The 377 foot cascade beside the Mendenhall Glacier, reached by a flat lakeside trail from the visitor center and thundering hardest in the glacier-melt months.
June through August
Big water window
in a typical year
Snowmelt
What drives it
Nugget Creek
Live USGS
Data on this page
gauge 15052500
USFS Tongass
Managed by
their rules govern
Trail status, closures and safety rules belong to each falls' managing agency, named and linked on every page.
The season
What fills Nugget Falls, and when
Nugget Creek drains the Nugget Glacier into Mendenhall Lake, so the falls peaks with summer glacial melt, June through August, and keeps a cold, reduced flow the rest of the year. The glacial sourcing is standard knowledge rather than the trail page's words. Juneau's fee program keeps the trail plowed all winter, so the frozen-season version is genuinely reachable.
Typical best flow: June through August
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What the agency itself says
The Nugget Falls Trail is 0.8 miles long. It begins half way down Photo Point Trail and ends at Nugget Falls, skirting the flats at the edge of Mendenhall Lake. It is a low gradient trail that was completed in 2010.
Gauge: USGS 15052500 Mendenhall R nr Auke Bay AK, downstream, on the river draining Mendenhall Lake; a basin-level proxy for the melt. The gauge reads the river, not the brink of the falls, so treat it as the trend line rather than a turnstile.
Source: USGS Water Services (National Water Information System). Instantaneous values and daily statistics services. U.S. Geological Survey data are works of the United States Government and are in the public domain. Gauge verified 2026-08-27.
The other half of the story: the same Palouse Falls in late August. Nothing is wrong; this is what a snowmelt river does every year once the melt is spent. “Palouse Falls 20100829” by Mark Wagner, CC BY-SA 2.5
Getting there
Access, in the agency's words and ours
The 0.8 mile trail leaves from partway down Photo Point Trail near the Mendenhall Glacier Visitor Center and skirts the lake flats to the falls, per the Forest Service, on a low gradient alignment rebuilt above lake high water in 2010.
Big northern melt water (Lower Falls of the Yellowstone, NPS photo). Nugget Falls runs on the most literal melt of all: a glacier, shrinking into a lake beside it. “Afternoon fall light on Lower Falls from Lookout Point (54937071695)” — YellowstoneNPS — Public domain
Common questions
Nugget Falls flow season FAQ
The reliable big-water window is June through August. Nugget Creek drains the Nugget Glacier into Mendenhall Lake, so the falls peaks with summer glacial melt, June through August, and keeps a cold, reduced flow the rest of the year. The glacial sourcing is standard knowledge rather than the trail page's words. Juneau's fee program keeps the trail plowed all winter, so the frozen-season version is genuinely reachable.
This page reads the USGS gauge on Nugget Creek (Mendenhall R nr Auke Bay AK, downstream, on the river draining Mendenhall Lake; a basin-level proxy for the melt) live in your browser, and shows the latest flow next to the median USGS publishes for today's date, so you can see where today sits in the year. The gauge reads the river, not the brink, so treat it as the trend rather than a turnstile.
No, but it breathes with the glacier: biggest in warm summer weather when melt is pouring, leaner and icier the rest of the year. The lake and glacier backdrop carries the visit in any month.
Tongass National Forest, Mendenhall Glacier Recreation Area (US Forest Service). The 0.8 mile trail leaves from partway down Photo Point Trail near the Mendenhall Glacier Visitor Center and skirts the lake flats to the falls, per the Forest Service, on a low gradient alignment rebuilt above lake high water in 2010. Trail status, closures and safety rules are theirs, and their page is linked on this one; nothing here overrides what they publish.
Yosemite Falls in May, running on snowmelt that will be gone by late summer. The National Park Service tells visitors the falls can be dry by August, which is why every falls page here starts from its watershed. “Tourists below Yosemite Falls (39832011431)” by Mike McBey, CC BY 2.0
Flow windows are typical-year climatology drawn from the driver and the agency language quoted above, not forecasts. Live readings and per-date percentiles are U.S. Geological Survey data, public domain; the above-or-below-typical line is our comparison and is labelled as such. Access, trail and safety information belongs to Tongass National Forest, Mendenhall Glacier Recreation Area (US Forest Service). National picture: waterfall season across the US → Hero image: “Afternoon fall light on Lower Falls from Lookout Point (54937071695)” — YellowstoneNPS — Public domain
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