We only stayed in Skagway for one night (although someone of us would have loved to spend some time in the numerous gems and jewellery stores). But next early morning, we boarded a small ferry towards Juneau. The boat also offered some sightseeing on the way, hence we saw a couple of bald eagles as well as sea lions – unfortunately no whales.
During the ride we were told that Juneau is actually the capital of Alaska (seriously we didn’t know 🙂 ) despite that Juneau is quite small with little bit over 23’000 citizens. But the most ridiculous fact: Juneau is only reachable by airplane and boat! There are streets, but all of them end somewhere just outside of the city. Anyway, we arrived in the capital of Alaska and where again astonished by the amount of tourists roaming around here. Then we saw 4 cruise ships along the dock of small Juneau city. There were even more gem and jewellery stores here than in Skagway! We also figured out, that there were a lot of activities to book for one-day tourists. One of those were helicopter flights to the Mendenhal glacier. Booked!
One hour later we boarded a small tour bus and left town towards the airport. We got equipped with proper shoes, pants, jackets and so on. A quick briefing and then we sat in the helicopter! We flew over Herbert Glacier as the pilot gave us explanations around glaciers in the area. Since helicopter flying was new for both of us, we were fascinated by the possibility to just quickly fly in front of a glacier icefall and take a look at it, hovering in the air. After a while, the pilot landed on the Mendenhall glacier where we saw other groups walking around.
On the glacier, we were given crampons and a pickaxe and made our way towards an icefall. Our guide was confident enough to get us a little bit higher up than the other groups to see some nice, blue pools of water. Very impressive!
After more than an hour of trekking, we return to the helicopter and flew back to Juneau airport. What a nice experience!
