TUESDAY, JUNE 18

TUESDAY, JUNE 18:

     This was a fantastic day – maybe our best yet!

     We met Scott, our guide for our LeConte Glacier tour, at 8:30 at the harbor.  We picked up another couple.  Julie used to work for Scott, but is now in Seattle in medical school.  She and her boyfriend were being ferried out to the beach where we would pick up the kayaks, and were going to camp there overnight.

     The 5 of us jumped aboard Scott’s 26-ft boat and headed out of the Wrangell Narrows to Fredrick Sound, up to the mouth of LeConte Bay.  Saw some Steller’s seals sunning themselves in the Sound. 

 

       As we approached the bay, we began to see some small icebergs,

 

 then larger and larger ones.  They had calved (broken) off of the glacier. It was phenomenal!  They were in fantastic shapes, not just rectangular blocks of ice that I’d always pictured icebergs to be.  Saw one with a bald eagle perched on top of a sharp jutted point.

 And the colors were gorgeous!!  Blue indicated that the ice had been exposed to the air more recently. Scott explained that melting occurs more slowly in the salt water than on air, and the more exposed the ice is to air, the whiter it becomes. These icebergs turn and tumble around in the sea, and do complete “flips” when they become top-heavy.  So the more intense the blue, the more recent the change of position of the ice, exposing new surfaces to the air.  It soon became easy to identify what had happened. 

 

 

 

Or you could just take in the stunning beauty in total amazement, almost believing, when the sun hit the ice forms, that you were looking at huge dazzling aquamarine cut glass.   
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Neither of us had ever seen anything like this!

 

     As we got deeper into the bay, we could see the terminus of the glacier itself.  This is an active glacier, meaning that it’s moving.  Most glaciers are retreating, but this one is still moving forward because of the tremendous amount of snow it gets each year.  However, the forward movement is balanced by the amount calving each year, so the overall length has stayed about the same for the past decade or so. The high school science students here track the size and distance of the glacier each year – been doing this for about a 30 years. 

 

 

 

 

     Saw a few waterfalls too – one especially large one aptly named Thunder Falls. 

 

 

       And as if all this weren’t enough – we got to see lots and lots of mama and baby Harbor Seals.  The moms give birth in June here every year, on the ice, where they’re protected from most predators.  The pups have about 10 weeks to mature here, and then they’re off to the deeper sea where there’s more food. 

 

 

We spotted one iceberg where there was blood.  Saw the mama, but not a little one.  And close by was a bald eagle perched on a high jutting edge of a tall piece of ice.  So we thought at first that the eagle had taken the pup for a meal. L Nature’s way and all, but still . . . But later we did see a tiny pup peeping around from behind his mom, so we deduced that the blood was from a recent birthing.  Fantastic experience!

     All this probably took around 3 hours.  Then Scott drove us over to a cove, where he dropped the 4 of us off while he anchored the boat a ways out.  If he’d anchored it at shore, a couple of hours later we would have been up the creek, so to speak, as the tide would have gone out.  (He carries a small kayak atop his boat to get him to shore & back).  He keeps his kayaks tied up here way up from the beach.  So we left Julie and Jack, and got settled into our kayaks.  Scott and I took the double, Bill the single.  

     Paddled out and around for a couple of hours.  Absolutely gorgeous and peaceful.  A couple of times we heard a sound like distant (or nearer) thunder . . . that was either the glacier calving, or a larger iceberg splashing upside down.  Scott said that’s one of the neatest things about camping out here at night – you can hear that sound throughout the night.

 

 

 

      After about an hour, we stopped at a beach and Scott and Bill traded places – Bill wanted to try a tandem. Since we were at low tide on the beach, we saw some icebergs that had been stranded – they’ll need to wait for high tide to get back in the water.  To touch an iceberg on land – now that’s a “cool” experience! 

 

 Then headed back.

     When we got back to the cove, sure enough – the tide was way out, and had to trek a lot more carrying the kayaks up than when we carried them down.  I asked Scott why the tides changed every 6 hours here, but only twice a day in other places, like Southern Calif.  He explained that the tides do change every 6 hours everywhere, but the closer to the equator you get, it’s only every other tide that’s noticeable.  Ah, makes perfect sense!

      He was full of information like this . . . gave us a running narrative of natural history, human history of Petersburg, animal habits, etc.  And a lot of info about the commercial fishing business around here, from the economics of it to the types of boats used and how each type affects the catch, and more.  He was a perfect guide and host – a seemingly inexhaustible repertoire of knowledge about such a wide array of things, which always enhances our experience.  And of course he was an expert at maneuvering his boat through and around the mass of ice in the bay, turning off the engine whenever he could, so as not to disturb and seals, and allowing us to hear the cascading of the waterfalls or thunder of the glacier calving or an eagle calling, against an otherwise silent backdrop.  We encountered no other boats today (unless you count the Presbyterian minister who was celebrating his 60^th birthday by kayaking out amongst the ice).  

     We sped back to Petersburg, encountering whitecaps as the wind was blowing in one direction and the tide was going out in the opposite. 

     An absolutely exhilarating experience.  Don’t know that we’ll have another one like it.  We’ll see lots of other glaciers, many much more dramatic than this one . . . but to have this personal, up-close experience . . . well, we feel so fortunate to have had it, and in a beautiful sunny day for the most part (Scott said that in 2 summer months, they might typically have 10 days like this!!).  WOW!!  And would you believe – within an hour of getting home, it started to rain.  Just lightly, but nevertheless . . . How blessed are we?!!!