Day 8 (Sunday, May 28, 2006)
6:30 AM: We're due to pull into Glacier Bay National Park at 7 AM, so we once again have breakfast delivered to the room.
7 AM: The ship slows to allow a ranger and a native interpreter to board from the ranger station at the mouth of the bay. We cruise into the bay, and spend the next several hours seeing one incredible glacier after another. We go to the mouth of the inlet where the Johns Hopkins glacier is located, but the ranger will not let us cruise too close to the glacier.
"There are more than 200 beating hearts between us and the glacier right now," he says. Harbor seals are pupping on the chunks of ice broken off ("calved") from the glacier. "You would have been upset if a Mack truck drove through the delivery room in your hospital, so we're not going to go charging through theirs."
We spent almost 2 hours parked in front of the Margerie and Grand Pacific glaciers. The Margerie is incredibly beautiful, with its wall of blue ice, and we are no more than 50 yards from the face. The Grand Pacific is bigger, but it has picked up a lot of debris, and just looks dirty.
Margerie on the left, Grand Pacific ahead:
Every minute or so there is a loud "pop" sounding like gunfire. This turns out to be the glacier relieving stress by cracking. Most of the the time, the cracks are upstream from the active face, but every once in awhile there is a crack at the face and chunks of ice fall into the water with a thunderous noise ("calving"). It happens so fast that it's difficult to get a picture of the calving, but we managed to get a couple.
Active face of Margerie glacier:
Margerie calving:
4 PM: As we exit Glacier Bay, we drop the ranger and native interpreter at the ranger station, then head off toward our last port, Ketchikan.
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