Today was an early morning wakeup call for us. On the itinerary was an early morning scenic cruise through Endicott Arm, ending up with a view of the Dawes Glacier. I have been to many beautiful places in this world, but the views we saw in Endicott Arm was in my top 3 places. Alaska was living up to its reputation for beauty, but not for weather. While it was overcast in Ketchikan, the sun was shining and the temperature was in the mid-60's.
Endicott Arm was named in 1880 by Lieutenant Commander HB Mansfield (USN) in honor of William Endicott. The channel is a 30 mile-long, narrow, steep-sided fjord. On either side of the fjord, mountains rise up nearly 3,000 feet. According to the on-board naturalist, the depth of the fjord is over 1,000 feet and that depth starts almost immediately at the side of the fjord. This allows the ships to get very close to the sides with no risk of scraping the bottom.
The further the ship traveled into the fjord, the more ice we started to see. There is a beautiful blue hue that comes off many of the icebergs. We learned that the blue color results from the glaciers being formed with large, dense crystals and few air bubbles. The red and white light waves are able to penetrate that dense mass, but blue is not and gets reflected, resulting in the glacier blue color. There is not much else to say about this place, so I'll let the photos speak for themselves.
As the ship got closer to the Dawes Glacier, there was a point where we could go no further for risk of damaging the engines due to icebergs. We were able to get close enough for a view of the Dawes Glacier and it was stunning to see. The face of the glacier is several hundred feet tall and is approximately 15 miles long. Princess offered an excursion on a smaller boat that took visitors up close. We did not take that excursion and opted for a long lens look at the glacier.
We cruised back out the way we came and headed towards our next port, Juneau. We arrived in Juneau around 1230 and took a bus to the Mendehnall Glacier visitors center. We had an afternoon helicopter ride booked that would land us on top of the glacier, but we wanted to see the front of it as well. Because our time was limited, we did not have an opportunity to hike over to the waterfall, opting instead to just see it all from afar. The Mendenhall Glacier is approximately 13.6 miles long and has an average depth of approximately 300 feet. The glacier leads back to the Jeneau Icefields. According to studies, the glacier has retreated by 2.5 miles since the mid 1700's. We heard on our tour that more than 3 million gallons of water is released by the glacier every 20 minutes. Before we arrived in Alaska, we looked pictures of the glacier. However, until you get up close you cannot understand just how big it is.
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We hopped on the bus and made our way back to the port to catch our van to the Temsco Helicopter terminal. Once we made it to the airport they fitted us with some ice shoes, put on a 5 minute safety video and we were off to hop on our helicopter. This was going to be a day of several firsts for us. Our first helicopter ride and our first time walking on a glacier. We boarded the helicopter, took off on a quick flight over the mountains and got our first view of the top of the Mendenhall Glacier. As had been the case for most of the day, words cannot express the magnificent beauty of the day. I figured that this might be the only time in our life when we fly out to a glacier, so I took GoPro video of the entire flight and landing.
Once all the helicopters landed, we got out of the helicopter and began our tour of the glacier. The first thing we noticed was that the temperature on top of the glacier was at least 15 degrees colder. We finally got to use the wool hats! We had about 15 minutes on top of the glacier and hand an opportunity to drink pure glacier water. Again, words cannot describe the beauty of this. Unfortunately for us, the tour was over as quickly as it began.
We returned to the pier and got bank on the ship. We made our way to dinner and were out early since our day began at 0455. Tomorrow we port in Skagway and board a train for a tour up into the mountains.
