Mendenhall Glacier has retreated more than two and a half miles since the mid-1700s, and the lake now filling its former bed did not exist before the 1930s. The ice arrives from the Juneau Icefield, some 1,500 square miles of compacted snow spread across the Coast Mountains. Roughly thirteen miles of that outflow forms the glacier itself. John Muir recorded it as Auke Glacier in 1879. The current name dates to 1892, honouring the physicist Thomas Corwin Mendenhall. In Tlingit the place is Sítʼ Eetí Ḵwáan, the glacier behind the town, and the Áakʼw Ḵwáan fished these waters long before either label existed. A juneau wildlife whale watching & mendenhall glacier tour follows that same geography. The glacier sits inside the Tongass National Forest, at 16.7 million acres the largest national forest in the United States. Its visitor center, opened in 1962, was the first the Forest Service ever built. From the observation windows the terminus reads as a wall of blue-white ice. That colour is a product of density rather than pigment: compressed glacial ice absorbs red light and returns blue. Nugget Falls drops roughly 377 feet beside the face, fed by a hanging glacier above. Meltwater carries rock flour into Mendenhall Lake, which is why the water runs pale grey-green through August. In recent summers, Suicide Basin has released sudden glacial outburst floods down the Mendenhall River, evidence that this landscape is still being written. Steep Creek runs past the visitor center, and its sockeye run draws black bears within sight of the boardwalk. South of the ice, Stephens Passage and Favorite Channel carry the other half of the story. Humpback whales return here each spring from Hawaiian breeding grounds, a crossing near 3,000 miles, and Juneau is one of the few places on earth where they feed cooperatively by blowing bubble nets. Steller sea lions haul out on the ledges of Benjamin Island. Harbor seals rest on drifting ice. Bald eagles work the shoreline timber, and hydrophones carry the feeding calls up through the hull. Juneau Wildlife Whale Watching & Mendenhall Glacier Tour tours bind ice and ocean into a single Southeast Alaska itinerary, and a Juneau glacier and whale watching tour reads the region as the Áakʼw Ḵwáan always have: one system, moving.