So we signed onto a cruise ship that was going to sail up a narrow channel, within an fjord, looking for icebergs. What could go wrong?
Let us start with "What is a fjord"? A good question (one I couldn't answer before this trip). Over the last tens of thousands years, the earth had a few ice ages and during each snow built up and formed rivers of ice called glaciers. These glaciers carved networks of large, rounded valleys throughout the landscape. (This was one of the things we learned -- when you look at a valley from a distance, you can tell if it was formed by running water (a river) or ice (a glacier) by looking at its shape. If it forms a pointy "V" it was formed by a river; if it is a soft shaped "U" it was formed by a glacier.)
So, when the glaciers receded, seawater rushed in to fill the valleys. This is the definition of a fjord. Some fjords still have glaciers at their head and spawn icebergs when huge chunks of ice break off (calve). It's pretty dramatic to see the ice boulder crash into the water -- this is what we were looking for.
We woke early -- before 5:30 a.m.! -- so we could watch as the ship passed through the narrowest part of the inlet to the fjord. Everyone raced to the side or various viewing spots to watch as small icebergs floated by. We saw wild life like eagles and whales. All the while, the ship's naturalist was giving an informative talk about the fjord over the PA system. Great stuff.
Now let me stop here for a second. Celebrity Solstice is a BIG ship. It has a few hundred seat theater, a very large dining room, casino, stores, swimming pools, jogging track and enough sleeping space for almost 3,000 passengers and about as many crew. This is not a small boat. It is a city. When we docked at Skagway, we doubled the size of the town. The captain steered this behemoth up the sailing equivalent of a very small city street.
When we got about half way up, the captain announced that anyone taking the excursion, should go to deck 5. (Yes, "Ann the wonderful", had signed us up for the excursion to go up further into the fjord). About thirty of us climbed on to a catamaran and off we went. Enclosed is a photo of the captain is doing a K-turn.
We motored up the rest of the fjord to the Sawyer Glacier, a gigantic river of ice that flows into the Tracy Arm Fjord. The glacier extends over 200 feet of ice extend above the surface of the water and 400 - 600 feet more ice are below the surface. This part of the trip was REALLY exciting. We maneuvered through a virtual sea of ice. It was EVERYWHERE around us. And our naturalist kept reminding us that you can only see 10 - 20% of the berg, because the rest is submerged under the surface. We zigzagged back and forth to avoid the larger iceberglets (not making this up -- that's what they're called); several times we passed directly over ice big enough to make loud grinding noises on the boat's hull. Definitely got our attention the first few times it happened! And we discovered that a lot of icebergs are really, really beautiful shades of aqua and look like they are lit from inside.
We saw seals, eagles, humpbacks and lots of other wild life. We didn't see any major calving, only smaller pieces breaking off. We did hear the loud popping and cracking before anything happened. It was exciting.
Let me leave you with many of the photos we took of this amazing adventure.
Bill
Sent from my iPad
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