Consider this: There are nearly 100,000 glaciers in Alaska, which take up some 29,000 square miles. These giant icefields dip into the coastal areas of Southeast and Southcentral Alaska. They shimmer among mountain passes in the far north. Some of them even come right out to greet visitors, and walking on them is just a matter of driving up and setting foot on ice.
Yet despite all this ice, glaciers cover less than 5 percent of Alaska’s land area. And of that 5 percent, humans can safely access only a fraction of Alaska's glaciers.
Thankfully, safe opportunities abound for visitors interested in getting up close to one of Alaska’s glaciers. It doesn’t matter if you’ve lived your entire life in Miami and have never worn boots or if you’re a truly experienced outdoorsman. Whether it’s a simple flightseeing tour with a quick landing on a glacier or a week-long ice-climbing expedition, the options are plentiful.
“Glaciers are one of the top 10 reasons why people come to Alaska,” said John Beiler of the Juneau Convention and Visitors Bureau. “The Mendenhall Glacier alone has over 350,000 visitors per year.”
The greatest concentration of glaciers can be found from the Alaska Range south to the Alaska Peninsula and in Southeast Alaska. It is in Southeast that access to glaciers is easiest. A good 5,000 square miles of ice cover the land in this region, and with population centers like Juneau, Sitka and Skagway nearby, there are guides to help you get there.
Perhaps the grandest way to capture a glacial moment in Southeast is to fly over these massive mountains of ice and, perhaps, land for a better look. Helicopter flight tours are available from Juneau, Skagway, Petersburg and Haines, among other towns. The primary helicopter flightseeing providers are Temsco, Coastal and Era Aviation, although smaller companies also offer tours.
Most flightseeing tours will include at least one landing on a glacier, although shorter fly-overs are an option, too. For example, Temsco has a permit to land at Mendenhall Glacier, as well as a half dozen other locations, and the pilots will choose the best destination according to the weather conditions. Trips range from an hour to nearly three hours, if you want to take extra time to walk around with a guide on the glacier. For the hour-long tours, about half of that time will be spent in the air, admiring ice spires, deep blue crevasses and meltwater pools of the surrounding area. Then it is time to land and experience the glacier up close and personal.
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