Alaska: Glaciers, Porcupines, and Bears!

Sunday was our day off from teaching responsibilities and the three of us graduate students decided to go for a long stress-relieving walk. At the tramway the day before, Katherine and Jenessa had heard of a "secret" trail which could lead you right up to the Mendenhall Glacier itself. Turns out the trail isn't so secret as there were heaps of people on it, but it sure did give us some spectacular views of the glacier and the Mendenhall Lake. It took us around two hours to get right up to the glacier, but we were able to climb right on top of the front of it which was an amazing experience. The weather was perfect as it has been pretty much the whole time we have been here, but it did get cold in the exposed areas with a fierce wind sweeping down the valley. Can't wait to see where we will go walking next.

The first full on view of the glacier

Up close to the glacier with ice climbers for scale

Made it!

Beautiful views in either direction

Later that evening we went to look for bears at the popular Steep Creek boardwalk by the Mendenhall Glacier Visitor Center. Turns out the third time is lucky (we also went the two preceding days, but had no luck), because we spotted a mother bear and her two little cubs and watched them for half an hour or so. The mother bear shooed her cubs up a nearby tree where they fell asleep while she went about fishing for salmon in the creek. It was amazing to watch her chase the salmon down the stream and she managed to catch two while we were there. There was also a great interaction between her and one of the cubs when she climbed the tree to check on them; she tried nuzzling up to the uppermost cub, who had fallen fast asleep. It woke up, looked down, and gave its mum a whack on the nose with its little paw, as if to say "not now mum, I'm trying to sleep up here!", keeping on doing this until its mum eventually gave up and went back to hunting. I managed to get a semi-decent video of the bear which you can check out below.



At the same location as the bears there is also a lot of other wildlife hanging around. We've seen a few cute red squirrels, salmon, birds, and some deer, but nothing comes close to this adorable baby porcupine which looked like it was going to fall out of its tree at any minute!