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Nugget Falls are located near the Mendenhall Glacier , located in Mendenhall Valley, about 12 miles (19 km) from downtown Juneau in the southeast area of the U.S. state of Alaska
The following coordinates will get you to the parking area for the Visitor Center. (N 58° 25.001 W 134° 32.812). At this point, you will have to find the path that goes along the shoreline to ground zero (N 58° 25.084 W 134° 32.709). #1 Requirement for this cache is to post a picture at GZ. Note: this is not a trail that is maintained by the park service. If you are on a cruise ship and don’t have the time for this small hike for the requirement, I recommend finding and logging the Mendenhall Glacier earthcache (GC1A34J).
Nugget Falls, is a good example of how most waterfalls in Southeast Alaska were formed.
The water that feeds the falls cascades down a valley carved by Nugget Glacier, a tributary to the Mendenhall Glacier. Nugget Glacier was smaller than the Mendenhall, so when it advanced and retreated, it gouged a more shallow trough in the rock, creating a drop to the deeper valley below carved by the Mendenhall.
Warning! Thin Ice and Rolling Icebergs. The Mendenhall Glacier and Nugget Falls area is a beautiful place in the winter and a great place for skiing, skating, snowshoeing and snow play. There are potential ice hazards here though, and the Forest Service would like to remind you to use extreme caution at Mendenhall Lake and Nugget Falls due to thin ice and calving of the glacier. Although cold winter weather usually allows ice to form on Mendenhall Lake, the ice can still be thin due to freeze/thaw cycles as well as upwellings in the lake.
The glacier near the falls remains active throughout the year. Large sections of ice break off the glacier face without warning, generating a wave surge underneath the frozen lake surface that can break up much of the surface ice. This can happen at any time. Calving can occur so rapidly that if people are out on the ice, they may not be able to escape in time.
Water temperatures in Mendenhall Lake average 37 degrees Fahrenheit year-round, and survival times in cold water can be as short as 15 to 30 minutes.
Icebergs that are presently frozen in the lake ice are also hazardous. They continually melt underneath, and can roll suddenly, breaking the surrounding ice.
People wishing to ice skate or cross country ski on the lake are asked to consider Skater's Cabin, on the west side of Mendenhall Lake. All skaters and skiers are urged to use caution and check the thickness of the ice before skating or skiing. As a precaution, users should take a length of rope or long pole with them to be used in an emergency, and never travel alone.
Please be safe. The ice hazards at Mendenhall Lake cannot be overemphasized and the Forest Service urges all individuals to use caution and good judgment when using the Recreation Area.
Maintain a safe distance from the face of the glacier at all seasons. Massive building-sized chunks of ice "calve" or fall off the face suddenly and unexpectedly, causing severe damage to anybody under them and creating waves that can sweep the unwary into the frigid waters of the lake.
This is bear country. Clean up after yourself and deposit waste in appropriate containers. Keep plenty of distance between yourself and large wildlife - a close approach for a photograph may be interpreted by the animals as aggression. Bear bells and bear repellent use are recommended.
The United States Forest Service administers the Mendenhall Glacier Visitor Center as part of Tongass National Forest. Inside the Visitor Center is a natural history bookstore run by the Alaska Natural History Association which is a non-profit organization supporting the public lands of Alaska.
The Tongass National Forest is home to about 75,000 people who are dependent on the land for their livelihoods. Several Alaska Native tribes live throughout Southeast Alaska such as the Tlingit, Haida, and Tsimshian. 31 communities are located within the forest; the largest is Juneau, the state capital, with a population of 31,000. The forest is named for the Tongass group of the Tlingit people, who inhabited the southernmost areas of the Alaska panhandle near what is now Ketchikan. Along with British Columbia’s Great Bear Rainforest, Tongass is part of the "perhumid rainforest zone," and the forest is primarily made up of western red cedar, sitka spruce, and western hemlock. Tongass is Earth's largest remaining temperate rainforest. Unique and protected features seldom found anywhere else in North America inhabit the thousands of islands along the Alaska coast. Though its land area is huge, two thirds of the Tongass is not actually forest, but snow, ice, rock, and non-forest vegetation. The terrain underlying Tongass is divided between Karst (limestone rock, well-drained soil, and many caves), and Granite (poorly-drained soil).
Features
•Water defines the Tongass National Forest, from glacial melt to rain and snow, water impacts geology, soils, plant and animal tolerances and limits, migrations and seasonal fluctuations.
•16.9 million acres of public land and over 2000 islands and adjacent coastline from the southern tip of Prince of Wales Island 500 miles north to Hubbard Glacier north of Yakutat is within the Tongass National Forest. This is ninety percent of the southeastern panhandle of Alaska.
•Geologic and climatic variation within short distances of less than 1600 feet are so dramatic that vegetation and wildlife are distinctly zonated and adapted to rainfall and temperature extremes.
•Maritime and coastline adaptations are found in all life forms, including algae, fungi, lichens, mosses, bog and muskeg plants and animals, vast anadramous and non-anadramous fisheries, and high and low altitude dwelling animals and plants.
•Forests of hemlock, spruce, red and yellow cedar dominate the canopy of the temperate rainforest. In areas protected from salt laden winds, trees may live to be more than 500 years old. Approximately 83 percent of the old growth forests remain as they were 100 years ago, before commercial logging began.
•Half of the Tongass landforms include ice, water, muskeg (a form of acidic bog) and rock. 11,000 miles of shoreline within the Forest are formed from mountains reaching down slope to sea level, and glacial rivers of ice either perch above sea level or reach sea level as tidewater glaciers.
•Designated wilderness areas and two National Monuments comprise 35 percent of the Tongass National Forest, representing the highest percentage of any forest in the national forest system.
•Containing the largest concentration of caves and karst (calcium carbonate dominated geology) landscapes in Alaska, the Tongass examples are truly world class. These complex ecosystems are of geological, paleohydrological, paleontological, and archaeological significance, and add significantly to our understanding of natural and cultural resources of Prince of Wales Island.
•Habitats that support large populations of coastal grizzly bears, Alexander Archipelago wolves, mountain goats, and streams and waters that support five species of salmon occur on the Tongass National Forest.
•The Tongass is the home for many cultures and many peoples, from Alaska Native villages of Tlingit and Haida tribes and the Annette Island Reservation of Tshimshian tribes, to Euroamerican descendants of gold seekers, loggers, or commercial fishing. These multicultural communities continue today. Embedded in the Tongass National Forest, with the added dimension of ecotourism, and with statehood, politics added to the mix of rural economies.
A waterfall is usually a geological formation resulting from water, often in the form of a stream, flowing over an erosion-resistant rock formation that forms a sudden break in elevation or nick point.
Some waterfalls form in mountain environments where the erosive water force is high and stream courses may be subject to sudden and catastrophic change. In such cases, the waterfall may not be the end product of many years of water action over a region, but rather the result of relatively sudden geological processes such as landslides, faults or volcanic action.
Typically, a river flows over a large step in the rocks which may have been formed by a fault line. Over a period of years, the edges of this shelf will gradually break away and the waterfall will steadily retreat upstream, creating a gorge of recession. Often, the rock stratum just below the more resistant shelf will be of a softer type, meaning undercutting, due to splash back, will occur here to form a shallow cave-like formation known as a rock shelter or plunge pool under and behind the waterfall. Eventually, the outcropping, more resistant cap rock will collapse under pressure to add blocks of rock to the base of the waterfall. These blocks of rock are then broken down into smaller boulders by attrition as they collide with each other, and they also erode the base of the waterfall by abrasion, creating a deep plunge pool.
Streams become wider shallow just above waterfalls due to flowing over the rock shelf, and there is usually a deep pool just below the waterfall because of the kinetic energy of the water hitting the bottom.
Waterfalls can occur along the edge of glacial trough, whereby a stream or river flowing into a glacier continues to flow into a valley after the glacier has receded or melted. The large waterfalls in Yosemite Valley are examples of this phenomenon. The rivers are flowing from hanging valleys.
Types of Waterfalls...
Block: Water descends from a relatively wide stream or river.
Cascade: Water descends a series of rock steps.
Cataract: A large waterfall.
Fan: Water spreads horizontally as it descends while remaining in contact with bedrock.
Horsetail: Descending water maintains some contact with bedrock.
Plunge: Water descends vertically, losing contact with the bedrock surface.
Punchbowl: Water descends in a constricted form, and then spreads out in a wider pool.
Segmented: Distinctly separate flows of water form as it descends.
Tiered: Water drops in a series of distinct steps or falls.
Multi-Step: A series of waterfalls one after another of roughly the same size each with its own sunken plunge pool.
To get credit for this cache e-mail chiefsfan19 the answer to the following questions:
1) Post a picture of your party at ground zero near the falls.(optional)
2) Approximately how high are the falls?
3) Approximately how wide are the falls?
4) What type of Waterfall?
5) What type of rock is the waterfall formed from?
Additional Hints
(No hints available.)