Taku Glacier: the Ice You Land On, and the Lodge at Its Face

The Juneau Icefield covers more than 1,500 square miles and runs 90 miles northwest to Skagway per Juneau's official visitor organisation, and Taku is its largest outlet glacier, the arm of the field that drains toward the coast. It flows into the Taku River, the waterway the floatplanes land on beside the lodge, across from the separate Hole-in-the-Wall glacier face. The DMO prints the two figures that define it: 4,845 feet thick, which is more than 15 times the height of the cliff face you see from the air, and an advance of 56 feet per year since 1988.

Those numbers make Taku both the biggest and the most anomalous glacier in the local field, and the advance is what the section that follows on this page is about.

• Largest outlet of the Juneau Icefield, a field of more than 1,500 square miles running to Skagway (DMO).
• 4,845 feet thick (DMO).
• Advancing 56 feet per year since 1988 (DMO).
• Flows to the Taku River, where the floatplanes touch down; the lodge sits across from Hole-in-the-Wall, a separate glacier face.

The Taku River below the ice

The Taku River is the glacier's plumbing and the flight's runway: a broad, braided, glacially fed waterway that carries the melt from the field to the sea near the Alaska-British Columbia border. The lodge sits on its bank, and the landing is the part of the day passengers remember: the Otter steps onto the river, glides to the shingle bank, and the lawn, the hearth-smoke and the glacier wall across the water are suddenly at walking pace. The river is also the reason the site works as a runway, which is the whole history of the place in one sentence; no road has ever reached it, and the bush pilots who pioneered the route in the middle of the last century are part of the lodge's table talk, alongside the story of Mary Joyce and her 1,000-mile dogsled journey that the lodge's staff tell per the listing.

Taku has advanced 56 feet per year since 1988 by the DMO's figure, which puts it in the tiny company of advancing glaciers in a warming world, and in a strange local position too: its neighbours on the same Icefield, the ones the same flight passes, have been retreating for decades. The pilot's narration leans on exactly that contrast, and the flight-and-feast listing calls Taku the mighty, ever-advancing Taku Glacier in its own copy. The scientific backstory is longer than the flight: Taku spent the 20th century as Southeast Alaska's research benchmark, and its tidewater connection closed in the mid-20th century, after which the glacier pushed its terminal moraine shoal together and switched into its present advance.

What the official pages we can cite print is the current figure, 56 feet a year since 1988, and that is what this page carries.

• The number to remember: 56 feet of advance per year since 1988 (DMO).
• The context to remember: thickness of 4,845 feet, the Icefield's largest outlet, growing while most of the field retreats (DMO).
• The view to match: on the flight in, the glacier's terminal lobe and its moraine are the scenery the narration points at.
• The honest limit: no official page prints a future projection or a current-year figure, and we will not extrapolate one.

The lodge was built in 1923, per the flight-and-feast listing's own description, as a hunting and fishing lodge on the Taku River, and it is now the setting Juneau sells as its only glacier-view dining in Southeast Alaska. The flight in is a classic De Havilland Otter floatplane from the Juneau waterfront with a guaranteed window seat for every passenger and narrated commentary through individual headsets, over five named glaciers: Norris, East Twin, West Twin, Hole-in-the-Wall and Taku itself. On the ground the day splits three ways per the listing: the feast, a guided nature walk on the forested trails, or a hot drink by the stone hearth on the porch, with the glacier face across the river the whole time.

• The flight: Otter floatplane, waterfront departure, five glaciers, window seat guaranteed, headset narration.
• The feast: grilled salmon over an open fire, homemade baked beans, coleslaw, pioneer fruit compote, herb biscuits, sourdough bread and ginger cookies, with glacier-ice-chilled drinks, per the listing.
• The grounds: forested trails on a guided nature walk, or the hearth and the porch benches facing the ice.
• The wildlife clause the listing itself prints: the salmon's scent can draw curious black bears to the edge of the lawn.

The lodge year, and what nobody publishes

The lodge opens with the flight season and closes with it, because floatplanes are its only road; no official page prints exact opening and closing dates, a capacity or a walk-in price, and we state that plainly rather than filling the gaps. The verified reviews on the current listing, dated July and August 2026, describe a smaller and cosier lodge than photographs suggest, strong food and staff storytelling, and one reviewer noting the flight felt longer than expected, which is a compliment in this market. Ratings sit at 4.9 from 15 reviews, a thin but clean record; the flight-only seaplane product's 26 reviews at 5.0 are the denser data point if review volume drives your booking.

The choice between the $532 flight and feast and the $382.66 flight-only seaplane is a three-hour versus 40-minute decision as much as a money one. The feast version eats most of a port day: three hours door to door, plus the margin any floatplane product needs against weather, which is why it suits overnight visitors and cruise days with late sailings. The flight-only version is the port-day shape: 40 minutes in the air, and the flightseeing page shows what else runs in the same window.

Between them sits the helicopter at $429, which trades the lodge for standing on ice, a different experience sold on the helicopter glacier tours page.

Weather, and what a cancelled flight does

Every product on this page is a flight first, and flights here cancel for weather the boats do not: fog on the field, low ceiling over the ice, wind on the river. The listing's weather note is the standard Juneau one, weather-dependent with operators re-booking or refunding when they cancel, and free cancellation runs to 24 hours on your side. Book the earliest flight of your day that you can live with, because a morning slot that weather moves still has an afternoon to land in; a 3pm feast that cancels has nothing. The best time to visit page puts the weather pattern in months.