached our landing spot on the glacier, the bright blue ice was beautiful. We learned that the ice is blue because the red light wavelengths are absorbed and the blue light wavelengths are scattered and reflected. The thicker and more compressed the ice is, the bluer it will look. This must have been plenty thick.
There were a several guides out on the glacier to welcome us and explain the features and science of the glacier. They had their own little base camp with a yurt to hang out in.
After the guides gave us their talk, we were allowed to wander around, being careful to stay away from crevasses.
One guide challenged us to do a push-up to drink from a little glacial stream running across the ice. It was no surprise that it was very clean and very cold tasting.
All in all, it was a great experience and I highly recommend it if you are ever up that way. With glaciers getting smaller every year, you should see them while you can.
All images in this post were created by me. If you would like to use any of them, please contact me for permission. Thanks.
