Ford’s Terror and Endicott Arm
We began the morning of our first day at sea anchored just in front of a narrow channel intriguingly known as Ford’s Terror. The name comes from Harry L. Ford, a seaman who in 1888 rowed up the channel in slack tide and returned in strong ebb to discover a roaring torrent, complete with swirling chunks of ice that nearly cost him his life. Our Zodiac cruise was carefully timed to avoid this condition, so what we experienced was a tranquil morning cruise through soaring walls of granite and waterfalls that would challenge Yosemite or any Norwegian fjord for their scenic beauty.
After lunch, we had another, even more spectacular Zodiac cruise at the very end of Endicott Arm that features a tidewater glacier named Dawes, for a Massachusetts senator who was fortunate enough to be a friend of Capt. H.B. Mansfield who commanded a navy vessel exploring the region and who named many of the geographic features in this area. Despite the distractions of ultra-cute harbor seals perched like sausages on blocks of ice and rocks that looked like chocolate-marble swirl ice cream, we all ended up near the 300-foot front wall of the Dawes Glacier waiting for the ice to fall. And fall it did - in great blocks that splashed 200 feet high as they hit the water and created mini-tsunami waves that really rocked our Zodiacs a quarter-mile a way from the drop zone.
Perhaps John Muir, the legendary naturalist, had a similar day when he visited here in 1879. He wrote, “domes swell against the sky in fine lines as lofty and as perfect as those of the California valley, and rock-fronts stand forward, as sheer and as nobly sculpted. No ice-work I have ever seen surpasses this, either in the magnitude of the features or effectiveness of composition.”
We began the morning of our first day at sea anchored just in front of a narrow channel intriguingly known as Ford’s Terror. The name comes from Harry L. Ford, a seaman who in 1888 rowed up the channel in slack tide and returned in strong ebb to discover a roaring torrent, complete with swirling chunks of ice that nearly cost him his life. Our Zodiac cruise was carefully timed to avoid this condition, so what we experienced was a tranquil morning cruise through soaring walls of granite and waterfalls that would challenge Yosemite or any Norwegian fjord for their scenic beauty.
After lunch, we had another, even more spectacular Zodiac cruise at the very end of Endicott Arm that features a tidewater glacier named Dawes, for a Massachusetts senator who was fortunate enough to be a friend of Capt. H.B. Mansfield who commanded a navy vessel exploring the region and who named many of the geographic features in this area. Despite the distractions of ultra-cute harbor seals perched like sausages on blocks of ice and rocks that looked like chocolate-marble swirl ice cream, we all ended up near the 300-foot front wall of the Dawes Glacier waiting for the ice to fall. And fall it did - in great blocks that splashed 200 feet high as they hit the water and created mini-tsunami waves that really rocked our Zodiacs a quarter-mile a way from the drop zone.
Perhaps John Muir, the legendary naturalist, had a similar day when he visited here in 1879. He wrote, “domes swell against the sky in fine lines as lofty and as perfect as those of the California valley, and rock-fronts stand forward, as sheer and as nobly sculpted. No ice-work I have ever seen surpasses this, either in the magnitude of the features or effectiveness of composition.”
