Hubba Hubba Hubbard Glacier

The second day of our Alaskan adventure was all about ice. Although an "at sea" kind of day (the sort of day that remind Nick and myself that we just aren't really cruise people), this day was totally and completely redeemed by our time spent in Yakutat Bay viewing Hubbard Glacier. And it was ALMOST totally and completely redeemed by the extra time on board we got to lounge around drinking tasty cocktails. ahem. Anyway, we started the day off with a leisurely breakfast:

from where we could already tell that it was going to be a very gray day. The seas had been rockin' and rollin' all night, and we heard countless stories of fellow passengers who were so seasick from the high seas that they had to go to the infirmary to get shots to combat the seasickness. Thankfully, neither Nick nor I had any problems (we were pretty sure Nick would be okay aboard a big ship, given his history of being okay aboard a big ship, but I just sort of assumed that I would be okay ... good thing I assumed correctly, otherwise it might have been a crappy way to start the cruise).

After breakfast, we headed up to the top deck to check out the weather. This little excursion of ours had the added benefit of shocking the shit out of our bodies - holy cold and windy, Batman.

Did I mention that it was windy? It had also started to rain. I didn't want to get all Debbie Downer at this point, but I was starting to have serious concerns about our luck with the weather this trip. I mean, the tracks flooding out our train travel, possible weather clouding out the glacier ... gah! When we headed inside, we saw that the winds were consistently 40 knots with gusts in the 55-60 knot range and, as luck would have it, the weather managed to deteriorate even further in the time it took us to prepare for our arrival into Yakutat Bay. However, I would not be deterred. No, sir. I was in Alaska, dammit. I was going to see a glacier, dammit. I would be the FIRST person out there in the rain and wind taking pictures of it, dammit!! So Nick and I returned to our stateroom and geared up for an afternoon of foul-weather-glacier-viewing-insanity. We donned our "functional jackets" and equipped ourselves with gloves, hats, and so many layers my mother would have given me a trophy. We arrived in the Observation Lounge an hour early and watched the ship approach land. Er, except that minor detail of being able to actually SEE the approach. You know, those sorts of trivial things. Thankfully, there was this cool monitor that showed our course and current location (red line with a circle at the end):

And, because I am stupid and twenty(cough)something and - most importantly - super crazy stubborn, the minute we spotted the faintest tracing of landmass, I was out there on deck like a fool, freezing my fingers off (did I mention that it was 45 degrees and minus-fucking-something-idiotic-degrees windchill?), sheltering my camera and HUGE ASS lens under my jacket in between bursts of whipping out this godly phallic thing with its ridiculously large windsail of a lens hood and firing off a few pictures (none of which turned out halfway decent, by the way), and trying to convince myself that this behavior is normal and that the rest of the cruising crowd sitting inside that nice warm lounge sipping their lovely complimentary alcoholic beverages WEREN'T pointing and laughing at me.

Sigh.

(But in my defense - it's the largest tidewater glacier in the Northern Hemisphere and perhaps the world)

As we got closer to the mouth of Yakutat Bay (also called the Bay of Disenchantment), I was, of course, joined by all sorts of other camera-sporting folk, but GUESS WHO WAS AT THE FRONT OF THE RAIL? That's right, bitches. This popsicle.

(yes that's me in the red)

You can probably tell that the weather still sucked at this point, but I was so determined to enjoy every second of this glacier-viewing experience, I couldn't be forced to care. Finally, some tiny bit of goodwill must have come over me (or maybe it was the numb fingers screaming at my brain) and I relinquished my position as windbreak for the rest of the crowd, choosing to warm myself inside and check out the views from the Port side.

The ship cruised into the bay toward the face of the glacier and we eventually started to encounter some icebergs. The field of ice in the water didn't seem too bad, though, and most of the ice chunks, though hardly wee, weren't huge.

As the ship continued to dance its way through the ice field, some of the icebergs within range of my 100-400mm lens were not only large but stunning in their depth of color, awesome texture, and interesting shape, stratified with shades of blue you can’t imagine came from Mother Nature. Some contained large quantities of glacial silt and it was cool to watch the silt dissipating into the water as the chunk melted. Others were azure blue, semi-translucent and melted into shapes that only Gaudi and Picasso could have imagined.

It's almost incomprehensible how ice can be blue like this ... but it's because glacial ice is formed through time and pressure, creating a crystalline structure of H2O that is so perfectly compact that all air and other minerals are excluded. It's actually classified as a mineral because it's pure H2O in its most perfectly aligned form. This mineral is able to absorb most frequencies of light in the visible spectrum except for the highest energy: blue. And because the blue wavelengths aren't absorbed, the ice appears that color to the human eye. And this is the reason that the deepest layers of ice in the glacier or areas that are newly exposed to air or that have recently been revealed by melting or calving appear the most blue; as the ice is exposed to air, tiny cracks form in the surface and they allow air to penetrate into the crystalline structure, allowing for absorption of blue wavelengths and rendering plain ole colorless or white ice. Consider this your science lesson for today.

Pushing through the ice field, the ship moved slowly - slowly enough, it turned out, for the weather to start to clear. At first, it seemed like the clouds were going to lift just enough for us to get a good view of the glacier.

But then the fog settled back in just as the ship got within a half mile from the glacier face. It was eerie and calm and so quiet, and we could hear the glacier crackle as the ice split and shifted.

But then. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, the fog thinned and the view became clearer and clearer ...

And then Terry Breen exclaimed that because the water was so calm and because of the condition of the ice field, the captain of the ship was pulling closer to the glacier. Closer, in fact, than they had been all season, and perhaps ever. (evvv-er!!) We ultimately ended up about a quarter of a mile from the glacier and even standing on the top deck of the ship, it was hard NOT to appreciate the enormity of this river of ice in front of us. It's one thing to hear that the face of the glacier was 360 feet tall, and it's one thing to appreciate that 360 feet is roughly equivalent to a 30-story building ... but it's something else entirely to realize that you're still well over 1,000 feet away from this thing that is looming over you.

Once the captain had gotten us as close as possible, he engaged the super duper fancy schmancy propulsion system that allowed the ship to pirouette so all sides could have this amazing view. For those of us sticking out the weather on the top deck, we were all wandering from one side to another, following the view around the circumference of the ship. During one of these strolls, I stopped in my tracks and commented to Nick that the view was SO CLEAR. Like, dude, when did that happen!? I think I made some sort of remark about someone turning on the HD. Click. Ridiculously awesome.

I had to keep reminding myself how crappy the weather had been just an hour before ... it was like I had singlehandedly shown Mother Nature how willing I was to brave her elements in order to get the most enjoyment out of her monuments of earth and ice ... and she rewarded me with this.

SHUT IT. LET ME HAVE THAT MOMENT.

While marveling at the intricate minarets and towers of ice was great, the real action was the CALVING. I mean, glaciers are cool, but TIDEWATER glaciers are the coolest because they are constantly moving. Sometimes they advance, sometimes they retreat. But when they advance, when they reach water they tend to weaken and break apart, crashing into the water below and creating a KICK-ASS spectacle that is capable of turning otherwise serious and very very grown-up adults into giggling, shrieking, bubbling people.

We'd been at the glacier for a while and had heard a lot of popping and banging sounds coming from the ice, and had even seen a few very small (football or medicine ball sized) chunks come raining down in sections. But there was one particular area I'd been eyeing through my zoom - during our time pirouetting, I'd watched more and more cracks form and I could see tiny (snowball-sized) bits of ice fall from this particular shelf. Just as Nick left my side to head toward the back of the ship (following the ship's rotation so he'd stay in sight of the glacier face), I saw this shelf start to go ...

And BAM. Dude. Done. Kick-ass. I'm pretty sure I screeched like a little girl being scared on Halloween. I hurried to the back of the ship where Nick was standing so that I could brag about my amazing picture-taking tenacity and prowess ... and then three HUGE towers of the farthest-forward section of the glacier came crashing down into the ocean. Oh. My. God. All I could do was watch it happen - no time to position the camera, no time to focus, nothing. I stared breathlessly, excited that I got to see it, bitter that I was all WALKING when it happened ... and then I saw my beautiful beautiful husband standing in perfect position at the rear of the ship, camera up and pointed in the direction of the glacier, clearly recording that amazing moment. When I shrieked (to, I'm sure, the amusement of my fellow passengers) "Did you get it?!?!?!" all he had to do was take one hand off of the (still rolling) camera and give me one big thumbs up, and oh my GOD, he had me at thumbs-up. Squee.

Incredibly, the view kept getting clearer and more defined:

We were warned from the bridge that we'd only have another few minutes at the glacier face before having to head out, and I was lamenting to Nick that there's no way the pictures would every do justice to the scale of this ice structure. I kept thinking that we needed to see people rappelling down the face or some sort of wildlife in close proximity to show just how AMAZINGLY huge this thing is. Which is right about the time I happened to notice this small vessel out to our Starboard side:

And look, that boat is not much bigger than that ice in the water. But wait. I'm gonna BLOW your MIND.

LITTLE BOAT, YOU NEED TO MOVE AWAY FROM THAT GENORMOUS

GLACIER BEFORE A CHUNK OF ICE BIGGER THAN YOU SPLASHES DOWN AND CAUSES A WAVE THAT CAPSIZES YOUUUU (gasping for air)

LIKE THIS ONE:

We joked that Regent must have hired that little boat to sit out there and provide photographic perspective and scale ... but in retrospect I wonder if that was some sort of official Park Ranger vessel policing the amount of time we were spending there or ensuring our ship maintained the minimum distance or something like that. Whatever.

As we started to pull away, we could see how far back the glacial icefield extended - you can see why tidewater glaciers are referred to as rivers of ice ...

And there was another arm of the glacier over to the Port side of the ship that was socked in most of the time we were in the bay. As we were pulling away, the view of the second arm and the mountains behind was striking:

Amazingly, during our retreat from the glacier, the weather once again turned foul and the fog started to settle back in onto the glacier ... and we realized just how thankful we should have been for the moments we were able to see the glacier with such high visibility and clarity. Thankful is an understatement.

It's hard to remember what else we even did that day on the ship - compared to our experience at Hubbard, it's pretty inconsequential. We just crossed our fingers that the rest of our vacation had this much luck in store for us!