Pacific NW

Expeditions

An incredible day of ice today. It began when I thought I saw the bridgedeck of a freighter on the horizon. It turned out to be a mammouth iceberg, spawned by the nearby Columbia Glacier. Then there were more, and more, and more. The Columbia Glacier is the second fastest-moving glacier in the world, flowing down the mountain at 68 feet per day. Not only that, but it is also the fastest-retreating glacier in the world. The result is that it drops gargantuan blocks of ice into the sea–bigger than skyscrapers–constantly. We had to pass over the old 1967 terminal moraine to enter the new fjord. Icebergs were grounded out on the bar, clearly marking its location. The icebergs here were so massive that they grounded out in water 190 feet deep, their tops towered above Silent Partner’s mast. The glacier itself was eight miles further up the fjord than indicated on the chart, due to the massive amount of ice disgorged in the past few years. Even from this distance we could hear the glacier thudding, creating small earthquakes that shook the boat. It was much louder and more sustained than thunder. It sounded like huge bombs going off. The glacier created its own sea-swell caused by the ice pillars collapsing. The swell was constant. We proudly wove our way through the ice packs for several hours until we were at last 1/4 mile off the face of the mighty Columbia Glacier. This is as close as we dared get, for the columns coming down all around us were shooting ice missiles easily out that far. Almost immediately upon reaching the face a triple-pillar let off with a thundering crack! The piece was as big as the entire face of the Sawyer Glacier. A sustained and deafening roar ensued as the mass of ice lowered itself into the sea. Missiles of ice launched 500 feet into the air leaving trailing streamers as they soared to incredible heights. This is not a glacier to mess with, it means business! The face today was 2 or more miles across and perhaps 400 feet tall. The water at the base of the glacier was 10,000 feet deep. A really big one! An hour later in the same spot as the previous major collapse, another collapse of even greater proportions occurred. What happened next is beyond description but I will try to provide a rough idea here: Relieved of the weight of the massive pillars above, a giant underwater section of the glacier surged up from the depths below. Before our eyes, a mountain of ice literally rose from the sea! It just kept rising and rising and rising and rising, until it rocketed to a height of 400 feet. God only knows how much remained underwater. Once it reached this grotesque height it began to tip over and collapse under its own weight. It simultaneously exploded, collapsed, and erupted in hundreds of directions. I’ve never before seen so much mass moving at one time. The mountain began to rotate on its axis like a giant horrible wheel, and the whole earth shook. By this point Neptune and I were screaming and shouting because it just seemed like the only appropriate thing to do. Giant pinnacles of ice the size of apartment buildings shoot forth from the rotating mountain and exploded into the sea with terrific clouds of ice and frothing tsunamis. And that’s just about all that’s needed to be said for today. We’re anchored in Emerald Cove, another one of those places that could pass as the “most incredible place in the world” for its beauty and majestic scenery. We are sitting warm by the fire and just enjoyed a great dinner with fresh vegetables from Valdez. We can scarcely believe our eyes and will never forget what we saw today. No words of mine could ever do justice to the awesome spectacle that we had the privilege of witnessing.