Nugget Falls Walk Self-Guided Audio Tour

About this tour

A glacier you can walk to. A lake that did not exist in living memory. A waterfall plunging hundreds of feet into water the color of mixed concrete. The Mendenhall Valley is the easiest place in Alaska to lay eyes on a glacier — and the strangest. In 1925, the lake you're standing in front of was solid ice from the gravel at your feet to the cliffs across the way. In November 2025, for the first time in recorded history, the front of this glacier finished pulling all the way back out of the lake it created. You showed up at exactly the right century. This audio guide walks you the mile and a half out to Nugget Falls and back, with stops that quietly rearrange the way you see this place. A naturalist named John Muir who looked at this ice in 1879 and called it "one of the most beautiful of all the coast glaciers that are in the first stages of decadence" — and he wasn't wrong. A federal surveyor named Thomas Corwin Mendenhall who got his name on the glacier in 1891 and, as far as anyone can determine, never set foot in Alaska in his life. Arctic terns that fly the equivalent of three round trips to the moon in their lifetime. A black wolf named Romeo who befriended an entire town for six winters. Why the lake looks like glacial milk. Why the icebergs hold a grudge. This is Mendenhall told the way Mendenhall actually happened. Walk it once. You'll see this valley differently for the rest of your life.

Stops on this tour

1. 1The Grand Retreat
2. 2The Jökulhlaup
3. 3The Longest Journey (Arctic Terns)
4. 4Pioneers of Rock
5. 5Romeo the Wolf
6. 6Power of Water (Nugget Falls)
7. 7Iceberg & Ice-Cold Safety
8. 8Rock Flour
9. 9Nugget Dam
10. 10The Blue Ice
11. 11The Tlingit Bear
12. 12The Final Frame

Route map