Adventures in Juneau

Juneau, the capital of Alaska, was one of the final stops on our recent cruise down the inside passage and the Alaskan coast, and so I have finally reached that in processing the 2000+ images that I took on the cruise. I have stepped over a few stops in these articles, but I will come back to them! I also processed some videos that are now on the various stock sites I submit to. If you want to see me in action on the top deck of the Viking Orion, here I am!

But back to Juneau! The weather makes a tremendous difference to the look of an image and when you have no real opportunity to revisit a location, you need to do the best you can. We were only in Juneau from 8am to 3pm and we were in the first group to visit the Mendenhall Glacier which is a short drive from the city. Still cloudy at that time of the morning although there were the makings of a better day and so my favorite here was a more detailed shot of the crevasses in the ice as it entered the lake. It is always hard to judge the scale, but the small trees on the mountain side give you some idea of the height of the ice:

I had a long telephoto on the camera as I didn’t think we would be able to get very close, and I’m certainly glad I did. On the stroll back to the visitor center, I saw a few people stopped and looking up into the trees – a bear! Took me a little while to see it, but when I did, I was able to capture what I think is a brown bear cub up in the top reaches of a tree. Presumably momma bear was close by, but no signs of her!

I managed to get quite a few clear images as the bear reached high up that pretty small branch and safely got back to the coach! That’s me, not the bear…

On the way back, we stopped at Brotherhood bridge on Glacier Highway to see one final view of the Mendenhall Valley and Glacier and as you can see, the weather is much better now. This image was created by stitching together multiple separate shots to get the full breadth of the panorama:

Back in Juneau, we were dropped off at the dockside and I noticed the Goldbelt cable car rising high up the mountain surrounding the city and so I was off on my next adventure. The sky was clear by now and I was full of high hopes for the views from the top. My first impression was that this was a tourist trap with a shop and an observation platform where the view was spoiled by the cables, but I noticed some paths leading off into the woods. That was what was really up here – a hike to the top of the mountain (if you had snowshoes and hiking poles!) It was warm and sunny, but still high enough to keep the snow on the higher slopes and so I shouldered my camera backpack and went off into the wild. The views up there were just as good as I had hoped:

The trail was circular and so I eventually got back to the view over the port of Juneau and the infrastructure of the cable car and captured this view up towards the airport and the distant mountain range:

I was also able to look directly down at the harbor. There were five cruise ships in port that day, including the Cunard Line Queen Elizabeth, but even with so many people in the town from the ships, there were very few up here on top of the mountain. The Viking Orion we were traveling on was anchored in the middle of the bay. As you can see, it is quite a bit smaller than all the other ships, which we certainly like.

Then a quick ride back to the town and a quick stroll around and it was time to be back on board for a delayed lunch and then departure. As usual, I am out on deck capturing the view as we leave the capital of Alaska on our way to Ketchikan – one of the wettest places in the state. I wonder if it will be raining?

Leaving Juneau that afternoon, we made our way to our final stop in this Alaskan cruise on the Viking Orion – the town of Ketchikan, unfortunately also known as one of the wettest towns in Alaska! The story of what we found in Ketchikan can be found here.