Endless white of snow-covered plains, endless colour of wildflower meadows, and endless peaks of snowy mountains marching north. These are some of the sights that make an adventure vacation to Alaska well worth your while.
In Tracy Arm, see the birth of icebergs as they calve from the Sawyer Glacier, or even crawl inside a glacier ice cave on a guided tour. These caves are unpredictable, but the adventurous traveler will find there are plenty more ways to explore some of Alaska's 100,000 glaciers. Take to the skies for a flight seeing trip over the Juneau ice field. From above, it's easy to see these glaciers for what they really are- creeping rivers of ice, making their way towards the sea.
Don your crampons for a heli-walk, where a helicopter takes you to the upper reaches of a glacier. You'll cross deep cracks and high step over ice boulders, and slide on cool blue frozen ponds high in the glacier. Glaciers are not pure white, and the adventurer that gets up close will discover many hues of blue where the ice has been compacted over the centuries. Brown streaks, or 'dirty ice' appears where the glacier has picked up rocks and sediment over the years as it gouged its way through the earth.
Where Glaciers cover just 5 percent of the state, snow covers much more. Ambitious hikers can leave their footprints in pristine fields of snow, but it won't be long before the wind re-shapes the snowdrifts and covers any signs of the tracks. Alaska is, after all, one of the last untouched wildernesses of North America.
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