In few places can you experience every stage of the water cycle at once. But there's magic in the Mendenhall Ice Caves, where water runs over rocks under blue ceilings inside a partially hollow glacier. The Mendenhall Glacier is a 12-mile-long glacier in the Mendenhall Valley, located only 12 miles from downtown Juneau in Southeast Alaska. The Ice Caves are inside the glacier, accessible only to those willing to kayak to, and then ice climb over the glacier. However, the glacier is retreating increasingly fast as global warming heats the oceans and temperatures rise.