26 Glacier Cruise

There are at least a half dozen trips in Alaska that i have never done, partly because i kind of save as options for when i have visitors. One of those things is the 26 Glacier Cruise out of Whittier. The Alaskan coastline is littered with tidewater glaciers tucked into an endless maze of fjords stretching from Homer to Valdez. I've been on the well known cruise out of Seward, which takes you into Kenai Fjords National Park, but i'd never gotten around to the one in Prince William Sound. I decided the time was right when my sister was visiting last summer.

I hate doing anything that requires advanced reservations in Alaska. The weather is just too unpredictable, but in the case of the cruise i knew they often were full ships. So we booked our tour, and of course it was raining when the day came to leave. It's not the worst thing in the world, because the glaciers are still visible at sea level, and so is most of the wildlife.

About 1.5 miles off shore from Esther Island is Egg Rock, a sea lion rookery.

Right across from Whittier is the well known Kittiwake Rookery. There are 10,000 birds that nest on these cliffs. After that i lost count.

A Bald Eagle is actively consuming a Kittiwake off to the side of the rookery.

The vessel for this tour is called the Klondike Express, and it's a seriously impressive ship. A 127 foot catamaran, it can reach a top speed of 50 mph (80kph) while carrying 342 people. It cruises at only slightly slower, at 44 mph (71kph). That's a very satisfying speed, and will get you a long distance in a short time. On the other hand, if you see something cool out the window and want to take a picture, then by the time you're ready whatever it was you wanted to photograph is long gone, and the boat certainly doesn't stop. It's got to navigate through 145 miles of water during the tour.

 During the long stretch of the cruise you will pass through an active commercial fishery. There were a ton of boats out there, some were quite large. I found this portion of the tour surprisingly interesting. The fishermen were very busy.

One of the boats in the fishing fleet was the Kodiak, (a boat featured in the TV show Deadliest Catch.) If you think all these crab captains just go home for the rest of the year and sit around once the season is over, you're dead wrong.

Purely by chance, the Captain Bill Wichrowski happened to be on deck (behind the red bearded guy). As you can see, he looks exactly the same as on TV. He's even wearing the same clothes!

Entering the fjords introduced a staggering number waterfalls pouring out of the clouds.

I didn't realize until i wrote this post that on the other side of this mountain is a place near Anchorage i've been wanting to go for years: Inner Lake George. From here it's 13 miles away. When i tried to get to the Eklutna Glacier a few years ago it was also 13 miles from me in the other direction. The only thing in the way at that time was a mile high cliff. Weird that I had ridden my bike 13 miles to get to that point.

The border between the ice and the rock is always interesting to me. After all, that's where all the carving occurs.

The tour is set up well. The longest, most "boring" part of the tour comes first, as the Klondike zips through open waters for 30 miles to a place called Esther Island. During this time the crew serves lunch, and before you know it the ship is navigating a narrow strip of water called Esther Passage. The passage is flanked on both sides by lush mountainous rain forest. After Esther the boat finally gets into glacier territory.

For people who see a lot of glaciers, this kind of scene is particularly exciting, at least it is for me. Usually you see a large glacier pouring out the end of a valley, like the one covered in debris here, or you see a smaller one working it's way down from it's mountain cirque crowned with rocky peaks, like the picture above this one. It's rare to see a glacier pouring over the top of an unknown landscape with no clues to what lies beyond. It definitely makes me want to get up there and explore.

 

As we arrived at Surprise Glacier the sun miraculously came out from behind the clouds.

 

I don't know how this happens, but in this picture a large portion of the glacier appears to have been turned completely on it's side, creating vertical strata in the ice. On the other hand, maybe it's just that dirt deposits have drained vertically down the side of ever thinning blades of ice. It's something i hadn't encountered before, and i couldn't walk up there to find out.

During our cruise we skipped College Fjord, the part i had been most looking forward too. The captains decided the weather was too bad, and told us the glacier had been calving so furiously all summer that the closest they could get with the boat was still miles away from the glacier. Instead we spent more time at Surprise Glacier. This worked out well because the sun came out and we got to witness several chunks of ice fall into the sea.

The sun came out and felt great. These fjords are refrigerated.

Then we got really lucky and the wind died down. The water started looking glassy.

The Klondike continued to amaze me when we were in the fjords. Due to all the rain we were having that summer the glaciers were calving like crazy, some of them choking the fjords with miles of icebergs. The Klondike was not frightened of the ice. It often hit ice bergs of impressive size. You could feel a tiny jolt due to the entire ship instantly changing speed as the ice absorbed it's momentum.

On one occasion when we were having trouble getting closer than two miles to Barry Glacier. The captains slowed the boat to a standstill. After a few minutes they spotted a gap opening up between large bergs. The captains gunned the engine and the large ship jumped right into action skipping through the narrow lead with no delay, as if it were a vessel ten times smaller.

The bottom of Surprise Glacier reminded me of old wooden beams, split under centuries of pressure.

The top of the glacier was covered in seracs constantly breaking apart.

Blocks of ice plummet into the ocean. Since we didn't go up College Fjord we were able to witness several episodes of calving on Surprise Glacier. 

A close up of the falling ice. It's hard for me to comprehend how many pieces it can break into on it's way down. You'd hear a loud crackle and then it was like the ice was exploding.

 

On the other side of the fjord were still more glaciers. In the middle of this picture you can see some black dots in the ice. They are not sealions.

 

The were otters swimming around and relaxing on the floating bergs! I didn't know otters did this kind of stuff.

Our cruise still had one more surprise. With all the ice floating around the crew dragged some up on deck while everyone else was busy gazing towards land. On the way back they chopped up this ice and served glacier margaritas. I couldn't resist, i'd never had a mixed drink with glacier ice. They are great. The ice is very hard and melts slowly. It is difficult to break it with your teeth.

Mary Beth and Danielle at Cascade Glacier. The funny thing about this is that if you look up our location in Google Earth we would be under solid ice just upriver of the confluence of Cascade and Barry Glaciers.