Not your regular rocky cave, the Mendenhall Ice Caves is one of the few places you can experience every stage of the water cycle.
The ice cave is located at the southern tip of the Mendenhall Glacier.
The Mendenhall Glacier is a 12-mile-long glacier located the Mendenhall Valley, about 12 miles from Juneau in Southeast Alaska. originally, the glacier had two names, Sitaantaagu which means “Glacier Behind the Town” and Aak’wtaaksit meaning “Glacier Behind the Little Lake”
So how about the cave? How did it form?
Caves such as the Mendenhall ice cave are usually created when water runs on a glacier and then a passageway is melted through the ice, often, water pours into a Moulin, moulin is basically a hole on the glacier's surface, before making it way out of the glacier to a lake or the ocean, but in the case of the Mendenhall ice cave, it's a lake.
Most of Alaska’s ice caves are formed this way but can vary greatly in their length and width.
The ice caves are right inside the glacier and is accessible to only those who are willing to kayak to get there and then climb the ice over the glacier but the bad new is that the glacier is fast melting becaise of global warming heats and the rice in ocean temperatures
Since 1942 when the glacier was monitored first by the Juneau Icefield Research Program, the Mendenhall Glacier has melted away over 2 miles of ice since 1958.
Time for some pictures!
Is the Mendenhall Ice Caves in you bucket list yet ? it should be cause i know my bucket list is gonna have a new entry already.
