With recent temperatures near the Mendenhall Glacier in the teens and single digits, hundreds of Juneau residents took to recreating on the lake this weekend, but Houston Laws warns everyone to be careful. The ice isn’t as stable as it may appear.
Laws should know; he fell through on Sunday.
Laws, a friend and three dogs started walking from the visitor center area around 1 p.m. Sunday. They had plans to walk to the face of the glacier and, if they had time, visit the caves. Laws said many people were also on the lake.
About a hundred yards from the face of the glacier, Laws saw a woman wearing a parka who was even closer to the face.
“The dogs start running after the lady in the parka and start barking, and she’s standing completely still. I’m thinking that she’s probably scared of the pups chasing after her. As I am trying to wrangle up the dogs, I fall through,” Laws recounted on the phone Monday afternoon.
He described the ice falling beneath him at “an elevator speed.” He dropped into the water to about chest level before he was buoyant.
“I remember just telling myself, ‘This is cold,’ and trying not to freak out. And just thinking if it keeps breaking, what is my next move?” Laws said.
Luckily the ice around him didn’t continue to break.
“I lifted myself out with my arms and put my chest on the surface of the ice to flatten and distribute my weight, and rolled away to safety,” he described.
Laws then saw that the woman wearing the parka was still beyond him and “she’s walking toward her relative, which is in a straight line of the thin ice and the hole I just created.”
He shouted at her to stop and change direction, but he could tell there was a language barrier, so he turned to the woman’s relative and gave directions.
“That was frightening. To experience falling through and I was really hoping that this person doesn’t fall through herself. That was my biggest concern, not to let this happen again,” Laws said.
The woman with the parka changed course and walked toward Laws. She never fell through.
“I grabbed her hand and brought her over to her relative,” Laws said. “(Then) I turned to my friend and said, ‘Well, this is a good time to turn around.’ She agreed.”
On the way back across the lake, Laws said he warned everyone they saw, at least 10 people, that the ice was thin.
“Nobody turned around, but hopefully they took caution to not get up close to the glacier,” he said.
Luckily, Laws didn’t sustain any injuries, but he was really embarrassed. Laws used to routinely run on the lake to train for long distance running.
“I should’ve known. I even told my friend we shouldn’t go that close to the face because that’s a softer area. I felt like I knew all that stuff, but I still didn’t take that knowledge and implement it,” Laws said. “And then it was a little deceiving seeing the lady in the parka being farther than us. I thought, ‘Well, she got out there, the dogs are out there.’ I obviously weighed a lot more than her.”
Laws posted a description of falling through the ice on Facebook to warn others and Laurie Craig, lead naturalist at the Mendenhall Glacier Visitor Center, is glad he did.
“I always hope that when someone has that kind of experience, they’re forthright enough to step up and say what they learned,” she told the Empire by phone on Monday.
Craig said Laws was able to pull himself out of the water, but “there are a lot of people that are in not such great shape.”
The U.S. Forest Service put out a press release Monday warning people of hazardous ice conditions on Mendenhall Lake. The visitor center has warning signs around the lake of hidden hazards on the ice.
“If you get an inch layer of ice and snow falls on top of it, you can’t tell how thick the ice is — you can’t ever really tell how thick the ice is — and you could so easily go through,” Craig said.
She said one of the biggest concerns is at the face of the glacier.
“It’s very unpredictable. When the glacier calves, it breaks up the lake ice and there’s water 200 feet deep and it can be very difficult to get out,” Craig said.
Though the visitor center does not prohibit anyone from going on the ice, “we just want them to be well informed and be prepared to take care of any incidence that might occur.”
Craig recommends bringing an extra set of clothing in your pack, not to wear any cotton and bring along equipment, like ice grip safety gloves, to help you get out of the water.
Capital City Fire/Rescue doesn’t recommend anyone going out on the ice, assistant chief Ed Quinto said Monday.
“If you do go out there, stay away from the icebergs, the face of the glacier and anywhere there’s running water. Those are areas that don’t really freeze. Don’t go to those areas,” he said.
Quinto also advises people venturing on the ice to go with a buddy, bring a cell phone, wear bright colored clothes and learn self-rescue.
Every winter season, CCRF offers an ice recue demonstration at the glacier visitor center. The date for an upcoming workshop hasn’t been set yet.
Quinto said there haven’t been any ice rescues this season, but there are typically at least two every year.
Bryan Caffrey, a National Weather Service Juneau forecaster, said the low temperatures will stick around Tuesday before beginning to warm up on Wednesday. This weekend, the temperature in Juneau is forecasted to be in the low to high 30s.
• Contact reporter Lisa Phu at 523-2246 or lisa.phu@juneauempire.com.
