Hubbard Glacier

As our Alaskan cruise continued, my wife, Sharon, woke me in the early morning. Our ship was sailing into Disenchantment Bay, home of Hubbard Glacier. It was drizzly, foggy, cool, and too early for me to rush awake. Sharon went up on deck and I followed later.

Hubbard Glacier is North America's largest tidewater glacier. A tidewater glacier is one that travels far enough to reach the sea. The origins of Hubbard are back up in the Yukon about 75 miles and it is still advancing. The face of the glacier is 6 miles long and 300-500 feet high. A lot more is under the water. It is HUGE! Our ship, Celebrity's Summit, was dwarfed by this 50 story high chunk of ice. We "parked" about a mile from Hubbard, but because of its size, it looked like you could almost reach out and touch it. When we saw a sea bird fly by our ship toward the glacier and almost disappear as it neared the face, we gained a little perspective!

For our best view we were allowed to go to the front of the ship to the helicopter landing pad. There, facing the glacier, a Tlingit naturalist (who Sharon & I had met and become friends with in Hoonah, our previous stop) told us all about Hubbard. The ice has a blueish tinge as did many of the glaciers we had seen earlier. I think this is caused by the air in the ice being pressed out by the pressures of the glacier. The color seems more evident under cloudy skies than sunny. A lot of the glacier's surface is heavily crevassed and fissured. Again, the size of these jagged cracks and convolutions was hard to comprehend until we saw them dwarfing full size spruce trees near the glacier edges. All glaciers also have dirt/gravel they have up heaved incorporated throughout their ice. Some appear "dirtier" than others like the smaller glacier to the side of Hubbard.

Viewing Hubbard Glacier was almost like a religious experience for me. Here we are, in the middle of nowhere, all by ourselves (well, 2500 other passengers too), in a slight drizzle, with fog shrouding the tops of the mountains, in front of a massive, thousands of years old example of nature, and it is perfectly silent. The silence would occasionally be disrupted by a reverberating "crack" or a distant rumble like thunder. Never quite heard sounds like that before. These sounds were Hubbard expanding and contracting. Like the old man he is, he creaks like my old knees. We kept a sharp eye because some of these cracks and moans meant calving (ice falling into the sea from the face of a glacier). Because of the size of Hubbard, though, by the time the sound got to the ship, the calving had already occurred. Did I mention that Hubbard is big? Live the World!

Juneau

From Vancouver going north we sailed through the Inside Passage. The Passage is our first taste of the rugged mountain terrain Sharon & I will experience in the days to come. I was surprise how narrow a few parts of the Passage were.

Our first port of call is Juneau. Juneau is the capitol of Alaska, third largest city, and its area is roughly the size of Delaware (that includes its unpopulated area). Like many Alaskan towns it was founded around gold. Surrounded by water the town is on an island only accessible by boat, ferry, or plane. Its eastern boundary is British Columbia, Canada. Juneau's weather is mild compared to what we think of as Alaska weather with the average summer temperature of 65F and winter of 20F. Only (!) about 100 inches of snow a year, but they get a lot of rain and ice. It was drizzly but in the upper 60'sF when we were there at the end of August. Guess the summer of 2006 was extremely wet throughout a lot of Alaska. The talk of the town when Sharon and I were in Juneau was the renewed effort by some to move the capitol to Anchorage. Anchorage and Fairbanks, Alaska's first and second most populous cities, have been fighting for years about moving the capitol to their cities. Should the capitol move, the locals say Juneau's population would decrease by 75% and make the town a virtual ghost town (except for the cruise passengers!).

The city area is at the foot of Mt Juneau and Mt Roberts; and they go straight up! The cruise ships dock right in town. A tram is available at the pier that will take you up Mt Roberts to view the wilderness area and Juneau Ice Field. This ice cap feeds about 30 glaciers in the area. Since it was cloudy and drizzly, Sharon & I didn't think the view that day would be very great (and it costs about $25.00 per person) and didn't make the trip. What we did do was go to Mendenhall Glacier.

Mendenhall is the number one tourist destination in Alaska (maybe because it is the only glacier accessible by road). It's only about 10-15 miles out of Juneau. You can sign up for the cruises' shore excursions or you can get bus transportation or taxis right off the ship. Funny, the people in Juneau take American money and they speak English! Some people took the helicopter excursions that allows you to land and walk on a glacier! Mendenhall was the first glacier Sharon & I have ever seen and boy is it awesome! The face of the glacier is over 100ft high and it stretches over a mile and a half in length. The blue tinged, dirt streaked, fissured ice stretches for miles up the mountain and out of sight. A waterfall flanks Mendenhall on its right. Our perception of scale was clarified when we saw ant-sized kayakers being dwarfed by the enormity of the glacier. This is also the area some of our cruise mates saw their first bear. Sharon & I didn't see it.

Our bus took us on a short tour of the Juneau area, stopping at a log cabin church and a river where salmon were running, and dropped us off back in town for some more sightseeing and shopping. I wanted to go to the Alaska State Museum, but Sharon wanted to taste the micro brews in the Red Dog Saloon. Guess where we went. The Red Dog started back in the mining days (1880's) as a place for entertainment and relaxation. I'm thinking the piano player and bar of today aren't all that was offered for entertainment in the past! The Red Dog Saloon was fun though it can get crowded. They also serve food. The rustic decor has the obligatory snarling grizzly bear leaping out at you and a giant king crab on the wall, but it also includes creative taxidermy like black bears chasing a person up a pole and chasing another into a garbage can. Then there is the rear end of a white tail deer with eyes and rabbit ears??? That's why it is fun to Live The World!