Tracy Arm
Southeastern Alaska is famously fjord-rent, yet even here, Tracy Arm stands out. The core of the Coast Range is granite, among the hardest of rocks, and where granite and ice meet, the results are spectacular. Great cliffs soar above the water, polished and furrowed by the glacier’s stony belly. Broad valleys, characteristically U-shaped, roar with frothy rivers. Shrubby alders cling to precarious slopes, a conspicuously slight biotic veneer.
We awoke well within Tracy Arm. Milky jade-green water surrounded us, and icebergs thunked against the ship’s hull, both clear indications that tidewater glaciers were near. The icebergs grew more numerous, and at last we saw the glaciers themselves – the tops of Sawyer and South Sawyer were peeping from clefts in the hills.
We dropped Zodiacs to get a closer view. And as we neared the Sawyer Glacier, we realized that the icebergs we had been enjoying were mere whelps compared to the monsters before us. These icebergs had recently broken from the depths of the glacier, and so were unbroken by crevasses. Some seemed newly made, fresh as a song, and were the most profound shade of sapphire blue. Others seemed ancient, broken and corroded, as if the bleached landscape of some distant and chilly planet. The glacier tumbled from the mountains, its fractured surface a chaotic staircase. The face of Sawyer Glacier stands one hundred and fifty feet above the sea, and only the calving of bergs, so large that they seemed to fall in slow motion, gave us an idea of the scale of the scene surrounding us.
Heading for the lower reaches of Tracy Arm, we encountered some of Alaska’s most spectacular creatures – killer whales! There are two sorts of killer whales on the Northwest Coast, those that hunt salmon, and those that prefer mammalian prey. These were likely the latter, and were returning from the seal-rich waters of upper Tracy Arm.
In the afternoon, we dropped anchor in Williams Cove. Here, rich forest blankets the land, and many of us went to explore it. We met spruce and hemlock, felt lacy ferns and spiny devil’s club. We trod the gently yielding soil of temperate rainforest, stepped over tangled roots and nurse logs, and swam through huckleberry thickets. Others had used the trail before us, and we examined the tokens they had left behind. Some of us explored Williams Cove by kayak, finding quiet and solitude in its placid waters.
Southeastern Alaska is hugely varied in color, texture and history. Its flora and wildlife are varied and fascinating. Today’s journey in Tracy Arm was a fine introduction to all.
