A view from the md-way walk across frozen Mendenhall Lake looking towards the Glacier (in the foreground are icebergs landlocked in ice)
My friend Jan and I walked the frozen Mendenhall Lake to reach the Falls; me walking on ice, no matter how thick the ice, is NOT something that is easy – I have never been comfortable with my imagination of falling through into icy water and drowning! Yet, I wanted to taste one of the rare things unavailable to most of us in “civilized” nations: wild water.
A couple of hikers on an iceberg
I grew up on wild water. Of course we had running water, and of course I drank water from the tap using my cupped hands or putting my mouth a few inches below the faucet like the methods I would as if catching from a water fall. While growing up on South Franklin Street, we would take walks out to Thane Road with waterfalls to quench our thirst. And when I had children of my own, we would fetch wild water from the same areas until we moved away from Alaska in the Spring of 1993.
Getting closer to our destination: Nugget Falls - Where and what is Nugget Falls? It's the big waterfall to the right of Mendenhall Glacier in Juneau, Alaska. You didn't know it had a name, eh?
Since 1993, I have missed drinking wild water. On occasion, while visiting someone or even passing through Haines, I make a point to hit the Mud Bay Road Wild Water Station” – that little pipe on the left side of the road about 2 miles out of town heading South. I can taste, smell and feel the difference!
The frozen waterfall with a narrow opening
Jan and my journey started a couple of weeks ago when we had watched a video on the Kangen (Japanese for “returning to the source”) Water where the host had tested the PH balance of various bottled water in comparison to the Kangen ionized water. We did a little research about ionized water online. One of the sources had said the most pure, potent, alkaline water came from our glaciers. Oh heck, it doesn’t take a scientist to tell us that! Yet, Jan and I wanted to know for ourselves.
We wanted to test the antioxidant power of our near-extinct wild water. Why? Because according to doctors who have proven that all, or at least most, diseases can only live in an acidic as opposed to an alkaline system. And since we are made up of 80% water, if our water content in our body is alkaline we can avoid diseases including diabetes, gout, Alzheimer’s and last but not least, cancers. Generally, one of the methods for those of us who want an alkaline system, is to drink and eat foods high in antioxidants.
When we reached Nugget Waterfall, most of the surface was thick, frozen ice with an opening where we could see the falling water. We were not sure about the thickness of the icy threshold – was it as thick as the lake ice? Would it hold our weight? There was only one way to find out.
We shoved the red ladder over to the edge
Nearby we borrowed a Forest Service red-painted ladder. We dragged the ladder towards the Falls where we hung about a foot of the ladder over the Fall opening. Jan placed herself at one end to keep the ladder from sliding and to keep my end from tipping, while I carefully walked out to the Falls stepping cautiously on each rung. I looked down under the ice into the dark hole of an icy-cold rock face; I quickly reached out and snatched a cup of water and backed down the ladder. So far so good! (No I do not have a photograph of the hole cuz I could only fetch the water – however, Jan took a photo of me while handing her the cup of wild water!)
Of course I took a swig of that delicious water before handing it to Jan for the test!
We immediately put our little machine called the to work. Immediately the numbers worked themselves up above 200. What did this mean?
The meter read 256
By no means are we experts on any of this information, however, we just wanted to find out for ourselves the level of antioxidants our wild water was on this day at this source. According to this meter,