Endicott Arm & Williams Cove
I wonder if it is legal to have this much sun in Southeast Alaska? That question could help to describe some of the joy of this day spent exploring the Tracy Arm-Ford’s Terror Wilderness. The towering, sheer granitic walls of this deep and narrow fiord pulled our eyes upward as we joined the happy group out on the bow this morning. These amazing rocks that were once Pacific islands, have traveled across the ocean and were folded and squashed when they collided with the North American plate. More recently, they were shaped and scraped by glaciers. Their smoothly rippled forms have fluid lines and subtle bands of color, and should the glacier ever retreat from view, the fiord walls and their tremendous waterfalls would surely bring us back.
Ah then, how about that glacier! The Dawes glacier at the head of Endicott Arm has been dropping a lot of ice recently. At a distance of one and one-half miles, the massive face of the glacier seems near, but half an hour later, after our Zodiacs have zigzagged through the brash ice, carefully passing pregnant harbor seals hauled out on the larger bergs, a wall of jagged blue ice stands before us, snaking back into the mountains further than we can imagine.
The sound and sight of this river of ice are entrancing and too soon we return to the National Geographic Sea Lion and make our way back down the fiord, taking in the sun and the local seabirds. Red-throated loons, pacific and yellow-billed loons, harlequin and long-tailed ducks, lines of surf scoters and duets of marbled murrelets dot the scene, while two humpback whales working the shoreline of Williams Cove surface just as we near our afternoon anchorage.
We close the day with yellow afternoon light playing through the spruce and hemlock branches around the forest walkers, while kayakers silently slip among the bergy bits and listen to the wild sounds of calling birds and falling water.
I wonder if it is legal to have this much sun in Southeast Alaska? That question could help to describe some of the joy of this day spent exploring the Tracy Arm-Ford’s Terror Wilderness. The towering, sheer granitic walls of this deep and narrow fiord pulled our eyes upward as we joined the happy group out on the bow this morning. These amazing rocks that were once Pacific islands, have traveled across the ocean and were folded and squashed when they collided with the North American plate. More recently, they were shaped and scraped by glaciers. Their smoothly rippled forms have fluid lines and subtle bands of color, and should the glacier ever retreat from view, the fiord walls and their tremendous waterfalls would surely bring us back.
Ah then, how about that glacier! The Dawes glacier at the head of Endicott Arm has been dropping a lot of ice recently. At a distance of one and one-half miles, the massive face of the glacier seems near, but half an hour later, after our Zodiacs have zigzagged through the brash ice, carefully passing pregnant harbor seals hauled out on the larger bergs, a wall of jagged blue ice stands before us, snaking back into the mountains further than we can imagine.
The sound and sight of this river of ice are entrancing and too soon we return to the National Geographic Sea Lion and make our way back down the fiord, taking in the sun and the local seabirds. Red-throated loons, pacific and yellow-billed loons, harlequin and long-tailed ducks, lines of surf scoters and duets of marbled murrelets dot the scene, while two humpback whales working the shoreline of Williams Cove surface just as we near our afternoon anchorage.
We close the day with yellow afternoon light playing through the spruce and hemlock branches around the forest walkers, while kayakers silently slip among the bergy bits and listen to the wild sounds of calling birds and falling water.
