Last night we travelled back up the Lynn Canal and turned north into the Icy Strait and then into Glacier Bay. The entire bay was carved out by gigantic glaciers. Glacier Bay was first visited by Captain George Vancouver two hundred years ago when the ice cover was within 25 miles of the mouth of the bay. Now you have to travel 65 miles into the bay to see the tidewater glaciers.
Our room was the glacier viewing party room. Everyone came over to get an uncrowded viewed of these monster ice packs. Our first stop was at Margerie Glacier. It was a blue ice monster, one mile wide and about 15 miles or more deep. It is growing at a rate of 6 feet / day. As the glacier pushes to the bay large chunks of ice fall off into the water. This is called “calving” and it makes a noise like a shotgun, which echoes off the mountains. We were lucky as the glacier was very active today. We then left and travelled into the Johns Hopkins Inlet to view the Lamplugh Glacier. Rocky stated that this to him was the highlight of the trip.
The entire bay is surrounded by huge mountains in the 6,000 to 7,000 foot range. Because this is an American National Park, we had narration supplied by a park ranger. She told us how they can determine the depth of the original glacier, during the ice age, by the shape of the mountains. If the mountain had a smooth rounded top it had been shaped by the erosion effect of the glacier. If the mountain’s peak was sharp then it extended above the glacier.
Margery Glacier
It was another formal night for dinner. I think we all had surf and turf. Rocky and Joan went to one the speciality restaurants. After dinner we went to see James Cielen in the Vista Lounge. He is very good magician who specializes in sleight of hand tricks.
After we has left Glacier Bay the boat travelled to the west of Sitka on the open ocean. It was very rough going with huge swells that had the boat rocking and rolling all night. It was very hard to walk back from the Lounge without bouncing into the walls.
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