August 12, 2016: Helicopters flew us on top of Mendenhall Glacier, which is part of the Juneau Icefield. It was cold and windy up there and we were glad for our hats and gloves. The ice was as dense and spectacularly blue as ever, with tiny streams running over the surface of the glacier. Our guide showed us how to get into push-up mode and drink directly from a stream. Mendenhall Glacier is a remnant of the Little Ice Age which began 3,000 years ago. It is retreating i. e. its ice is melting faster than snowfall can accumulate to form new glacial ice. The glacier’s melt has created Mendenhall Lake, where we kayaked later that day. The lake drains into the Inside Passage thru Mendenhall River. As the glacier moves steadily away from the ocean, it presses against the mountains surrounding the lake, exerting immense force on account of its mass and weight, ripping off rocks, and pulverizing them within its compressed layers. Ground up rock forms silt and sediment, which produce abundant plankton life, which in turn sustains the crustaceans, krill, and larvae that feed numerous marine creatures including whales. A veritable primordial soup.
Later in the afternoon, we kayaked across Mendenhall Lake, a deep basin filled with freshwater from the glacier. If reminded me of Saiful Muluk, a mountainous lake located at the northern end of the Kaghan Valley in Pakistan, that feeds the Kunhar river.
The water was relatively still but it was cold and wet and extremely foggy. We could see Mendenhall glacier towering over the lake on our left and Nugget Falls, a waterfall downstream of the Nugget Glacier, right in front of us. We were the only ones on the lake at the time and in between paddling and orienting ourselves, I tried to absorb the lake’s grandeur and mystical beauty, its dreamlike abstraction and formidable physical history. It was like being in one of Whistler’s Nocturne paintings. Hauntingly beautiful. Sacred.
