Tracy Arm, August 19

(from the Cruise West adventure update) "We will enter Tracy Arm, a steep-walled fjord more than 25 miles long with a shapr 90 degree bend forming an elbow to the arm. Headed by two active tidewater glaciers, Tracy Arm is not only know for it's sheer cliffs, averaging 2,500 feet but also for its rich Tlingit history and significant geological features."

I woke up at 5:30 to see high cliffs and aqua water.  Shortly after that, around 6 or 6:30, the Captain announced that we were at the Wedding Cake Falls.  Or at least, that's what I thought he said. Later I heard it called Bridal Veil Falls, so it's possibly my mind translated it differently!  Either way, it was tiered all the way down the mountain.

A light breakfast was served in the lounge.  I'm not sure if anyone pried themselves away from the view to go to the dining room downstairs.  At the moment it is only 9:15 but it feels so much later because we were thrust into the day so dramatically.

We moved up Tracy Arm to the Sawyer Glacier, south arm.  It is a mile wide. We can see the 350 feet above the water line but there is 900 feet hidden below.  It has created a gorge. We were a mile from it and could still see the glacier calving!  It's amazing to consider the size when you think that I can take a photo a mile away and see the details! Sea lions were lounging about.  The naturalist called them "sausages on ice" because the whales snack on them. At first, in the distance, they looked like logs and debris on the ice.

The water appears more gray next to the glacier, due to the silt.  Moving out the 27 miles back down Tracy Arm, the water is aqua again. The iceberg pieces that calve off are brilliant blue because they have been compressed with no air in the layers; their composition is such that all colors except blue are absorbed.  Blue is reflected, so that's what we see.  Once it is exposed to the air it starts to become white.  The pieces of ice are potentially thousands of years old, or hundreds at least! When they melt enough they become lop-sided and tip over in the water and you see the blue part that has not been exposed yet. We have to travel slowly through the iceberg pieces.

Tracy Arm is a trip back in time.  The glacier that moved through was a mile high and you can see the striations on the rock face.  There is little vegetation, moss and lichen.  And no shoreline. If there are trees, they are alder and Sitka spruce, made possible by the succession from nitrogen fixing vegetation that created soil.