You must be as sure-footed as me to ride this trail...

...trust me, that's not setting the bar very high.

Today after work I decided to go on a walk.  Ernie had already left to go kayaking by himself, so I chose to go hiking by myself.  I did not get eaten by bears.  (Although interestingly enough, I have chosen to go in some of the the most beary-areas of this region right off the bat.  Maybe I am getting it out of my system.) 

I chose to go on the West Glacier trail, which runs up along the side of the Mendenhall Glacier, though not really on the west side, since the glacier itself runs pretty much west to east.  It took a long time to get this straight in my head.

Anyway, it is pretty cool being that close to a glacier, although today it was pretty warm.  I think there might have been a temperature inversion, though it is possible I was just wearing more clothes than usual.

Also, I got a new camera!  I will have a special post about it later.

This is Mendenhall Lake, near the start of the trail.  The glacier does go all the way to the edge of the lake, but you can't see it from here because the point of land blocks the snout of the glacier.  Yes, there are icebergs in this lake, and yes, Alaskan kids do swim in it.

This is a viewpoint a little ways up the trail.  No glacier yet.  That point of rock is fairly recently exposed, maybe in the last 20 years.

Now we have a glacier...

This is what the trail looked like in several areas.  It seemed nearly vertical, but there was a bit of slope to it.  I took this picture from about halfway up that section.  It is mostly slick rock, but in some cases stair steps have been made, and there are quite a few places where you have to use your hands to get up the trail.  Up actually isn't so bad, but it seems like down could get tricky, especially in the rain.  Luckily it was mostly sunny when I was up there.  Its kind of neat because the soil on the trail is mostly as thick as the moss that covers it, and when you pull that away it is just bare rock, where you can still see the scrape marks from the ice.

This is up near the end of the trail.  I didn't quite make it to the end, because I was trying to stay within a certain time frame.  The trail gets pretty close to the ice, but the official trail doesn't go all the way.  There are many unofficial trails though...

And a close-up of the ice-edge.

This is where I turned around.  Not because I couldn't cross a creek, but because it was getting late and I don't know when the bears are eating their dinner these days.