Thursday 7-26.
Stan Stephens was a University of Minnesota student when he adventured to Alaska 50 years ago. He never went home and has become the local guru on the history, geography, and fauna of Valdez and Prince William Sound. He also runs the area’s most successful tour boats. Early this morning (so early that for the first time on the trip we had to use the dreaded alarm clock) we boarded Stan’s 150-passenger tour boat, the Valdez Spirit. This is normally not the kind of thing that appeals to Nancy and me—we’d rather be alone and unfettered by someone else’s schedule, but we figured we’d need to be way out in the Sound to see the right stuff, and knew that Das Bot was not the right vessel.
We had high expectations for scenery, glaciers, and wildlife. We were not disappointed.
It’s hard to keep finding superlatives for the scenery (and you know how our family LOVES superlatives), but we’ll have to try. Yesterday and today I was amazed at how few waves there were on the bay. As we got underway this morning, I asked Captain Stan if it were unusually “calm”. He made a fine distinction between “calm” and “flat”. He said, “The seas in this area are often calm like this—few swells…but very rarely this flat—without any wind or waves whatever”.
The sea was a mirror and had the effect of doubling Prince William Sound--thought by many to be the most beautiful place on earth…bays, fjords, tree-drenched islands and islets, countless mountains—some rising up abruptly from the sea bright green with others behind them in a darker gray-green, and others still more distant and darker gray against the horizon…myriad waterfalls, mist rising from the sea and filling some coves, and clouds at several levels, some like halos on the mountains, others like shrouds upon the peaks. It was definitely an above average day.
Within minutes we came upon a pod, or bevy, or herd, or whatever of Sea Otters (I’ll have to look up the correct term for a gaggle of otters). We have otters in California but they’re almost always alone. This morning there were 15 or more in a single group. Later in the day we saw several more, even larger groups. There’s nothing as cute as an otter, and as we passed these groups they’d look up at us in unison, their big brown eyes framed by their fluffy blonde heads, every one of them focused on us as if we were the ball in a tennis match. Nothing as cute as an otter, except, maybe a baby otter sitting on it’s mothers belly with both of them looking at us like we were about to hand them the Oscar for Best Performance By A Mammal.
The otters were followed by two bouy harbor seals (don’t know where the goils were—you’ll need to look at the pictures to get the lame joke). We saw many more harbor seals during the day, including some resting on icebergs. These are the seals with the huge, sad eyes. We’ve deduced they’re sad because they can’t get pizza delivery.
We also saw many Steller Sea Lions. These are big guys that weigh up to 1200 pounds. We saw them swimming at the side of the boat, lounging on the beach, and a boiling frenzy of them gorging on salmon, but the coolest thing we saw was Stellar Sea Lions toying with and taunting a Humpback Whale. The whale was swimming lazy circles in that slowly undulating whale style. It would blow air in an audible puff of mist as its back broke water, arch gracefully downward while lifting its flukes, and then with flukes raised, glistening, and dripping, quietly glide beneath the surface. Pfffft, gurgle, swish---then a long silence---then, pfffft, gurgle, swish. The sea lions clearly thought this lumbering giant was a good prospect for a game of tag, so they darted ahead, around, and behind the whale sometimes appearing to be nipping at its flukes. The whale seemed unperturbed and the sea lions entertained. We were entertained as well. Neat! Other animals today included Dall’s Porpoise (look a little like miniature Orcas) and a very distant mountain goat.
We saw birds by the thousands. Nancy identified 5 new birds for our life list; Marbled Murrelets, Murres, Horned & Tufted Puffins, and Black-Legged Kittiwakes, and we also saw flocks of gulls, cormorants, ducks, and a bunch of bald eagles.
Oh, I forgot to mention the glaciers. They’re pretty cool (my apologies—sometimes I just can’t help myself). Along the way, we learned quite a bit about glaciers. We’ve all heard from Al Gore (and others) that they’re melting. This is largely true, although up here they call it “receding” or “retreating”. What we didn’t know was that (at least according to the local experts) most of these glaciers started receding or retreating decades or centuries ago, and that “retreating” like “advancing” is a normal part of the glacier’s lifecycle. Global warming is probably accelerating this current phase, but no one fully understands or can measure the impact or the implications (except that if ALL the polar ice were to melt, the oceans would rise 231 feet. That would not be good for people living in Malibu, but would dramatically improve the view of our kids who live in the Santa Cruz mountains).
Although we passed several distant glaciers en route (including Shoup about which you’ll hear more tomorrow), our first destination was the Columbia Glacier. This is the “largest tidewater glacier in the world” or maybe “the hemisphere”—anyway, it’s big. You’ve probably seen it on The Discovery Channel or in a travelogue with the house-sized chunks of ice calving and falling into the sea. Today we weren’t able to get close enough to see the actual calving because over the last several weeks the huge icebergs falling off the glacier have compacted in front of it for a mile or so, and boats can’t get in to the face.
After Columbia, we motored to Meare Glacier. There we were able to get up close and personal—watch and listen to the calving. The “CRACK” when the ice breaks off is sharp like a rifle shot and loud like thunder—but more ominous than thunder because there’s often a brief pause before you see the ice break loose and slide into the ocean. The ice moves almost as if it’s in slow motion, so the splash it makes is more animated than the falling ice…but the sound of the splash is muted by the echo of the CRACK. The sequence is “CRACKKkkkkk”, S-L-I-D-E, silent splash, s-l-o-w wave through the icy soup. Watching the glaciers calve is dramatic, but more impressive is their immense size and the remarkable shades of blue that they seem to radiate. The visible face of Columbia is several hundred feet high and almost a mile wide, but there’s almost two thousand feet of Columbia under the water (for those of you who are quick with math, you’ve already figured out that this thing will make one heck of pitcher of margaritas). Speaking of margaritas, if you could make them in any of the shades of blue we saw today, you might not even need the tequila to get high…well…maybe not the triple sec.
We’ve returned tonight to the Admiral after a very long and glorious day. The hours of pure sea air stimulated me to fire off a letter of commitment to the PAA (Pizzaholics Anonymous Association) and tonight we had Chinese at (I swear) the Fu Kung restaurant. It was tough getting used to Chicken Kung Pao and Rice Fried, but at least we didn’t have trouble with the PU PU platter.
