S.V. CAMBRIA: October 2015

John Hopkins Inlet: A Winter Wonderland

Tuesday, October 20, 2015TheCambrians

Our day was just getting started. After an amazing morning in Tarr Inlet, we reluctantly turned our stern and started south. Our season in Alaska isn’t over, but it’ll all be “downhill” from here on – 59°N was the farthest we’d be sailing. We weren’t finished with Glacier Bay, though. We still had one more major inlet to explore: John Hopkins.

The fjord is more intimate than what we’d seen in other areas of Glacier Bay. The land seems older. The rugged mountains are steep-to and capped with hanging glaciers that feed waterfalls which stream down its sides and colour the water a perfect aqua-marine. Maybe it was the sunshine. Maybe it was the dramatic scenery. Or maybe it was a sense of familiarity. Whatever the cause, John Hopkins felt more welcoming to us than the rest of the park . . . and was my personal favourite.

We were optimistic about our chances of making it to the face of the glacier. David had spoken to Steve Hulsizer aboard S.V. Osprey (his wife wrote “Glaciers, Bears and Totems: Sailing in Search of the Real Southeast Alaska”) last night and they were able to get within a quarter of a mile. Our luck wasn’t as good, though, and we gave up a mile or two off when the ice got too thick. But there was still one more tidewater glacier to see, so we turned around and made our way back to the mouth of John Hopkins Inet and Lamplugh Glacier.

We stood off the 150-tall wall of ice for what seemed like hours watching the colours dance in the sun and making out the shapes of hoodoos while sipping from hot mugs of coffee to keep warm. It wasn’t long before the cold won out and we turned our stern once again, this time for Reid Inlet and for the night.

It had been an incredible day: One that exceeded our wildest hopes and dreams for what our cruising life would look like. One that we would like to relive over and over again . . . if only that were possible!

Note: This blog entry was written on Tuesday, 07 July 2015.

Alaska Glacier Bay Inside Passage

Tarr Inlet: The End of the Line

Thursday, October 15, 2015TheCambrians

It was a different day entirely. While Monday had been sunny and bright with a heavy haze weighing down the air, Tuesday began with low clouds filling the main channel. The barometer rose back to 1017 MB overnight, promising sunshine. If we were lucky, the sky would start to clear before we reached the head of Tarr Inlet.

We were lucky.

The clouds began to lift as we slowly motored north, breaking enough to give us a view of Lamplugh Glacier. The massive wall of ice tempting us as we passed by: It would have to wait.

Motoring up Glacier Bay is like sailing back in time. The farther you move away from Bartlett Cove, the younger the scenery becomes. The landscape grows more barren with ever mile, and more vunerable . . . it’s like seeing the earth in its infancy. This is where we find its beauty – in its primitiveness.

The head of Tarr Inlet resembles a wasteland the likes of which we’d never seen. One could be forgiven for thinking a volcano had erupted and destroyed everything in its path, particularly on the northern end where the face of the Grand Pacific Glacier has been covered by landslides and rock debris, but the opposite is true: It was the melting of ice that created this new land – desolate and bleak, yet beautiful at the same time. It’s a humbling sight.

Sitting off Margerie Glacier, we passed 59°N – our highest latitude to date and the farthest north we intend to sail. It was a cold morning; one that required several layers and a steady flow of hot drinks, though the drinks may have been more about going below decks into the warmth of the cabin than anything else.

We spent an hour or so drifting off the mile-wide glacier listening to the thunderous sounds of cracking ice echo through the bay and the explosive crashes it made when hitting the water, never quite fast enough to capture the calving glacier on film.

Margerie had us completely captivated. We were awestruck . . . how could we not be?

We were reluctant to leave. In the fifteen years that we’ve been on the water this experience, this morning in particular, had been among the best . . . the most memorable. Turning our stern to it was a difficult thing to do; we could have stayed there for hours and hours just watching and listening. But the forecast for Wednesday calls for rain, so we needed to take advantage of the fine weather while we could and there was still a lot to do . . . John Hopkins Inlet, after all, was waiting.

Note: This blog entry was written Tuesday, 07 July, 2015 from Glacier Bay National Park.

Alaska Glacier Bay Inside Passage

Reid Inlet: The Anchorage

Thursday, October 08, 2015TheCambrians

It’s difficult to imagine how many anchorages we’ve stayed in over the course of the last 15 years: Hundreds, definitely. Thousands, probably not. Some of them – like the deserted islands of Tonga, Waewaetorea in New Zealand or Chief Matthews Bay in British Columbia’s most beautiful fjord – stand out. While others are distant memories, nothing more than stops along the way. But I think it’s fair to say that Reid Inlet just fell into our “most memorable” category.

Why? Because there’s a tidewater glacier at the head of the inlet that you can safely anchor off . . . one that begs to be explored.

There aren’t many opportunities to get up close and personal with the glaciers in Glacier Bay – the pack ice and the possibility of calving keep prudent boaters at a distance. But Reid Glacier is a little different from the rest . . . most of it is on solid ground now.

As far as glaciers go, Reid isn’t as beautiful or dramatic as the others we’ve seen – Dawes, North Sawyer and South Sawyer. The ice has been weathered and now holds air bubbles that diffuse the light and soften the blues that are reflected, making them appear white and cloudy like sea glass.

A glacier starts its life high in the mountains where the snow doesn’t melt and accumulates in pockets, building year after year, until it compresses and compacts from its own weight. The snow turns to ice and eventually gravity takes over and it begins to move downhill. Once the ice starts to move, it becomes a glacier.

As it moves, it drags rocks and debris along with it that carve away the bedrock and create deep glacial valleys. When the ice reaches lower elevations it begins to melt, revealing the bedrock and leaving behind the debris, called terminal moraine. Some of the moraine is still in rock form but most of it has been ground into a fine grey powder, much like talcum.

On the surface, it’s an ugly sight to behold. But it’s here that the real beauty of Reid Inlet lies – in the rawness of the new earth and the beginning of life. It’s a simple matter of looking.