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Juneau Alaska

A year and a half ago Sandy went to Montana to take her first Quiltworx class. There were two ladies in her class who had come all the way from Homer Alaska to take the course. They proposed to host a future quilting retreat in their hometown. Sandy and I both thought that it would be great to design an Alaska trip around it. Unfortunately when they finally picked the dates for this summer, it conflicted with another quilting event that Sandy had already scheduled. We were both disappointed so we decided to plan our own trip to Alaska.

I like to travel and I like to be in the mountains, so I especially like trips to the mountains. I've been to many beautiful mountain areas around the world: the Sierras, the Cascades, the Canadian Rockies, the Alps, the Pyrenees, the Himalayas, the Andes, the Southern Alps. But for some reason I have never been to Alaska.

I'm not sure why. Long ago I read many of the classic books about climbing in Alaska, like The Mountain of My Fear and Deborah: A Wilderness Narrative, both by David Roberts, a famous mountaineer and writer. I read Wager With the Wind, the biography of Don Sheldon, a bush pilot who was known as "the mountaineer's guardian angel". I've always wanted to go to Alaska and see its amazing mountains and pristine wilderness but for some reason I've never made it there. Now we were finally going to fix that.

Alaska is really big and we couldn't hope to see it all on one trip. Instead of hopping from place to place, we eventually decided to focus on visiting one area - Southeast Alaska. A lot of people visit there on cruise ships, sailing from Seattle or Bellingham up to Anchorage along the coast of British Columbia and Alaska. The Inside Passage is rightfully famous and because of the wilderness character of the area, traveling by boat is the best way to see the spectacular mountains and fjords.

The only problem was that sailing on a giant ship with 2500 other people didn't sound too appealing to Sandy and me. Fortunately we found a good alternative from a company called UnCruise, which operates small ships that carry only fifty to a hundred passengers. Most big cruise ships spend a lot of days visiting the towns in Southeast Alaska. UnCruise trips spend their time in remote areas and feature more physical activites like hiking and kayaking. It was definitely more our style. We booked a week-long cruise that would focus on Glacier Bay National Park and the surrounding area. Since we started and ended in Juneau, we added an extra week after our cruise to do more exploring on our own.

Weather was a concern. Since Southeast Alaska has some of the highest coastal mountains on earth it gets a lot of rain. It doesn't really have a dry season. August and September, usually the best months for weather in the mountains in the lower 48, are actually the wettest months in Southeast Alaska. We ended up picking May for our trip because it is one of the driest months.

Then we just had to cross our fingers. We assumed that we would get some rainy days so we packed for wet weather. We just hoped that we would get some nice weather too.

When we got to Juneau it was a warm, sunny day. It looked like the weather gods were going to be kind to us after all. We arrived around noon so we still had the whole afternoon to do something.

We were supposed to be picked up at the airport by an UnCruise representative. Somehow things got messed up because there was no one there to meet us. Eventually we got tired of waiting and Sandy called their office. She couldn't get through to anyone locally and finally had to call their main office in Seattle. It turned out that they had picked up one party but left us and another group behind at the airport. It took multiple calls and complaints before someone finally came back out to the airport and got us a taxi to our hotel. It wasn't that big a deal but we did waste a lot of time, something you don't want to do on a precious day of good weather. It also didn't bode well for how organized they would be for the cruise. Fortunately it turned out to be an anomaly. It was the only probelm that we had on the whole trip. Everything went smoothly after that.

Even though it's the capital of Alaska, Juneau is not a big city. It only has about thirty thousand residents. Abbott and Costello used it in one of their routines (I think it was in the movie Lost in Alaska).

Costello: "What's the capital of Alaska?"

Abbott: "Juneau"

Costello: "If I knew, why would I be asking you?"

It's also unusual because it's not possible to reach Juneau by car. With the ocean to the west and a high mountain range and the huge Juneau Ice Field to the east, there's no way to build a road through to the city. A local joke is that there are only three ways for a person to get to Juneau - by plane, by boat or by birth.

It's actually typical for the area though. Ketchikan, Petersburg, Sitka and almost all of the smaller towns in the Alaskan Panhandle don't have overland road access. Only Hanies and Skagway are connected to British Columbia and the rest of North America by road.

Our hotel downtown was in a perfect location. The convention center, the meeting place for our cruise, was next door and our ship docked right across the street. The big dock for giant cruise ships was only a few blocks away and the main tourist/shopping street started there and ran towards our hotel. There was a nice pedestrian path along the water. It was easy for us to walk just about anywhere we wanted to go.

After a quick walk around the downtown area to see what was there, we stopped for lunch at Alaska Fish & Chips Company. We wanted to start enjoying fresh Alaskan seafood right away. We got a table right next to the water, outside where we could enjoy the sunshine and warm weather. Who said that Alaska had bad weather?

We had a great view as we ate our lunch. I think Juneau has the prettiest setting of any city that I have ever visited. It is on the coast, along the narrow Gastineau Channel, that runs between the mainland and Douglas Island. Mountains rise steeply on both sides of the fjord, starting near the water and climbing to over three thousand feet. The lower slopes are covered in deep green forest, while above are rocky cliffs and alpine peaks. Directly behind the downtown area is the west face of Mt. Juneau, with a series of waterfalls descending thousands of feet from snowfields near the summit. It's truly spectacular.

By the time we finished lunch it was almost three in the afternoon, but we figured it was too nice a day to waste any of it. We decided to take the Mt. Roberts Tramway. Starting from the cruise ship dock, it climbs 1800 feet, almost half way up 3,819 foot Mt. Roberts. It was quite a ride and we got a great view of the city, Gasteneau Channel and the mountains on both sides.

One of the people riding on the tram with us was carrying a small dog. It was dressed up to look like a member of a motorcycle gang, complete with a black leather biker jacket (with THERAPY DOG written on it), dark goggles and a motorcycle helmet. The dog was really well behaved and didn't seem bothered at all that it had to wear such an elaborate outfit. Back when I used to work at HP I knew a guy who had a dog named Harley. That would have been the perfect name for this little guy.

The upper terminal provided access to several hiking trails. One descended back down to Juneau. The route is steep and entirely in the forest so it isn't much fun. It's mainly used by people who can't afford the tram (we can) or who just want to prove how tough they are (we're too old for that).

We took the trail which went in the other direction. It climbed the ridge which continued up behind the tram station. After only a quarter of a mile we came out of the forest. This is my favorite kind of hiking, above the treeline, high in the sky, with expansive views in all directions. Directly across the Perseverence Valley from us was 3,576 foot Mt. Juneau, the mountain which was so prominent from downtown Juneau. To the west we could see the ridge of peaks which formed the backbone of Douglas Island, while in the far distance were the mountains of Admirality Island and Glacier Bay National Park.

As we climbed higher the views just got better. We hiked for about an hour before turning back, climbing maybe 800 feet above the upper end of the tram. Beyond our turnaround point, the trail continued to the top of Mt. Gastineau, dropped several hundred feet to cross a saddle, and then went to summit of Mt. Roberts.

It would have been fun to bag an Alaskan peak. I also would have liked a chance to see the Juneau Icefield, but it was too late in the day to try to get to the top and get back in time to catch the last cable car. Besides, we could see snow on the upper part of the mountain and we couldn't tell if the trail was even clear all the way to the top. Perhaps most importantly, while our lunch had been delicious, eating a big meal of fish and chips is not conducive to heavy duty hiking. It was ok though. We had a great hike and saw some of the beautiful scenery around Juneau. We made the most of the good weather even though we didn't even get into town until noon.

Before riding down we checked out the extensive gift shop at the tram terminal. Our plan was to wait until later in the trip to buy anything. Tomorrow we would be leaving on the cruise for a week and expected that our space for luggage would be very limited. Unfortunately the gift shop had an extensive sale rack with some cool Alaska tshirts for only five dollars. So much for the plan. I bought two of them.

That night in our hotel we repacked all of our stuff for the cruise. Fortunately my new tshirts fit. Someone came by the hotel at 9 am the next morning to collect our bags. Then we had the day free until 4:30 when we had to be back for a precruise briefing. We were going to use the time to visit the Mendenhall Glacier. It's thirteen miles long, descending from the Juneau Icefield to its terminus in Lake Mendenhall. A road goes twelve miles from downtown Juneau to the lake, where the Forest Service has a visitor center. We didn't have a rental car but the glacier is a popular day excursion for tourists coming off cruise ships. We just walked down to the cruise ship dock and signed up for one of the bus tours that left from there.

On our way to the glacier the bus driver mentioned that we should watch for bald eagles because they were very common in the area. Sure enough, even though the ride was short we must have seen at least a dozen eagles. They were easy to spot because they would perch on the very top of the spruce trees along the highway. Their white heads were easy to see, even from far away. I saw as many eagles on a twenty minute bus ride as I had probably seen my entire life up to that point.

The tour bus dropped us at the visitor center. There was a nice view of the lake, the glacier and the surrounding mountains from there. The Mendenhall Glacier used to fill the whole valley but it has been in retreat for at least a hundred years. The lake was only created in 1929 and now the glacier barely reaches it. With the current global warming trend, it will probably continue to retreat and in a few years will not even reach the lake.

There were several trails that started at the visitor center. We did a short hike that went part way around the lake to Nugget Falls. It was an impressive waterfall, dropping 377 feet in two major tiers. The trail ended at a sandbar at the very base, so you could get as close (and as wet) as you wanted. We also took short trails to several other viewpoints scattered around the lake which provided different views of the spectacular scenery. It was another nice day with blue skies and warm temperatures. We couldn't have asked for better weather.

After about two hours of easy hiking we were back at the parking lot to catch the bus for the return to town. There are some longer trails that go all the way to the glacier and then climb above it. That would have been awesome but just like the day before, we were under strict time constraints. We still had a boat to catch today. But in the short time that we had available we felt like we had done a good job of exploring Juneau.

So much for the undercard. Now it was time for the main attraction, our one week cruise in the Glacier Bay National Park area.