Tony and Jo Ann's Travels: Day 4 -5

Our entire trip has been planned around visiting two locations, Glacier Bay National Park on the inside passage and Brooks Camp in Katmai, National Park. Today we start two days at sea, cruising the first day into Glacier Bay and College Fjord the second, both are only accessible by boat. In 1750 there was no Glacier Bay, but rather it was a single glacier thousands of feet thick which filled what is now a 65-mile long fjord. Now as the glacier has receded, Glacier Bay National Park has numerous distinct tidewater glaciers that are visible within the bay. The highlight of the cruise is at the end of the fjord where the Margerie and Grand Pacific Glacier terminate into the sea. http://www.nps.gov/glba/naturescience/upload/Tidewater-and-Lakewater-Glaciers.jpg The Margerie Glacier is the most famous and typical of what we think of when we refer to glacier, white ice, blue in the crevasses with dark tracks of dirt and rock. The Grand Pacific Glacier is the opposite as it appears to be just dirt, but beneath its brown exterior is a core of ice.

It seems that every morning the skies are cloudy and the ceiling low, today was no exception. However the further we cruised, the lower the ceiling dropped until it almost met the ocean. It seemed like Ground Hog Day, another grey day on the horizon. If there was one place I really wanted to be sunny on our cruise, it was Glacier Bay, but that was not to be!

As we cruised past Gustavus, we pick up two park rangers from the Glacier Bay NP ranger station. They set up a park’s area on board with literature and answered questions as well as provide a broad cast of Glacier Bay facts as we cruised 65 miles into the fjord. They also were great at alerting us to marine wildlife and glaciers as we cruised past. The Island Princess is one of only a handful of cruise ships allowed into the bay. Also there is a limit to the number of ships allowed per day.

Glaciers are “rivers of ice”. Snow over the years have accumulated and been compressed into ice. Tidewater glaciers terminate directly into a water source and there are many visible all along the inside passage. The glaciers are drawn by gravity down valleys, grinding rock along the way and ultimately emptying into the water. The glacier’s movement is aided by melted glacial water that runs underneath.

We had a great view from our balcony.

The front wall of the Margerie Glacier is huge, rising straight up 250 feet from bay, with an additional 100 feet under the surface. The glacier itself is stable, forming as much new ice as it loses in a year. It is also one of the better known glaciers for its frequent calving. As the glacier moves, chunks of ice crack and ultimately break off or “calve” into the water.

Notice the smaller ship on the left side of the glacier. Also notice how large the iceberg in the water is compared to the ship.

As we approached the face of the glacier there was a smaller glacier tour boat that was leaving the area as we approached. The ship helped to put the immensity of the glacier into perspective which can be quickly lost without something to compare it to.

Aegean blue ice in the crevasses of the glacier face.

On a sunny day, you would immediately recognize a glacier; its white form with aegean blue ice mixed in with its irregular peaks and crevasses. Most also have white ice contrasted with lines of dirt and rock running the length of the glacier. However, on a cloudy day, it is hard to differentiate the clouds from the ice. Luckily as we approached, the clouds started to rise, revealing the entire glacier as the park ranger narrated over the ships loud speakers.

Thanks to the Jenkins from Utah for taking this pic. We kept running into Alan and Lori Ann during the many days of photographing wildlife and scenery from the ship.

Its everyone's dream to see a huge chunk of a glacier crash into the ocean, you know-just like you see in Discovery or Nat Geo Channel documentaries. Most passengers were on deck and almost as soon as we approached, a humongous crack put everyone on alert. It almost sounded like the crack of a rifle; the glacier was moving. As I later discovered, ice doesn’t fall every time you hear a crack. However, once you hear the crack, it’s usually too late to see the ice falling from the glacier. A perfect example of how slow sound travels, we were only a half a mile away.

360 perspective of cruising into Glacier Bay.

We stayed near the glacier of over an hour as the skies started clearing and the glacier had multiple calving events. Various sized icebergs filled the bay; remnants of previous calving events. It was really hard to appreciate the size of the icebergs, they looked like little ice cubes floating in the

Even seagulls need a rest.

water. 90% of those were underwater and only 10% showed above. It wasn’t until you could compare them to a life size object did you realize that some of them were the size of small boats. Timing is everything and I was really lucky that when the largest piece calved, I had my telephoto lens already focused on that particular area. There was a large cave at the base of the glacier where large waves were created by water roaring out underneath entering into the bay. Immediately after switching lens, a huge piece of ice started dropping straight down along the face of the glacier by the cave and fell into the water creating a huge wave and splash.