Lunch-time ski at the Mendenhall Glacier

One thing I love about living in Alaska, is being able to go out for ski somewhere like the glacier below, within the span of a 1-hour lunch break. The Mendenhall Glacier is a 5 minute drive from the University of Alaska Southeast where I work, and though it's considered dangerous to be out on the frozen lake, it's one of my favorite things to do.



This was an ice berg that had a heart shaped tube running through it!





This is a photo of a couple of skiers off in the distance, you can see how windy it got. At one point there were 3 "snow tornadoes" out there at the same time...it kind of freaked me out. One strong blast of wind knocked me down and blew away one of my gloves and a ski pole (that I later was able to retrieve).




If you look at the woman in the red jacket with her dog in the lower right side corner, you get a sense of the scale of things.




This is a photo I took of myself holding the camera out away from my face. The ice berg behind me was nearly 4x as tall as me. One of the reasons it's not safe is because only a tiny portion of the berg is sticking out the top, and if they shift (one made a *very* loud scary noise while I was near it) they will crack open the ice on the lake and in you go.


Elise on 03.03.11 @ 04:10 PM AK [link]