Advertisement
This beautiful sunny morning we were 50 degrees north of the equator in Glacier Bay, Alaska. Glacier Bay is a deep narrow inlet where many millions of years ago, a giant glacier receded to let the sea come in. Usually two cruise ships enter this bay each day, one in the morning and one in the afternoon. A National Parks Ranger boards the ship and gives a permit to enter and then makes a running commentary of the area from the ships bridge. We headed to the end of the inlet to Margarite Glacier and to Grand Pacific Glacier. As we sailed in, either side of us the mountains were snow capped to about half way down, then some scattered trees and some scrub before the stone covered shoreline. In the sea, a few small ice blocks appeared, then more, then more and more as we neared the two glaciers at the end of the bay. The water was now murky mid green caused by glacier debris, rock and dust. Grand Pacific glacier is about 1.5 miles wide and mostly dirty from rock and rubble it collects before it meets the water, behind it is white as it appears further up
in its valley. By contrast, Margarite is all white, 1 mile wide and 250 feet high at the waterline and extends 100 feet below the waterline. Up close at about ½ km away, each glacier appears as many tall vertical very close knit fingers with chasms in between but from a distance, it all appears as one close white mass with jaggered vertical walls at the waters edge. Three times were saw “calving” where sections of the front wall sheared off Margarite in a cloud of white spray followed by significant low thunder.
We tracked back out at lunchtime and went into another sound to meander up to Mt Cooper 1 mile high at sea level, and around Point Jaw so named because what you see is supposed to make your jaw drop. Well it almost did, another big glacier up close, Johns Hopkins Glacier but without the shards falling off at the front. The only animal life we saw in the bays were 3 sea eagles sitting on ice flows and a few sunbaking seals also on ice flows and way off in the distance two mountain goats high up on cliffs where the green/brown foliage starts. One of
the rangers then conducted a slide show and talk back in the theatre to complete this morning’s adventure.
Later we saw some humpback whales, a sea otter laying on its back, some seals hunting beside another humpback and some puffins catching fish. Although it was cold about 10 degrees, I managed to get sunburnt cheeks “on whalewatch”. Tonite we had pre dinner cocktails at the Gold Club Group with the Captain making a short speech. We didn’t win anything, those who had been on about 25 cruises won But we had a dance and that was nice. After dinner in the restaurant, we went to the last Showtime, which was the best one yet, it was a dance & music show finishing with Riverdance.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.146s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 11; qc: 50; dbt: 0.0706s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb