Alaska cruise, Post 5: Glacier Bay

On Sunday, May 6th, we spent the day "scenic cruising" in Glacier Bay National Park. Along with our day in Juneau, this turned out to be one of the two main highlights of our trip.

Glacier Bay National Park preserves nearly 600 000 acres of marine ecosystems. No roads lead to the National Park, yet over 400 000 people visit each year - the vast majority of them by cruise ship. Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve contains nine tidewater glaciers, four of which actively calve icebergs into the Bay.

As we entered the National Park, a few park rangers came aboard via a tender, and throughout the day they made loudspeaker announcements and held slideshow presentations so that we could learn more about Glacier Bay. We went to a presentation by Park Ranger Randy.

In the morning, we passed a couple of glaciers, but they didn't look particularly spectacular to us. They were at a distance and covered in a layer of snow, so they really just looked like hills between the mountains, sloping down to the shoreline. There were pieces of ice floating in the water though, and it was very cold outside on the decks!

In the early afternoon we were relaxing in our room when I looked out of our window and screeched to Ben that we'd better get outside right now! We had arrived at Margerie Glacier, and this one was worth getting cold for.

For the next hour or two, the Volendam sat a mile or so in front of the face of Margerie Glacier, slowly rotating so that the passengers could see the glacier from all sides of the ship. It was a spectacular sight - one of the most impressive things I have seen in my life. From our perspective in the Bay, Margerie looked like a giant wall of ice... a jagged, blue-tinged cliff a mile long and 250 feet high.

As we stood out on the deck, rugged up and talking to our fellow passengers, I saw the glacier calve nine times. Calving is the sudden release and breaking away of a mass of ice from a glacier, iceberg, etc. The previous day I had sent a postcard of a glacier calving, thinking as I did so that there's no way we would see something like that! Anyway, I was absolutely chuffed to see it happen nine times. (After getting back home, I saw some YouTube videos of HUGE chunks calving off, so I'm glad I hadn't seen those before the trip or I might not have been quite as impressed by the comparatively small chunks we witnessed!)

A glacier - which is essentially a river of ice - moves due to the weight of the ice and the effects of gravity causing it to "flow" slowly downhill. (Click here to learn more about glaciers retreating and advancing.) Most of the world's glaciers are retreating these days, but Margerie is stable. I think we heard that Margerie is advancing at a rate of 7 feet per day... so as far as I can figure, that must mean she is calving 7 feet per day in order to be considered stable. No wonder we saw lots of calving!

Each time the glacier calved, there would be a sound like distant thunder or a jet passing overhead. If we turned towards the direction of the noise in time, we would see a chunk of ice falling away and splashing into the ocean, creating a frothy white wave. Ben only saw it calve a few times as he was taking lots of photos and usually missed it. However, he did catch one small calving on camera... see below!

So what do you think of Glacier Bay... worth getting cold for? We thought so!

To be continued...