After sunrise our ship entered Tracy Arm, a gorgeous, thirty-two-mile-long fjord that cuts and winds into the mountainous mainland. Several miles in, we encountered a young humpback whale and we slowed to watch it.
The ship stopped about two miles from the South Sawyer Glacier, and we got into small expedition boats to explore the icebergs and look for wildlife in this recently uncovered part of the fjord. About a third of a mile ahead of us sat the towering face of the enormous blue-white glacier, about 170 feet tall. Looking at it made one feel tiny. The floating ice pieces were beautiful; some were utterly clear, while others were striped, or seemed to glow electric blue. It was a bit like being in a fanciful, floating sculpture garden.
The water itself looked milky-green, loaded with silt the glacier had ground from the mountains. Here and there a harbor seal popped a shy head above the surface. On distant pieces of floating ice, we could see more seals resting, but we were careful to keep our distance so as not to disturb them; this is birthing time. We heard the chattering of Arctic terns as they flew to their nesting area and sometimes they perched on top of floating ice. A few mountain goats near the tops of the mountainsides. Waterfalls fell in rapid torrents down narrow chutes of rock, and sharp peaks over 7,000 feet high were visible beyond the rounded mountains.
After returning to the ship, some very happy, hardy souls did the “polar plunge’’ a jump off of the ship’s stern into 35 degree water, with ice from the glacier floating nearby (and they did a very quick swim back!).
As we cruised out of Tracy Arm, we paused to watch three black bears, and we got an excellent look at one that was right at the water’s edge, scraping its claws over the barnacles on the rocks and then licking them to eat the ground-up barnacles. We also stopped in front of two waterfalls, including one aptly named “Hole in the Wall.”
At our Captain’s Farewell Cocktail Party, we enjoyed the beautiful images taken by guests during this wonderful voyage. Thank you for sharing the surprises and beauty we found in our explorations this week.
