Mendenhall Glacier?

[Sunny AZ Girl]

How much time should we allot for the glacier? We are only in port from 7:30 - 3 and would also like to do a whale watching tour. I would love to go see the waterfall area.

[poolwife]

Sorry about the probably dumb question - is the "blue bus" one of shuttles you can get when you get off the ship?

 

I would also like to go to Mendenhall glacier and the waterfall and the glacier gardens. Can I do this independently though the shuttle buses or do I have to book it through the ship? I prefer doing things on our own.

 

Thank you.

[t4jes]

Are the waterfalls accessible from one of the park trails? If so, which one?

 

We'll be in Juneau next month (off the Pearl), and will be independently driving to the Mendenhall Visitors Center. Which trails should we look into hiking? The waterfalls spot looks fantastic!

 

We were there this past Wednesday. We asked the park ranger about the waterfall trail, and she told us because of the weather (70 and beautiful), it was hard to get to. There was a huge pool of water on the "unofficial trail". She told us if we were willing to get a little wet or trek around the water by scaling the rocks, we could still get to it. We decided to go for it, and indeed scaled some rocks and walked through some mud, but it was worth it.

 

They are building an official trail, but it's not open yet. The unofficial trail begins on the second right after the visitors center. There will be a small sign that says something along the lines of don't feed the bears. Just walk torwards the waterfall.

[mochatacoma]

What is the blue bus? I'd like to go to Mendenhall Glacier on our own too rather than with a tour. Is it cost-efficient to do it on your own (blue bus?) or is it easier to just join a tour? TIA

 

Right when you get off the ship (our NCL Pearl docked far and we took free shuttle to port, you saw alot of vendors and they offered same services. We took the $27/pp city tour and Mendenhall. If you go with blue bus, it is only $14 round trip. DO NOT take city bus because you have to walk 1 mile, not worth the saving. If I can do it over, I would take the blue bus and spend more time at the Glacier. Since the NCL Pearl arrived to Juneau at 2pm and the last bus picks up at 6pm, you don't have enough time if you do something else before coming to the Mendenhall. We didn't have time to walk the trail to the waterfall. Juneau is pretty but it is just normal city. I rather spent time at the Mendenhall. Well, with city tour, they droped us off at a little wooden church that looked out to a wonderful scene of the moutain and the glacier.

[Smeecanada]

What is a rough estimate of walking time to the waterfall? Also, are taxis/van going back to town from the Glacier easy enough to obtain? We'll have 4 in our group, possibly 7 so taxi/van is a cheaper route than the blue bus.

[mochatacoma]

I didn't see any taxi. The walk is probably 1 hour I thought. Our bus driver said that it was actually farther than it looked. We were there at 4:45pm and he adviced not to walk since we would miss the bus if we did. Only few people actually walked there. It's amazing anyway from the distance.