Today we had anticipated a “once in a lifetime” experience: we had booked the “Dog Sledding & Glacier Flight Seeing via Helicopter” excursion, which had the following description: ”Meet professional mushers and their dogs on a unique Alaska excursion. After a thrilling flight over spectacular glaciers,
land at a dog camp on the Denver Glacier. Experienced guides introduce you to “mushing”, the art of dog sledding. Drive the sled or sit back and relax while enjoying the breathtaking scenery”. Alison was so looking forward to seeing the huskies and see how they are trained and to “drive” the sled. We had to 
bring appropriate clothing for the dog camp, which meant very warm layers of clothing (that had taken up precious space in the suitcases) and we got into our gear and departed the ship for our 9:35 AM dockside meeting. When we got there, we were informed that the cloud cover was too low to get to the camp, but we could be rescheduled for 3:00 PM when the cloud cover would probably be higher, so we agreed to this, rather than try to do any other of the many available excursions offered in Skagway, the best of which we were already too late for anyway. 
We returned to the ship, took off all the warm gear and I can’t particularly remember how we passed the time, but of course we had lunch. Around 2:40 PM, we got back into “snow gear” and sweated our way to the exit and departed the ship once again. Unfortunately our tour operator informed us that the cloud cover was still too low and that our excursion had to be cancelled. Obviously, this was a safety issue and only the weather was to be blamed, but we were 
both extremely disappointed and Alison was emotionally upset, but there was nothing we could do. We decided to walk into the town of Skagway – right there at the end of the docks, where the main street is basically unchanged from the late 1890s. We saw the train that takes people to “White Pass” up in the Yukon “Gold Rush” territory (a train we could have taken had we chosen that particular excursion). We went into the “Red Onion Saloon”, which used to house the fanciest brothel on the upper floors in 1898, and where the waitresses wear the costume 
dress of that period. As I said, the main street is within 100 yards of the docks, and when you look back down the street, it looks as though our ship is trying to sail down the street – Alison got a great photograph of that.We returned to the ship to shower and get ready for a “birthday dinner” with Bernard and Arline (whose birthday it was), and we had a booking for 6:00 PM in the “Summer Palace” main dining room. After dinner we watched one of the lounge bands and at 9:00, we had left the dock at
Skagway and started on our route to Glacier Bay. Then we went with Arline to the ship’s Stardust Theater and saw “The Nylons”, a Cappella quartet from Canada, and we all enjoyed their performance.
Thursday 06/26/06 – Glacier Bay
We were told that we would see our first glacier at about 9:30 AM and Bob was at the gym at 7.30 so that he could get his workout in before the glacier viewing began. However, while he was on a treadmill which faced the side of the ship with huge windows, all of a sudden he saw a glacier straight in front of him, which we would later work out from the map, was the Reid Glacier. This obviously was not considered worthy of a stop, but it looked pretty impressive when we sailed by it. Bob rushed back to the cabin (900 ft away at the back of the boat), to tell 
Alison, but she had already seen it from the balcony, but not in time to get a good shot of it. Basically, the geography of Glacier Bay is, as the name suggests, a very large bay, but is has many inlets off the main bay, and if you sail up an inlet, you will ultimately meet “face to face” and towering above the water, the glacier that made the inlet,. By 9:30 PM, we had arrived at the Tarr Inlet at the far end of the bay and at the end of that inlet is the Margerie Glacier which is one of the biggest and the best in the Bay. We went to Deck 15 at the front of the ship and found a good spot to photograph and video. There was a 
National Parks Ranger on board who had been commentating already for an hour about the Glacier Bay National Park and the formation of the glaciers and other interesting facts and figures, but now he said he was going outside to view the glacier himself. The ship stopped and we began to take our pictures. There are actually two glaciers at this point, the Margerie to the left and the Grand Pacific Glacier in front of you that is the end of the inlet. However, the Margerie is still right 
there at the waters edge, while the Grand Pacific has receded and just left behind rocks and silt that ends the inlet (which also marks the border of Alaska and Canada, so the active front of that glacier is a mile or two back in Canada.
The Margerie Glacier moves forward about 8ft a day, but of course, that 8ft drops off and just adds fresh glacier water to the inlet. This “collapsing” of the ice into the water, which I’m sure you have all seen on film, is called “calving”, and as the ranger said, no one has any idea as to when a glacier will “calve:, but it usually
happens when you have gone to the toilet, or to get a cup of coffee, or while you are changing your film or batteries in your camera! Anyway, the Margerie glacier was pretty impressive; it is a mile wide and 250ft high and goes back mile and miles to the ice fields. Unfortunately, when you are there on the ship, because the glacier face is so high, you cannot see how far it goes back and it was only later when we saw postcards taken from the 
air that we were able to see the glacier squeezing its way down the valley.
Bob was taking video and Alison stills and of course we were waiting for a “calving” and we had a number of small ones. Because we were at the end of the inlet, the ship had to turn around and the captain began a very slow 180 “on the spot” clockwise turn which of
course swung the bow of the ship away from the glacier and the stern of the ship towards the glacier. Bob put the video away and as the stern of the ship completely faced the front of the glacier, there was a mighty crack and a huge chunk of ice fell from the glacier into the water. It was so huge, it created a wave that rocked the boat. Alison still had her camera at the ready, and successfully photographed the occurrence from an angle that also showed the ship’s deck because we were watching from the front as the ship was turning. We later learned that
Bernard was out on his balcony at the aft end of the ship, as was Jennifer, and they saw the whole thing much closer up, and had we been in our cabin and on the balcony, so would we. But we still saw it, and the ranger announced afterwards that the ice that fell was the equivalent size of a 16 storey building, and that neither he, nor the other ranger on board, who’d been doing the Margerie Glacier watching from cruise ships for over 4 years, had ever before seen such a huge calving, or a wave big enough to make the ship rock. So this was some compensation for our disappointment of the day before. After Margerie we sailed a short way back down the bay and into Johns Hopkins Inlet (named by a glaciologist, Dr. Reid, who had attended Johns Hopkins University). As the ship goes around a headland in the inlet known as “Jaw Drop Point”, the vista of the Johns Hopkins Glacier comes into full view and is quite 
magnificent. Because seals are having “pups” at this time, and use the ice from the calving of the glacier to wean the pups on, the ship is restricted in how close it can get to the glacier and we were five miles away, but it is so enormous that it looked closer than a mile. Because we were at such a distance from the glacier, we were able to see it curving back up the valley until it disappeared around a bend. It was quite breathtaking and was easy to see why the headland got the name of “Jaw Drop Point”. On the way out of the inlet we also stopped at Lamplugh Gacier. The viewing of the glaciers from the ship today was definitely the highlight of the trip. By late afternoon we were heading out of 
Glacier Bay and into “Icy Straight” on our way to arrive in Ketchikan at 6:00 AM Friday 27th—our last port of call in Alaska. This evening we went with Jennifer & Ed, and Colleen & Mike to the "Spinnaker Lounge" see the ship’s comedian put on his show for "adults only".
We were told that we would see our first glacier at about 9:30 AM and Bob was at the gym at 7.30 so that he could get his workout in before the glacier viewing began. However, while he was on a treadmill which faced the side of the ship with huge windows, all of a sudden he saw a glacier straight in front of him, which we would later work out from the map, was the Reid Glacier. This obviously was not considered worthy of a stop, but it looked pretty impressive when we sailed by it. Bob rushed back to the cabin (900 ft away at the back of the boat), to tell 
Alison, but she had already seen it from the balcony, but not in time to get a good shot of it. Basically, the geography of Glacier Bay is, as the name suggests, a very large bay, but is has many inlets off the main bay, and if you sail up an inlet, you will ultimately meet “face to face” and towering above the water, the glacier that made the inlet,. By 9:30 PM, we had arrived at the Tarr Inlet at the far end of the bay and at the end of that inlet is the Margerie Glacier which is one of the biggest and the best in the Bay. We went to Deck 15 at the front of the ship and found a good spot to photograph and video. There was a 
National Parks Ranger on board who had been commentating already for an hour about the Glacier Bay National Park and the formation of the glaciers and other interesting facts and figures, but now he said he was going outside to view the glacier himself. The ship stopped and we began to take our pictures. There are actually two glaciers at this point, the Margerie to the left and the Grand Pacific Glacier in front of you that is the end of the inlet. However, the Margerie is still right 
there at the waters edge, while the Grand Pacific has receded and just left behind rocks and silt that ends the inlet (which also marks the border of Alaska and Canada, so the active front of that glacier is a mile or two back in Canada.The Margerie Glacier moves forward about 8ft a day, but of course, that 8ft drops off and just adds fresh glacier water to the inlet. This “collapsing” of the ice into the water, which I’m sure you have all seen on film, is called “calving”, and as the ranger said, no one has any idea as to when a glacier will “calve:, but it usually
happens when you have gone to the toilet, or to get a cup of coffee, or while you are changing your film or batteries in your camera! Anyway, the Margerie glacier was pretty impressive; it is a mile wide and 250ft high and goes back mile and miles to the ice fields. Unfortunately, when you are there on the ship, because the glacier face is so high, you cannot see how far it goes back and it was only later when we saw postcards taken from the 
air that we were able to see the glacier squeezing its way down the valley.Bob was taking video and Alison stills and of course we were waiting for a “calving” and we had a number of small ones. Because we were at the end of the inlet, the ship had to turn around and the captain began a very slow 180 “on the spot” clockwise turn which of
course swung the bow of the ship away from the glacier and the stern of the ship towards the glacier. Bob put the video away and as the stern of the ship completely faced the front of the glacier, there was a mighty crack and a huge chunk of ice fell from the glacier into the water. It was so huge, it created a wave that rocked the boat. Alison still had her camera at the ready, and successfully photographed the occurrence from an angle that also showed the ship’s deck because we were watching from the front as the ship was turning. We later learned that
Bernard was out on his balcony at the aft end of the ship, as was Jennifer, and they saw the whole thing much closer up, and had we been in our cabin and on the balcony, so would we. But we still saw it, and the ranger announced afterwards that the ice that fell was the equivalent size of a 16 storey building, and that neither he, nor the other ranger on board, who’d been doing the Margerie Glacier watching from cruise ships for over 4 years, had ever before seen such a huge calving, or a wave big enough to make the ship rock. So this was some compensation for our disappointment of the day before. After Margerie we sailed a short way back down the bay and into Johns Hopkins Inlet (named by a glaciologist, Dr. Reid, who had attended Johns Hopkins University). As the ship goes around a headland in the inlet known as “Jaw Drop Point”, the vista of the Johns Hopkins Glacier comes into full view and is quite 
magnificent. Because seals are having “pups” at this time, and use the ice from the calving of the glacier to wean the pups on, the ship is restricted in how close it can get to the glacier and we were five miles away, but it is so enormous that it looked closer than a mile. Because we were at such a distance from the glacier, we were able to see it curving back up the valley until it disappeared around a bend. It was quite breathtaking and was easy to see why the headland got the name of “Jaw Drop Point”. On the way out of the inlet we also stopped at Lamplugh Gacier. The viewing of the glaciers from the ship today was definitely the highlight of the trip. By late afternoon we were heading out of 
Glacier Bay and into “Icy Straight” on our way to arrive in Ketchikan at 6:00 AM Friday 27th—our last port of call in Alaska. This evening we went with Jennifer & Ed, and Colleen & Mike to the "Spinnaker Lounge" see the ship’s comedian put on his show for "adults only".
2 comments:
we were obviously so disappointed for you on your behalf with regards to the mushing but the glaciers sound just incredible. We can't wait until you're back so that we can enjoy the photos.
Love, M, D & I
great to see all the photos!
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