I don't know what's going on with my blog service. I posted on 8/29 and again on 8/30. Both show as "published" on my blog-owner's access site, but so far I've not received an email announcing the posts and I think none of you have either. My views are 1 and 0 for those two posts.
Hopefully, they will catch up. The WiFi is particularly slow this afternoon and evening so that might have something to do with it, but just don't know.
This day started with some sun (below the horizon) at 0536. But you never know in glacier country, where the weather can change in minutes.
Looks promising. This was taken at 0617.
0622 and a good sunrise in the making.
Off to the left of the sunrise you can see why tourists like to come to Alaska.
The sun is up but screened from my view by the clouds. You can see the sun's rays illuminating the upper part of the mountain on the right.
Today we are scheduled to cruise into Yakutat Bay and view Hubbard Glacier. Here's hoping for some good weather today.
At this point we are sailing into the bay. There was the occasional piece of ice but mostly ice free silty water. The terrain here is only recently (geologically speaking) free of ice and snow. All along the shore we could see evidence of washouts as melting snow and ice, combined with rainstorms, washes away loose soil deposited by retreating glaciers. Another product of retreating glaciers is the increasing height of the land. Some areas near here are still rebounding at the rate of 1-3 inches per year due to reduced weight of ice as the glaciers melt.
Some glaciers aren't melting, at least consistently, and Hubbard is one of them. It's sometimes called the "galloping glacier" because it can move quickly or stall unexpectedly.
In 2002 it advanced far enough to block Russell Fjord, off out of sight to the right in this photo. When we visited in 2009, it was quiet and covered with dark debris. The main attraction for cruise ships then was the Turner Glacier, out of sight to the left in this photo.
Now the Turner Glacier is quiet and this one is actively calving and showing its strength.
This is the Celebrity Eclipse sitting in front of the glacier. You can see it reaches only about halfway to the top of the face.
View of the right side of Hubbard Glacier. This is the largest tidewater glacier in North America and is an amazing sight. The face is over 600 feet high with 250 feet underwater and the other 350 feet above the waterline. It is over seven miles wide. The opening on the right leads to Russell Fjord.
This is the view to the left. As stated above, when we were here before, this was all a dirty brown with only a few areas of bright ice.
Directly opposite the ship, about in the center of the face of the glacier, I saw this brown water gushing out. I wasn't able to catch a photo at the right time, but sometimes a large volume of muddy water would burst up, splashing against the face and sending waves toward us. Near as I can tell, the river of muddy water comes down the glacier base and is released as the face of the glacier hits a submerged hill of rock, causing the geyser-like eruption. Since the base of the glacier is 250 feet below the surface, the rocky mount must be pretty large to channel this flow. Just my guess, but I found it interesting to consider.
This is the Turner Glacier as it looked today. It looks pretty quiet, with brown sediment covering most of the arms and even parts of the main flow. The cruise ships don't even go close to look at this one since there is so much more action on the Hubbard now.
After we left Yakutat and Disenchantment Bays heading for Sitka, Iko and I were sitting in the dining room and saw this amazing rainbow. I've never seen one that terminated so close to our observation location. The view through the ship's windows obscured part of the beauty, but it was a enchanting end to a great day.
