Three Glaciers in Three Days in Southeast Alaska

   As always with UnCruise, our itinerary leaves a lot of room for flexibility and inspiration. The group this week was really into glaciers after their opening day flightseeing trip over LeConte Glacier near Petersburg, AK. So our bold plan was to show them three glaciers on the last three days, all experienced in completely different ways.

  Up first was Dawes Glacier. At the end of a beautiful fjord named Endicott Arm, a great tidewater glacier stands guard as it has for thousands of years. It slowly marches its river of ice down and through the mountains until ending in the ocean with a 200ft tall face that often calves great chunks of ice into the water. Here we took advantage of the calm, windless conditions to explore by kayak. We saw calvings, a shooter, and had a visit from a much appreciated cocoa boat serving hot cocoa with kahlua. Kayking through the ice and watching a glacier calve made the guests wonder what could possibly top this.

  Next up was Baird Glacier. Less that a decade ago we were able to give guests crampons and actually walk on this glacier. Since then it has receded so much that now a terminal moraine and a vast glacial lake make getting to the glacier impossible by foot. A couple of glacial outwash streams work their way through the land of the moraine. They would provide a way to boat up to the lake, the only problem being that the streams are very shallow, filled with boulders brought down by the glacier, and thanks to all the glacial silt in the water the visibility is zero. So you don't know if you are headed into 6 inches of water or 6 feet. Our goal was to skiff up this river and make it into the lake. It was an adventure.

  After tapping a few shallow spots on the way up both skiffs made it into the glacial lake. It is filled with giant icebergs grounded and slowly melting. We skiffed up to many of these, admiring the different shades of blue and designs that the ice made. I usually make it here about once a season, and this time was the first time I have been able to skiff all the way to the face of the glacier itself at the back of the lake.

   After soaking up the incredible remoteness of this little visited place, we headed back down the river, which proved to be harder than the way up. The tide had drop and rapids had formed. Our deep v-shaped hull of our skiff proved difficult to manage as we got hung up on shallow unseen rocks, turned sideways, and pushed by the rushing current. As the current grabbed us it sent us towards rapids dropping a foot and a half in height...and right into an exposed rock. I noticed most of my guests had dropped to the floor as we entered the rapids and the prop was missing a small chunk, but after that it was smooth sailing. There are always bonding experiences during the UnCruise trips but this one really brought the guests together. At the end of the trip, among all the highlights, this adventure skiff tour turned out to be the most popular.

  On the third glacier day we took the skiffs into the LeConte ice garden. This is an adventure that I came up with years ago after finding out that if you stay in the low tide area of the shoreline you are not technically in the Tongass National Forest. I noticed at low tide in LeConte Bay the icebergs from LeConte glacier are often left stranded by the receding water.

   So we skiffed over to the shoreline and let people walk around natures own ice sculpture garden. The formations are amazing and all different. They are changing all the time as they melt and morph. Being able to walk amongst the ice raises rare opportunities for photographs like these. It is a heck of a way to end the week.

   Taking the small boats through Le Conte Bay to see truly massive icebergs is a sight to see. You can see the skiff in the picture below to give you an idea just how massive some of the formations are. To see more of my best pictures from Alaska check out my photography page here: www.daimartamarack.com