The Inside Passage -- Glaciers

     Glaciers made the fjords, unlike sites such as the Grand Canyon which were made by volumes of running water (such as rivers) instead of huge sheets of frozen water, and now we were heading further north to hopefully view a few of them.  This meant another 400 nautical miles of sailing in order to get us away from the temperate, almost rainforest-like area of the lower panhandle which was so conducive to producing those giant Sitka, spruce and hemlock trees, each adapting to steep hillsides or marshy lands, lands which would now give way to colder temperatures coupled with mineral-rich but sparse soil.  The land here overall is a giant bed of rock and so the vegetation struggles to find a foothold despite its rich-looking appearance on top.  Wind gusts, some over 100 miles per bour, can topple swaths of tall trees as easily as that of an avalanche.  And glaciers, even with their slow pace, can do much the same to the land.

Approaching Endicott Arm

     Alaska is home to over 100,000  glaciers (although just over 600 of those have been named), which sounds like a massive number but geographically those glaciers cover just 5% of the state.  And geologists have specific parameters for the qualifications and necessary ingredients which are needed for a glacier to form.  For one thing, a minimum of 150+ inches of snow must fall, all of which must transform itself from snowflakes to granules to a denser pack (which they term "firn") to even coarser grains...then ice, ice and more ice building layer upon layer onto itself.  And even though most of today's glaciers formed 10-15,000 years ago, what you see as you stare at their visible wall ahead is just the past 400 years of growth, despite their being 300-500 feet tall (which doesn't seem THAT tall until you see a kayak or small boat being buried by a wave when a piece of the glacier breaks off and that spectacular view those brave or foolish boaters took suddenly turns into a rescue operation).

The U-shape valley left from a glacier

      There are also glaciers of all sorts, from those trapped in the bowl of a mountain (a cirque) to those that have merged as they come to a head from separate valleys (a term they call piedmont).  The typical glacier coming down the side of a mountain is an alpine glacier (those massive glaciers such as those which once covered Greenland are appropriately titled continental glaciers).  Coming through a v-shaped valley, the glacier will slowly edge its way to the easiest body of water, a river or ocean, the ice moving along the thin sheet of water below it which acts as a lubricant.  And once done, the result is a valley transformed from a sharp v-shape to a rounded u-shape.

The grizzly just out of hibernation

The area to which we were heading was up a fjord called Endicott Arm, a sister to the more popular (but often more ice-filled, as it was for us) Tracy Arm.  Here we were hoping to view the slowly-retreating Dawes glacier if the weather and water cooperated (the captain told us that the water in this fjord was just 300 feet deep whereas it was 1200 feet deep in Tracy Arm).  The weather was also becoming foggy and small chunks of ice were appearing as we braced for our 25-mile venture up the waters (on average, 90-95% of a floating piece of ice is hidden under the water, something that doomed the Titanic).  And as if to wish us luck (good or bad), a grizzly bear appeared on the shore, digging for clams and apparently 100% unconcerned with the hundreds of faces staring at him (or her) as if he were an ancient dinosaur.  Ohhh, a grizzly (perhaps we were indeed all fascinated because it has only been in the past year that they have somewhat recovered from being overhunted,  at least to where consideration is being made to remove them from the endangered species list).

The glacier making its way to the sea

 
     We were moving over bedrock that was 65-95 million years old  or so said our guest speaker, and were viewing ice that was all fresh water (since salt water, being hesvier, cannot freeze).  The white color of the ice often giving way to a turquiose-like blue, the result of the spectrum of visible light that was unable to absorb that particular color.  The grizzly was already tired of us, ambling slowly back into the woods as if knowing that we were moving on to something further upstream, each bend in the passage making us strain our necks as if we could somehow stretch them around the glass and be the first to yell out this new discovery.

First sighting of the glacier

 
 And then, somewhere off in the distance, the alluvial wall of ice appeared, small and slightly hidden through the mist.  Still, our cameras were ready, ready for anything really, for each minute brought us a bit closer.  Don't get your hopes up, the lecturer and cruise director told us; they'd been on many similar cruises and we were nearing the stopping point, the point where safety would override the wishes of the people hugging the railings on the upper deck. The sun broke through, as did the clear blues that now lined the walls of what we could see of the glacier, and still our boat eased closer.  A mile away, a bit closer, then less then a mile.

Inching closer to the glacier

    The boat was slowing but still moving closer, noticeable as we passed a smaller craft, then a few even smaller vessels.  Then we were only half a mile away and edging closer still.  The sun was now fully out, the boat turning ever so slowly to face the far wall, and there, three cables away (the nautical term the captain used), we stopped, dazzled that our once large ship --now turned completely parallel to the glacier-- seemed intimidatingly small.  Just a third of a mile away, the safety zone should a large chunk break off (the resulting waves can send shard of ice flying as if coming from a shotgun), we stopped.

The glacial walls 300 feet tall

The wake of a falling piece of the glacier

     The loud cracks we would hear came after the small splashes in the water, the ice steadily being pushed further into the waters ahead as it slid along the mountainside grabbing boulders and whatever else stood in its way. It was called "calving," this ice breaking off, but our lecturer put it more succinctly..."you are watching  a glacier die."  It was both inspiring and sad, our lecturer declining to get into anything but the science...the glaciers (with the exception of only two in the world) were receding.  Greenland, so named because the word Iceland was already taken (and surprising new immigrants who thought they would indeed be arriving to a green land) is already showing virtually no new ice on satellite photos, the land slowly returning to its namesake.

    We were treated to nearly perfect conditions, or so we were told as the captain kept the ship there much longer than usual.  In six cruises, the director told us, she had never had a captain steer a ship so close to any glacier.  Perhaps, as with our earlier experience with Kevin and the float plane, the captain was simply enjoying the experience, all of it, the sun, the calm waters, the excited passengers, the lack of other boats, even the grizzly (he turned the boat around and paused for that as well).  And as thrilled as we all were, one couldn't help but think that history was collapsing before us, hundreds and perhaps thousands of years once frozen and now returning back to its origins.  And as beautiful as it was, it was humbling to think that this glacier --25 miles inland by water and an additional 25 miles of solid ice behind it-- could just as easily be inching toward us, growing instead of receding, another sight for generations well beyond our human imagination...but a cycle of life and death, beginnings and endings encapsulated in the blink of time for something larger.  Our home.