Glacier Bay

In 1794 when Captain George Vancouver first set eyes on the small five-mile inlet that was Glacier Bay, I'm sure he thought, "Oh holy shit!"  He described it as a "sheet of ice as far as the eye could distinguish."

There's really no place like this on earth.  Glacier Bay encompasses over 3.2 million acres of forest, inlet and shore, mountain peaks rising over 15,000 feet and, of course, glaciers...seven glaciers, including Margerie Glacier - one of Alaska's most photographed features.

This sucker is about 250 ft high above the water, and bottoms out at about 100 feet below the surface.  It looks blue because in the light spectrum, blue is most easily refracted.  When the light hits compacted ice (like a glacier), the red wavelengths are absorbed...the blue light reflects off the ice to our eyes.

Glaciers move faster than you think!  Usually about five feet a day...that's really a lot faster than I've seen some people on this cruise move.  As the ice is pushed forward in the "river" it cracks and pops causing some pieces to fall off...that's called calving.  Trouble is, you never know where or when...so we wait.

video

(Sorry, internet is hinky, and my videos won't upload to Blogger.  Good news is that the YouTube video up next right after mine shows a great shot of the glacier calving!)

Still waiting

And...

 This is the Lumplugh Glacier.  It's retreated much more than Margerie.  It's still enormous, but it doesn't really calve...ice fields have built up in front of it (think silt in the mouth of a river), so when parts of the glacier break off, they just fall onto the field instead of into the ocean.  Someday some enormous amount of pressure will cause the ice to break down enough and push it into the ocean.  Today is not that day.

I love the low-clinging clouds.

This is Johns Hopkins glacier.  It's almost gone, but you can totally see the path it's taken over time.

This glacier (Reid?) has retreated back from the shore and now sits completely on the mountain.  It just looks cold.

Tomorrow I'll be back with more glaciers and wildlife (hopefully) from our cruise of College Fjord - our last day on board...can't believe it's already over!