Icy Bay

It was a magnificent day to visit Icy Bay. Alaska has outdone herself today. Scenery stunning. Weather perfect. I have to pinch myself to believe I am really here doing this. Not in my wildest imagination did I ever think I would be taking our own boat down fjords dodging icebergs. Run to Paradise the ice breaker! Well not quite.

There are three kinds of ice floating around here. There are icebergs. Obviously we don’t want to hit those. There are bergy bits. These are still big enough to do damage and you don’t want to hit them either. I am not sure when a berg becomes a bergy bit! And there is brash that we can gently push through. The water is silty and aqua blue from the glacial melt.

It wasn’t long before we spotted our first floating ice. It is hard to know how much ice is below the water so we took the approach we were going to avoid everything we could. Dean sat up the front to spot and used a walkie talkie to convey instructions to me in the cockpit. The result was I remained toasty warm soaking up the rays and he soon became a bit of a berg himself.

Floating ice is at its peak in August from the ice falling off the glaciers in the warmer weather. Don’t let this panic you. This is normal, even with what the Alaskans have been telling us has been a cold and miserable summer! Though it is a fact that the glaciers are receding.

We were thrilled to see whales swim past us amongst the bergs. We all prefer to see pictures of breaching whales and it is never exciting to see the top of a whale fin that is someone else’s picture, but as this is a journal for me, I’ll show you anyway because it was pretty cool!

We also saw seagulls asleep on bits of ice floating by. They must have very tough feet!

We passed a catamaran leaving at great speed. It was doing 9 knots compared to our 3-5 knots. Maybe they’ve done this before and are more confident than us! We first headed towards Chenaga Glacier in the Nassau Fjord. Finally we had to stop because there was simply too much ice to go any further. But we were pleased to get this far. There are times that you can’t get in at all.

Chenaga Glacier meets the sea so ice calves off, falling into the water. From our vantage point we could also see Princeton Glacier that runs across the end of the fjord and doesn’t come down to the water.

You can see how they are both orientated near each other below.

I popped into the dinghy to go for a bit of a row through the ice and take some photos while Dean floated with RTP. It wasn’t so much fun by myself, I wish Dean had been with me. I managed to scoop up some ice so we could have cocktails, and made it a big enough piece that I had enough for me to do a final rinse next time I wash my hair. It was quite surreal floating out there.

The photo below is terrible quality but it shows me looking for my perfect piece of ice. Some I went for looked small enough for me to pick up, but they actually had heaps under water and they were too heavy. So it took a bit of searching.

As we bobbed up and down and had our cocktail, we could hear the creaks and groans and cracks of the glacier above the rushing of the numerous waterfalls surrounding us. Even the ice floating in the water makes little noises as it moves.

We ghosted out under Genoa for a while down towards Tiger Glacier.

Try as we might we couldn’t avoid the brash and you can see the track we made through it below.

We actually spotted some otters and when we realised they were swimming faster than us, we thought it may be time to turn on the engine. I didn’t expect to see otters out here backstroking through the ice! It was easy to spot them by their wakes.

We made our way down to Tiger Glacier back in Icy Bay. While this is much smaller we were also able to get up closer. There was still a fair bit of ice to dodge though.

The waterfalls down here were nothing short of spectacular, gushing down the mountains. There were so many, fed by the snow melt.

Huge slabs of ice lay on the shore where they had fallen from up high and were so large they hadn’t melted. They must have been there since the beginning of summer because grass was growing on top of them!

While not as large, because we were so much closer we got to see Tiger Glacier in greater detail. Unfortunately we were looking straight into the sun, so it wasn’t the best photo opportunity.

We left with the outgoing tide and got to ghost a little however the wind soon completely stopped. There wasn’t as much ice as when we came up, but it had just been washed further out with the tide and we soon caught up with it and had to meticulously pick our way through. Once again Dean giving me instructions. We make a pretty good team, I must say!

The south shore had more shade and there was so much ice in the water, it looked like the water was actually freezing over. As we passed Chenaga and Princeton glaciers again, a bitter cold wind was blowing straight off them down onto us. We were grateful once we passed by and got protection from that wicked wind.

As we went by the bergs, most were lovely pristine white. But the ones that interested me more had ancient silt embedded into them. How old was that dirt? What story did it tell? I would love to know. The one below seemed to have more rock than ice, yet was still floating. Wow.

While there are anchorages in Icy Bay, you may find yourself surrounded by ice in the morning in some of them, and we weren’t keen on that, so we chose to head out.

We chugged across outer Icy Bay towards Otter Bay and it was mainly larger bergy bits floating about, that were a lot easier to navigate around. Larger pieces were stranded against islands doomed to melt away. Although it was well past 6pm the sun was still high and the sky blue. It has been a really great day.