carbonel

I got up early and virtuously did my half-hour on the elliptical. Just as I finished showering and dressing, my parents tapped on the door, and I joined them for breakfast.

After that, I went to the morning trivia session. Only five people showed up, and only two of us were serious players, but the game host promised all of us prizes. About halfway through the game, there was an announcement over the PA system that there was a humpback whale on the port side, so we all ran out to see. It seemed to be showing off for us -- it breached several times, showing about half its body, and then blew out from its blowhole. It stayed more-or-less in place, but eventually the ship moved past and we returned to the game. I won, and had my choice of a tote bag, clock, or water bottle. The tote bag was probably worth the most, but I didn't have a travel alarm, so I chose that.

Today was supposed to be the best day for glacier viewing. The ship stopped around 10:00 to pick up a ranger who would provide commentary for our trip through Glacier Bay. At 11:15 she gave a half-hour talk about her personal history and reasons for living and working in this area. The slides were nicely scenic -- wildlife, plants, and breathtaking vistas. The commentary wasn't quite as fascinating, but interesting enough.

Glacier Bay is actually a comparatively new phenomenon. When George Vancouver first saw it in 1794, it was just a slight indent in a glacier that choked what is now the entire bay. The original glacier was more than 4,000 feet thick, up to 20 miles wide, and extended over 100 miles. But by 1879, John Muir found that the ice had retreated 48 miles up the bay, and by 1916 the Grand Pacific Glacier was 65 miles from the mouth of the bay, which is now about 15 miles wide at its widest point.

The first couple of hours in Glacier Bay, there wasn't anything particularly impressive to see. We could see occasional small chunks of ice in the bay, but nothing much in the way of visible glaciers. This was partly, I assume, because we were too far away to see anything much, though it was hard to get a good sense of scale. Then we went to Tarr Inlet, where there are two tidal glaciers -- Margerie Glacier and Grand Pacific Glacier. A tidal glacier is one where the ice extends all the way to the water -- so that it's affected by tides. Tarr Inlet is about two miles wide. Grand Pacific Glacier looks like nothing so much as a huge dirty driveway. It ends in a terminal moraine, which is a layer of rocks and dirt that protects the ice below. Margerie Glacier, on the other hand, is quite impressive. It's a 250-foot layer of ice extending above the water, and there's another 100 feet of ice under the water. It's about a mile wide, and we got within a quarter mile of it. The glacier is formed into a field of giant spikes, shaped by the wind into fantastical shapes. Most of them were simply boulder-shaped, four or five times as tall as they were wide, but some looked like crudely carved statues. The left side showed striations from the dirt it collected as it moved slowly from high to low, but the right side was cleaner, and was white and shadings of that beautiful glacier blue. The blue is an illusion because of the absorption properties of the glacier ice -- if you chip out a smaller chunk, it'll just look white, and if you melt it, it's clear. But it's a lovely color.

The ship was parked in front of Margerie Glacier for an hour and a half so we would have a opportunity to see it close-up and watch for calving. Calving happens when the bay water undercuts the glacier and a chunk of it falls off. Normally it happens a few times an hour, so with an hour and a half, the odds were good.

I went up to my stateroom to get my map of Glacier Bay, but when I got there, I found that I was on the correct side of the ship to see Margerie Glacier, and I had a wonderful view from the balcony. So I sat there 20 minutes or so and was rewarded with a medium-sized fall from the right side of the glacier (as I faced it). It was preceded by popping and cracking noises, then a 150-foot piece of ice about 10 feet wide (at a guess) detached itself from the cliff and fell vertically into the ocean. It must have disintegrated pretty thoroughly in the process of falling, because we couldn't see many chunks in the water nearby -- just small pieces.

After another 15 minutes or so nothing more had happened, but the weather was pleasant enough that it was worth staying out and watching just in case something more did. Then the ship started swinging around, so I headed for the Promenade Deck so I could still view the glacier. I ran into my mother there, so we hung out together for a while. There were two more small calvings on the left side of the glacier, and then Mom decided to go for ice cream. I was rewarded for staying on my Atkins plan, since about 20 minutes later there as an absolutely spectacular calving about halfway across the right side. First it broke off some small pieces, like the previous two calvings, and then a huge chunk -- about as high as the first one, but both wider and thicker -- broke off and belly-flopped into the bay. It's hard to get a proper sense of perspective on how much ice there was, but there was a huge wave that spread out in all directions, giving some difficulty to nearby kayakers, and still a few feet high when it reached the ship a quarter mile away. The ranger said that was one of the most spectacular visits she'd seen this season, and I can believe it.

I kept watching until the ship turned away, but there were no more calvings. The day started out mostly cloudy, but most of the clouds cleared off in the afternoon, and it was much warmer than the day before. I'd dressed in layers, with a long-sleeved shirt and light jacket, and another sweater in my carry bag if I needed it, but I wore my jacket open, and never needed the sweater.

In fact, when the ship left the Tarr Inlet and traveled to the Johns Hopkins Inlet where we rode past the Lamplugh Glacier, I went out on my balcony to watch it barefoot and jacketless. It looked much like the Margerie Glacier, but slightly smaller. We saw a small calving as we went by, but we didn't stop there. We spent another couple of hours moving through Glacier Bay, and I sat out and watched most of it. It's really hard to get tired of spectacular views of mountains, snow, and water.

The evening entertainment in the theater was a comic that had already received thumbs down at the preview several others had seen the first night, and the alternative entertainer was a ventriloquist. I don't really find ventriloquists funny, even though they're sometimes fascinating to watch. But I can't really get into the spirit of the thing -- I always watch the actual speaker for both ends of the conversation. So I decided to go back to my stateroom and get caught up on the journal instead, then read for a while and went to bed.