Castner Glacier and Ice cave, Alaska

Long time no see Pinmapple!

This will hopefully be one post of many from my trip to Alaska. I'm hoping to visit at least 3 land marks while I'm here.

This weekend I took a drive 2 hours south of Fairbanks to Castner Creek. Stopping halfway to admire this incredible view (and stepping slightly too far off the path and falling into snow in the process).

This is potentially the most Alaskan picture I think I'll ever take. An 18 wheeler infront of a huge mountain. It was a very quiet road and we only stopped for 5 minutes so this was a very lucky shot!

We parked up at the creek opposite another another famous attraction, the trans Alaskan pipeline.

Then it was roughly a 45 minute walk across deep snow to the cave. The path had been hardened by people compressing the snow, but if you strayed slightly off it, you'd sink at least 2' into the snow.

Totally worth it though!
The chunks of ice on the ground were the size of boulders. I genuinely didn't think I'd ever see something like this outside of Antarctica.

The ice "bridge/tunnel" looked like something from an alien world.

Sadly the tunnel collapsed last year during the ice melt so is much smaller than it used to, and this year its expected to collapse fully. While we were there there were a few loud bangs as ice along the edge started to fall.

Continuing through the tunnel we entered the entrance of the ice cave.

Rumor has it that the person that pulls this rock from the ice becomes the next King of England.

The cave turned right and went deep into the hill, this is where my camera started struggling to take clear pictures as it became pitch black as soon as we turned the corner.

The floor in the cave was a frozen river so smooth solid ice. One of our group had a nasty slip backwards and was saved by the hood on his jacket.

The entire ceiling of the cave was ice crystals

On the way back we stopped off at another view point and I finally got to snap one of the enormous ravens I keep seeing here. In the UK we have fairly large crows but these things are like dinosaurs in comparison!

He even graced my landscape photo as a parting gift!

So far this has been my best experience here for not that much effort. A two hour drive and hour hike yielded some amazing views. I'll be driving in different directions out of Fairbanks in the hopes of finding more spots like this.

Pictures taken with Panasonic Lumix FZ1000 and a Oneplus 8 phone.