It is our first close encounter with glacier ice. The blue is light, bright, and beautiful to see. The glacier that feeds Portage Lake is out of sight around an arm of the mountain. A tease of what is to come.
We also met up with the Alaskan Rail Road here, and got in line to travel the tunnel to Whitter. The tunnel is a one lane road that shares the rail road track. You get in line and wait for the green light when it is your turn. The light spaces everyone out. Then you straddle the rail road track and enter the 2 and a half-mile tunnel going under the mountain to Whitter where those leaving Whitter are lined up waiting for their turn.
After boarding the Island Princesses, we set sail for Yakuiat Bay arriving about 1 pm the following day. Hubbard Glacier is at the end of the bay. The weather there can be a problem, meaning a lot of times it is fogged in. If that happens, there is nothing to see and ship moves on. This time the weather was clear and water calm, and view breathtaking.
On our way into the bay we pass two large chunks of ice a few miles from the entrance to the bay. By large I mean 30 or 40 feet long and standing 10 feet out of the water. The closer we get the more ice we encounter in the fiord. Soon there is ice everywhere and we are bouncing large chunks off the hull of the ship, not to worry, we have slowed down, and avoid the larger chunks of ice. The water is clouded gray with glacier silt the further in we go.
Hubbard Glacier is more than 70 miles long and 6 miles wide where it meets the sea, towering as much as 400 feet above the water line. It is a healthy glacier in that is not melting away. At times it surges into the bay.
Because of the ice under the waterline we can’t get much closer than half a mile, but even at that distance the view is magnificent. We spend 30 minutes portside and another 30 minutes starboard, so everyone gets a good view.
As fantastic as the view is here, it is at our stop at Glacier Bay that you feel and hear the power of the rivers of ice.
At Glacier Bay we view three separate glaciers. And what views they are. We take on Park Rangers as we approach the town of Gustavus at Bartlett Cove at the mouth of the bay.
The Tlingit tell of a village at the base of the glacier, which the Tlingit called S'e Shuyee or "edge of the glacial silt."
Maps indicate this village was far inland from what is today the Icy Strait. There was land all the way to Icy Strait and all inhabited by the Tlingit people.
There was just the one glacier then while today there are some 14 glaciers emptying into the bay and no silt edge anywhere.
The glacier which terminated at the “edge of the glacial silt” was The Grand Pacific Glacier.
The Tlingit tell of a maiden that disrespected the glacier which responded by surging foreword, destroying their villages and forcing them to leave.
Science has backed up the oral history. The glacier started to advance around 1680, by 1750 it had pushed miles into the Icy Strait before retreating almost as fast as it advanced.
The once land bound glacier moved far enough to become a tidal glacier, where the warmer water did its work and carved out the glacial silt under the growing ice.
The Little Ice Age had ended, and not even the 166 feet of snow they get each year today is enough to advance most of the ice. As the sea undercut the silt it meant there was nothing but water to support the weight of the ice. Today the ice that makes the Margerie Glacier is 250 feet above the waterline and 300 feet below it and moving 6 feet a day.
In 1966 The Grand Pacific Glacier had retreated into Canada, but today it is miles inside the US once again and almost butts up against the Margerie. But, as the sea beat back the massive glacier the ice gauged out a deep valley that is today’s bay. Now it was known as Sit' Eeti Gheeyi or "the bay in place of the glacier."
We encounter ice miles from Margerie Glacier at the far end of Glacier Bay, in Tarr Inlet. The ice in the water is getting more plentiful and larger the further up the bay we travel. Though we are moving slowly into the bay it is still a bit unnerving hearing it hit the hull of the ship.
The water is cloudy with silt from the glaciers, and the seals take advantage of it. The Killer Whales don’t like silt clouded water and stay away.
On the land part of our adventure we saw clear rivers and gray rivers which told you which was fed by snow melt and which were fed my glacier melt, it works here too. Silt gray sea water means there is at least one glacier emptying into the bay.
The weather is overcast making the blue ice stand out. We are within a few hundred yards of this wall of ice. It is 21 miles long and a mile wide were it juts into the bay. The massive wall of ice is impressive up close, but what gets your attention, something you will never forget, is the sound of the ice, the long rumbling sound of millions of tons of 15,000-year-old ice moving towards you and crack as the ice breaks free and splashes into the sea.
The ice is a living river, growing and dying as it sheds huge chunks for ice before your eyes. You listen, you feel and you see this and wonder at the splendor of the power before you.
This glacier is heathy, so is The Grand Pacific Glacier a few hundred feet away and at a right angle next to the Margerie, but you have to look to see the Grand Pacific Glacier is there at all. It appears to be a wall of land at first, second and third glance. There have been landslides above the glacier which hides most of the ice face in black dirt. However, a closer look shows places were the ice is exposed. It is quite a contrast to all the other glaciers within the park.
Should the climate swing back, and someday it will, the bay could be covered in glacial ice in a surprisingly short time.
On the way back out of the bay we sail past the Lamplugh Glacier. This one is not moving as fast and we don’t come as close. We couldn’t hear the ice, which was a shame. The sound of moving ice moves you too. Like an Elk Bugle once heard can bring you to cry when heard again.