Mom in the Mtns

I’ve done some amazing, epic, and gorgeous hikes in my life.  But I think the hike out to the Byron Glacier Ice Caves wins the title of most unique hike ever!

I’ve hiked the beginning of the Byron Glacier Trail a few times now, but we’ve never made it all the way out to the glacier and the hidden ice caves at the bottom of the glacier.  If you read my post last week about billions of boulders, you might have noticed that we had to turn around mid-hike because my friend’s dog couldn’t handle the boulder field.  It’s always hard to turn around before you make it to the end, but we were okay with it.  But I was definitely excited when my friend texted me later that week saying that she wanted to go back and make it all the way to the ice caves!  On Sunday we grabbed coffees and our puffy jackets and headed back down to Portage.

The official Byron Glacier trail is really flat and easy.  I swear it’s only one mile round trip.  But once you get off the official trail you’ve got some boulder scrambling to do before you reach the glacier.  This took us longer than we thought, but it really wasn’t that bad of a hike and I would definitely still call it “easy”.

Once we got up to the glacier we were stunned by how gorgeous the ice caves were!  The first one we visited was really big and deep and had a large stream coming out of it.  In fact, this actually is the beginning of the stream that you walk along for the entire hike!

There was a waterfall too, which made for some fun pictures.  My husband took some time to explore more of the cave while we took our time posing in ridiculous ways.

The next cave that we explored was a ridiculously gorgeous shade of blue!  We were literally speechless as we carefully climbed into this cave.

The views looking out towards Portage Valley were also breathtaking!

Everyone decided to explore deeper into the cave except me.  I’m afraid of dark and dangerous places, so I stayed by the entrance and chatted with other hikers.

We eventually realized that we needed to go home, so we did some final explorations before walking back.

I’ve never done anything like this in my entire life!  I’ve walked on a few glaciers, but never inside of them.  It was amazing to see how powerful and alive glaciers really are – you could see exactly how the glaciers were manipulating the landscape in that valley.  But just to be clear, this hike is a pretty dangerous thing to do.  If one of the caves collapses you will definitely die.  If you do this hike, go at your own risk and make sure to research the activity beforehand so that you know the consequences of hiking inside a glacier.

What’s the most unique hike you’ve ever done?  Would you ever hike inside a glacier?