Glacier Bay

Glacier Bay is a long--53mile--fjord-like National Park at the BC/Alaska border, just west of Skagway. We arrived at the entrance at about 8:30--we saw otters and many spouts, whales and orcas!!! After picking up the Park Rangers, we sailed along the Bay to the end, where Marjorie and Grand Pacific Glaciers meet the Bay. Marjorie advances 5 feet per day and so calves of lots of ice into the water. We saw a few pieces (size is hard to tell--the glacier front is 75 meters tall and 1 km wide, and we're about 600 meters away) fall off. You catch a glimpse of motion in the corner of your eye, hear a great crack--sort of like thunder--like when an ice cube explodes in your glass, times 200--and see the splash. Quite amazing. Grand Pacific Glacier comes down from Canada--the border is just a few hundred meters back in from the water. Its not moving as fast as Marjorie, and is black because of rocks and silt and the like. We were maybe 3/4 of a mile off the end of it--and saw a brown bear on the edge of the glacier.

We sailed back a bit to Lamplugh Glacier--the water off the end of the Glacier was just white with floating ice pieces--big and small. And in the background of all this are snow covered mountains--the Fairweather Range at 15,000 feet plus, the Saint Elias Range, the Alseks and the Takhinsha Mountains. Just beautiful--for the second day in a row, words fail. The weather is perfect--bright blue sky, about 5 C, only a breeze. We are very lucky!!!

We are sailing back down Glacier Bay towards the entrance now. There will be another hour or so of good whale watching later, so hopefully we will see more...

Tomorrow, Skagway and the White Pass and Yukon Railway trip, so we'll blog after that for sure.