Glacier 2/8/18

Up the inner passage to Tracy Arm and into the fjord.  Immediately, the water turned that glacial blue-green that is so recognizable.  We entered the fjord at 9:30 AM and arrived at the glacier at 12:30PM, sailing gingerly through increasingly narrow and ice-floe laden water.  The sides of the fjord were steep, sculpted rock.  The mountains were dark basalt, rounded-off by centuries of glacial grinding, with the occasional side-fjord and a lot of ribbon-like waterfalls.  As we neared the glacier, the ice floes became bigger and bluer until we rounded a corner and there it was.

Old hands who had visited before said that it was obvious the glacier had retreated considerably in the last ten years.  The bay in front of the glacier was ice-choked with several smaller tour boats alarmingly close to the glacier’s face.  As we watched, the glacier calved off a small berg, but the boats were unscathed.

I returned to our suite to copy my pictures to my laptop, grabbing a sandwich from the cafeteria en route.  As I worked, the ship spun on its axis and I was treated to an unobstructed sight of the glacier swinging by our balcony.  If I’d have thought that would occur, I could have spared myself an hour of standing on deck in a very cold mist, jockeying for position with hundreds of other watchers.