Endicott Arm
Today would be the last of our expedition along the inside passage from Seattle to Juneau. What a day it was! We awoke to gentle rain showers as the Sea Bird made her way south towards Holkham Bay. After breakfast, the ship entered this magnificent two armed fjord system. The south arm, called Endicott Arm, has a smaller fjord that branches off to the east. This fantastic corner of Southeast Alaska is called Fords Terror. It is named so because a surveyor in 1889 was almost lost trying to paddle through it. It being a constriction in the valley that is both narrow and shallow. Like two bathtubs trying to equalize water levels through a small straw, the tides cause significant rapids during the max ebb and flood tides. We enjoyed a gentler ride in the Zodiacs as the tide was slacking during our visit. On the other side of the swift water is a valley with towering walls, huge waterfalls, and great clefts in the rock from seismic fault zones that have shattered the stone over eons.
After a nice warm lunch, we repositioned the ship farther south to Dawes Glacier. This very active tongue of ice has eroded Endicott Arm since the beginning of the last ice age. Again we loaded the boats for ice tours to see ice bergs, growler ice, bergy bits, brash ice, and the creation process for all this material. Calving is caused when the face of a tidewater glacier collapses into the ocean. We were amazed as the towers of ice, some 250 feet tall, at first shuttered then silently fell to the water below only then to explode on impact with the water surface with a great cacophony of sound that reverberated through the fjord.
It was a great end to a great expedition.
Today would be the last of our expedition along the inside passage from Seattle to Juneau. What a day it was! We awoke to gentle rain showers as the Sea Bird made her way south towards Holkham Bay. After breakfast, the ship entered this magnificent two armed fjord system. The south arm, called Endicott Arm, has a smaller fjord that branches off to the east. This fantastic corner of Southeast Alaska is called Fords Terror. It is named so because a surveyor in 1889 was almost lost trying to paddle through it. It being a constriction in the valley that is both narrow and shallow. Like two bathtubs trying to equalize water levels through a small straw, the tides cause significant rapids during the max ebb and flood tides. We enjoyed a gentler ride in the Zodiacs as the tide was slacking during our visit. On the other side of the swift water is a valley with towering walls, huge waterfalls, and great clefts in the rock from seismic fault zones that have shattered the stone over eons.
After a nice warm lunch, we repositioned the ship farther south to Dawes Glacier. This very active tongue of ice has eroded Endicott Arm since the beginning of the last ice age. Again we loaded the boats for ice tours to see ice bergs, growler ice, bergy bits, brash ice, and the creation process for all this material. Calving is caused when the face of a tidewater glacier collapses into the ocean. We were amazed as the towers of ice, some 250 feet tall, at first shuttered then silently fell to the water below only then to explode on impact with the water surface with a great cacophony of sound that reverberated through the fjord.
It was a great end to a great expedition.
