Iceberg, right ahead!

I got to play tourist for a day and visit the Tracy Arm Fjord and the Sawyer glaciers. Although it was cold and raining and cold that day I boarded the boat prepared to hopefully not reenact 'Titanic.'

It was a long day but well worth it as we boated three hours south from Juneau into the fjord to get near the glaciers. We knew we were getting close as we started seeing real icebergs! Luckily these weren't the size that probably caused Titanic's demise but we certainly avoided hitting them.

Ice, of course, floats in water, but about 90% of the ice mass is actually below the surface of the water. Seeing as we were only looking at the visible 10% of the ice it made me wonder how much ice was really below us and how close we really wanted to get. These bergs have been broken off from the nearby glaciers and float away as they start to melt. Glacial ice is quite unique as it holds very little air bubbles (due to so much compression). Light therefore goes through the ice differently and the resulting effect is the beautiful blue color.

Iceberg, right ahead!

As we entered into the narrow passages of the fjord we started seeing more pieces of ice as well as direct evidence that the glacier had once been where we now boated. Much of the sidewalls of the rock still showed direct scouring and forests were only now starting to form.

A rounded, glacial valley where a glacier once sat

And then we finally came to the Sawyer glacier. Due to the amount of ice in the water we couldn't get too close but we were offered a truly wonderful seen of a lot of ice. We witnessed first hand caving of ice from the tip of the glacier into the water - this created a distinctly loud crashing sound and subsequent wake on our small boat.

The Sawyer Glacier