Kenai Fjords National Park 2013

It seems like for years i've been doing cruises in Prince William Sound so this year when Robert was visiting i decided to take him on a cruise i had been postponing in Kenai Fjords National Park. We took the Northwestern Fjord tour, the longest cruise offered at 9 hours. I've always avoided it because it also involves about 4.5 hours of driving on top of the 9 hours of cruising. A long day indeed, but this was the year.

We hadn't gotten far before we spotted a pod of Orcas.

Offshore whales were busy feeding on plankton in front of distant icebergs looming over the forest in front of the Bear Glacier.

The Bear Glacier is always impressive. It is the largest glacier leaving the massive Harding Icefields.

Male sealions were constantly threatening each other.

Higher up female sealions were mostly not fighting it out.

The cruise takes you from Seward out of Ressurection Bay, like all the cruises, but this one takes you deeper into the park than any of the others, into a fjord that was mostly ice filled until only 50 years ago. It culminates in the end at the Northwestern Glacier, which has melted so much at this point that it's not even recognizable from the brochure photos. Additionally, several hours are set aside for opportunistic wildlife viewing.

There's not much else to say about the cruise, the pictures tell the story, so enjoy! I took over 400 pictures that day and have really tried to limit what's posted here to avoid desensitizing you delicate viewers.

Eventually we made it into Northwest Fjord where the temperature plummeted as ice took over the scenery.

Hard to take a panorama from a bobbing boat but i nearly did it.

Most fjords i've visited are covered in lush vegetation but this one was lined all over with newly exposed rock. It was a nice change of pace.

In the back of Northwestern Fjord is Northwestern Glacier. So much ice has come off of it in the last couple of years that it kept the tour boats 2 miles away. We were able to get all the way up to see that in maybe one or two more years it will no longer be a tidewater glacier.

The edge of Northwestern Glacier retreats from the water.

Northwestern Glacier is already too far gone to show off spectacular ocean calving but there was still a decent amount of crumbling activity.

Sorry if this takes a long time to load. I've never made a gif before so it's probably not saved efficiently. I took a couple of series of quick shots of some ice falling from high up at a telephoto range of 220mm. I'm amazed photoshop was able to align the shots as well as it did. This was 12 shots in fast succession. Two of the preceding stills are from this series.

Unfortunately it began to rain and we headed back towards the mouth of the fjord.

Initially it looked like this was a little island of trees about to be bulldozed by ice.

It turned out to be two different glaciers but i bet the view is pretty cool right there on the strip of trees.

At one point we passed the historical terminus of the glacier, 10 miles away from the current terminus, out near Harris Bay. The boat must navigate through very shallow water over a submerged moraine using what used to me the stream coming out the mouth of the glacier. During this transition the water is so shallow it makes rapids in the ocean. This was just 50 years ago, and everything beyond that point is new land. The valley pictured here looked great for hiking. Probably no more than 40 years old it had a nice beach for camping and looked pretty easy to walk inland through patches of young alders.

A Jeckle and Hyde Glacier.

Like a mirage a fishing boat shimmers through the water.

A large black and blue amphitheater reveals a conspicous waterfall under what othewise would be assumed to be solid ground.

A larger view shows an immense rock slide at somepoint buried the glacier, probably insulating it for centuries.

This iron reinforced knob of rock was able to withstand the ice that created the fjord.

I have seen the top of this mountain before. I've always liked it.

On the way out of Harris Bay we made a surprise stop at a massive granite wall covered in waterfalls, known as Cataract Cove.

The mountains on the edges of Harris and Aialik Bay, as well as Ressurection Bay, are flooded by the ocean. That is to say, in the past the valleys continued to descend several hundred more feet before reaching sea level. You can see this easily if you can ever get ahold of a deteail topo map that also includes the subocean. In the case of Cataract Cove, the granite cliff here dives straight down hudreds of more feet, enabling a skilled captain to pilot a large boat within touching distance.

We got very close. You could have hopped off.

During a shot across open ocean we saw this distant knob on the horizon, in the weird light it looked like a tunnel through the sky to another world.

After the sky tunnel we explored my favorite area, the surreal Chiswell Islands archipelago.

The rock on the edge looks straight but the trees are domed, are they hiding something?

Matushka Island is a bird paradise.

Puffins! They look related to Penguins.

The Chiswells are part of that group of islands off the coast i menitoned that are actually drowned mountain tops. Exploring the craggy peaks makes for a fun boat ride.

Baby sealions!

Everywhere out in the Chiswells you see these repeating dome shapes. With no way for predators to access these islands they end up being preferred bird nesting grounds. This island was completed covered on all sides by an additional dome of flying birds. They are visible in this picture but not at this scale so look at the zoomed up portion of the left side of the island here below. That's a lot of birds, and just one island.