With an extra day to kill in Juneau before an early flight home, my dad and I decided to visit this glacier to get some photos for my classes. Mendenhall has receded something like 200' per year since 2005. Climate change will most likely continue eating away at the glacier.
3 See the gray rocks in the valley near the glacier? There's nothing growing there because they are freshly exposed surfaces. In the 1920's the glacier extened to where this photo was taken.
4 Mendenhall Lake looks gray and silty because the glacier grinds and powderizes rocks that it flows over coming down the valley. The sediments created (called glacial flour) get washed into the lake by under-glacier streams or glacial calving. They are so small that they stay suspened for a long time.
7 Our destination for the day was a short hike out to 377' Nugget Falls on the right side of the photo. The glacier was covering the falls in the 1970's
22 Easy to see the influence of the waterfall's effect on the lake. The falls don't pick up much sediment and thus displace some of the lake's suspended load of glacial flour.
