Tracy Arm & Williams Cove
Most of our folks who had flown in from the east coast were up early this morning. Bundled up and out on deck, they were the first to gaze with awe at the towering cliffs of Tracy Arm fjord, rising either side of the Sea Bird as we slowly, slowly picked our way through the ice. By the time breakfast was called, everyone had awoken because there was no avoiding the sound of ice bergs scraping along the hull of ship: an exciting sound to those of us who know what it means. It means dramatic vistas, cold air, mountain goats, and harbor seal females with pups on red-stained floes. One piece of ice held half-a dozen bald eagles awaiting the afterbirth perhaps.
By Zodiac we explored, positioning energetic guests with paddles to fend off aggressive bergie bits from our path towards the face of South Sawyer glacier. The booms of ice falls echoed in the fiord. This glacier has retreated two miles in two years – easily believable when the amount of ice we saw today is taken into consideration.
The afternoon had us many miles and many hundreds of years away from the morning. Tall forests of Sitka spruce and hemlock wrapped their arms around the explorers as they stepped into the woods. A brown bear was seen minutes before we dropped anchor aways up the shoreline. His scat (was it his?) seemed fresh on the ground when we got ashore. It was a bear trail, after all. Kayakers had large flocks of harlequin ducks flying circles; a few white-winged scoters were mixed in, looking dull next to these elegantly marked ducks of dramatic plumage. No wind disturbed the reflected images of dark green forest and snow-covered mountain tops in the waters of William’s Cove.
Most of our folks who had flown in from the east coast were up early this morning. Bundled up and out on deck, they were the first to gaze with awe at the towering cliffs of Tracy Arm fjord, rising either side of the Sea Bird as we slowly, slowly picked our way through the ice. By the time breakfast was called, everyone had awoken because there was no avoiding the sound of ice bergs scraping along the hull of ship: an exciting sound to those of us who know what it means. It means dramatic vistas, cold air, mountain goats, and harbor seal females with pups on red-stained floes. One piece of ice held half-a dozen bald eagles awaiting the afterbirth perhaps.
By Zodiac we explored, positioning energetic guests with paddles to fend off aggressive bergie bits from our path towards the face of South Sawyer glacier. The booms of ice falls echoed in the fiord. This glacier has retreated two miles in two years – easily believable when the amount of ice we saw today is taken into consideration.
The afternoon had us many miles and many hundreds of years away from the morning. Tall forests of Sitka spruce and hemlock wrapped their arms around the explorers as they stepped into the woods. A brown bear was seen minutes before we dropped anchor aways up the shoreline. His scat (was it his?) seemed fresh on the ground when we got ashore. It was a bear trail, after all. Kayakers had large flocks of harlequin ducks flying circles; a few white-winged scoters were mixed in, looking dull next to these elegantly marked ducks of dramatic plumage. No wind disturbed the reflected images of dark green forest and snow-covered mountain tops in the waters of William’s Cove.
