After 1 ½ hours in Stephens Passage, we came to Holkham Bay where we turned left into the Tracy Arm Fjord.

• Holkham Bay actually splits into two fjords: Tracy Arm and Endicott Arm. Endicott is narrower, and perhaps a better example of a fjord, but too dangerous. It’s most narrow point is called Ford’s Terror. When the tides change, 15 –20 feet of water have to rush through this narrow passage, and it creates whirlpools. Once upon a time a man named Ford got caught in those whirlpools for 6 ½ terrifying hours! Endicott Arm can be navigated, but it has to be timed right with the tides.

• The Forest Service patrols these fjords using kayaks!

• From Holkham Bay, we could see the Sumdum Glacier. The Sumdum Glacier is called a “Hanging Glacier,” as it has its own source of ice. It is not connected to an Ice Field. In naming the Sumdum Glacier, the white settlers were trying to name it after the Tlingit word that refers to how the silt in the water sparkles and dances in the sunshine. They didn’t get the word right! What is silt? Glaciers crush rock into a powder so fine and light that it hangs suspended in water. That powder is called silt. It is the silt that makes the water looks such a beautiful green.

The Tracy Arm Fjord:

• Because the catamaran only draws 2 ½ feet of water, we can get right up next to the shore (and because the shore is vertical rock that drops straight down.)

• The Tracy Arm Fjord averages about 1200-1800 feet deep, and 2000 feet in some parts.

• When we are up close to the side of the fjord, we can see all the little critters of the Intertidal Zone – barnacles, mussels… The white barnacles are a favorite food of the black bear. The black bears have curved claws that are good for scraping the Intertidal Zone. We saw one black bear just hanging head first down the sheer vertical drop of the Intertidal Zone. He was very contentedly eating those little critters. It was amazing how he held on without falling into the water!

• How is a glacier made? An ice field is like a huge sheet (or lake) of ice contained in a mountain range. It snows 100-200 feet per year up in the mountain tops. This snow accumulates year after year. Snow has 1/20th the density of ice. But the weight of all that snow is enough pressure to compress the snow into ice. When that gets compressed further, over years of more and more weight upon it, it becomes glacial ice. Glacial ice is the most dense form of ice. As more and more snow falls, and the pressure continues to build, and room for all this ice runs out, the ice has to spill out somewhere. If it were water, the water would flow out from the lake in rivers. As ice, it flows out from the ice field in glaciers. A glacier is like a river of ice. The back of the glacier is attached to the ice field. The front of the glacier is from where icebergs break off. When the ice reaches 500 years old, it is at the end of its life cycle, so to speak, and it breaks off into an iceberg. So icebergs represent ice that is 500 years old. Only 10% of the iceberg is above water. It melts faster below water than it does above water. Blue icebergs are a result of the density of the ice. When ice is at its greatest density, it absorbs all the colors of the spectrum except blue. The blue bounces back to your eye. The older the ice, the more pressure it has been exposed to, and thus the more dense it is. So the more blue the ice, the older it is. If the iceberg is opaque, there are a lot of air bubbles in it. The small bits of ice in the water are called “bergy-bits.” I don’t know how to spell it, but it is an actual scientific term!

• The Tracy Arm Fjord ends at the North and South Sawyer Glaciers. The water is pretty slushy with bergy-bits and icebergs. We move very slowly through the water. Doc steers around the bigger bergy-bits, but there are too many to steer around them all, and the smaller ones don’t harm the catamaran. So every once in a while we’d hear the booming sound of a little iceberg hitting the bottom of the boat. The water is 35° F. We saw a smaller tour boat lower a kayak into the water, and then a crazy woman into the kayak! She was beaming! She was crazy because she had bare hands, and it was pretty darn cold out there!

• The North and South Sawyer Glaciers split about 80 years ago. I think that Lissa said they are each about 100 square miles. They both are attached to the Stikine Ice Field which is 2900 square miles. The Stikine Ice Field is separate from the Ice Field behind Juneau. There are 38 named glaciers that come off of the Stikine Ice Field.

• The North and South Sawyer Glaciers are Tidewater Glaciers, as opposed to Land Glaciers. Tidewater glaciers hit the sea water. (Mendenhall Glacier in Juneau is a land glacier. It does not touch the sea water.) Tidewater glaciers are more active because of the salt water lapping at the glacier. Lots of icebergs break off.

• We went to the South Sawyer Glacier first. Touching the sea water, the glacier measured about ¾ of a mile from one side to the other, and rose about 160 feet from the water, and descended about 300 feet into the water. When part of the glacier breaks off under water, it is called a “shooter” because it shoots up out of the water. A good analogy is holding a filled water balloon under water. When you let go, it will shoot up out of the water. The reason has to do with the density of the iceberg. The density of the iceberg is less than the density of water. That is why the ice floats. So when a piece of ice breaks off beneath the water surface, it is going to shoot up to the water’s surface.

• The glacier looks more blue when the sky is cloudy than when the sky is blue. The sky looks blue for the same reason that a glacier looks blue: It absorbs every color of the spectrum except for blue, and the blue is reflected back to our eyes. When the sky is blue, it takes away from the blue of the glacier. When the sky is cloudy, the blue of the glacier stands out more.

Doc turns off the motor and we drift silently in front of this mammoth glacier. The world is pure and silent, but for the thunderous crackings of the South Sawyer Glacier. It reminds me of the sound of frozen tree limbs cracking and falling, or whole trees falling, within a silent forest – but on a much larger scale. We listen to these explosions of ice, and watch parts of the glacier break off and fall like an avalanche, or a waterfall of ice, into the sea. As the force of this ice hits the sea, another explosion seems to come back up from the water. I am mesmerized. Looking through binoculars, I see architecture in blue ice that seems like it is out of an imaginary world, a timeless world. The world as I know it fades away. The ice is so blue, a brilliant turquoise/royal blue. There are caverns, arches, tunnels, crevices, designs, all sculpted out of ice. I don’t think it would be possible for a human to design something so artistically and architecturally creative, so other-worldly. I love it.

As I pan around with the binoculars, I see the hundreds of harbor seals lounging on all the icebergs at the base of the glacier. They are so much fun to watch. I find myself laughing at their playfulness. I see a row of five or six harbor seals all on one glassy clear iceberg. They look like they are sun-bathing on a cruise ship. I spot another one swimming around – seemingly aimlessly, without a care in the world. I am caught up in watching this one to see where he goes.

• The harbor seals are about 6 feet long, and about 200-300 lbs. About 1000 years ago, a harbor seal discovered that the base of these glaciers are a safe place for them to hang out during pupping season. It is nearing the time that the harbor seals will leave, and head back to Stephens Passage, as they have been here for about four to six weeks since giving birth. That is about how long they stay. Their number one predator is the killer whale – the Orca. Why don’t the Orca come this far into the Tracy Arm Fjord? Well, one of the ways they navigate is by echolocation. They make a clicking noise that reverberates through the water, bounces off something, and comes back to the Orca. The Orca can see through hearing – it interprets clicks in 3-D images. I can’t remember if Lissa said that the silt in the water slows down the traveling of sound or not. But she did say that all the icebergs confuse the whales as the clicks bounce off the icebergs. (Reminds me of a pinball machine!) So the Orcas don’t normally come this far into the Tracy Arm Fjord even though the Harbor Seal is their favorite food. They’d rather wait closer to Stephens Passage for all the Harbor Seals and their new pups to return from the glacier! The Orca does have excellent eyesight, and does something called “spy-hopping.” That is when it gets vertical in the water and pops its head out to take a look. Though called a killer whale, that is a misnomer. The Orca is actually the largest species of dolphin.

• We left the South Sawyer Glacier and headed over to the North Sawyer Glacier. The North Sawyer Glacier is in something called catastrophic retreat. That means it is receding at an alarming rate. While the South Sawyer Glacier is only receding at the rate of a couple hundred feet per year, the North Sawyer Glacier is receding at the rate of a couple hundred yards per year. That’s over a mile in just 10 years. Lissa pointed out to us where the edge of the glacier had been back in 1988, just 12 years ago, and it was a long way from where it is now! When part of the front of the glacier falls off into the water, it is called “calving off.” Even though both the North and South Sawyer Glaciers are melting, or calving off, at the same rate, the South Sawyer Glacier is being fed more ice from behind than the North one is. The temperature at the South Sawyer is colder, and it gets more snow. The earth cycles of global warming and global cooling have naturally taken place every 10,000 years or so (if I understand that right), and so it is not alarming that glaciers are receding. But it is known that humans are making global warming worse than is natural, and it is not known if that is irreversible. It is predicted that the average global temperature will increase by 4° F in the next 20-40 years. For every ? °, glaciers retreat several hundred feet. So 4° equates to miles of glacier retreating.

As we drifted in front of the North Sawyer Glacier, there began the most thunderous calving that the crew would later say they have ever seen. As we watched, whole sections of the front face of the glacier began exploding and tumbling into the sea. Again and again, huge pieces of glacial ice broke off and dropped into the sea with a force that sent backlash explosions upward. We were watching the glacier reshape itself. When the thunderous booms and cracks and tumbling ice finally stilled, there was a single moment of silence before we realized that a tsunami, or a tidal wave, had been created by the force, and was about to come toward us. I heard the engine start and the catamaran quickly turn its bow into the direction of the glacier and the mammoth waves coming from it. The sea seemed so alive. It was stunning. We watched the life of the sea move toward us, until it hit and we went up. Because the waves on which we rocked were so big and fluid, it felt as though we moved in slow motion. We had to go so far up in one direction before we could rock back to the other direction, that it seemed slower and smoother than being hit with smaller, choppier waves. It was so exciting, and so much fun. I never once felt in any danger. It was absolutely thrilling. I want to be out there every day! It is so hard to be here at this computer indoors, when the world is so alive out there on the sea, and in the woods!

We left the North Sawyer Glacier looking different than it had when we’d arrived. We were all excited about what we had just seen. We continued to be awed by the beauty all around us. In some areas the cliffs stretch 1800 feet above us, and we would see the most amazing waterfalls cascading down. We saw another bear, and a mountain goat that was prancing around on the sheer vertical rock face of the mountain. I couldn’t believe it! I longed for a camera with a zoom lens, so that I could be preserving these pictures of the mountain goat, the black bears, the harbor seals, the stunning architecture of the South Sawyer Glacier, and the thunderous calving of the North Sawyer Glacier. It seems that a picture is indeed worth a thousand words, as I am trying so hard to use words to paint and preserve these pictures! There is some beauty for which there are no words!

As we head back along the Tracy Arm Fjord, there begins to be these long horizontal wisps of smoke twining through the air. The world looks so peaceful and still, even surreal. The whispery clouds soften our view and add that fairy tale dimension I am finding so often here in nature.

When we left this morning, Juneau was completely enshrouded in fog. We were boating through a total whiteness – both sea and sky the same. The fact that we came out of the fog, had a beautiful view along the Tracy Arm Fjord, and then look to be re-entering the fog as we head back north toward Juneau – that all makes the wonders we saw today so much more magical and mysterious – again that surreal, fairy tale-like quality.

• Before reaching Holkham Bay, we visited Williams Cove. Because many of the private boats take a day to get here from Juneau, and the bottom of Williams Cove is shallow and muddy enough for anchoring, they will anchor overnight here before going on to see the glaciers on the next day.

• Lissa told us that John Muir, a famous explorer and dedicated journalist, described in his journals both the scientific facts and his emotions that went with each of his experiences. When he died, those journals were able to be published. She quoted for us of one of her favorites of his writing. Paraphrased, he recommended that people who want to travel should save Alaska for later in life, because if they arrive here early in life, they will never leave, and so they will miss all the other places they wanted to see. Of course, he said it much more eloquently than that!

• In addition to being the engineer and mate, John Martin is a Tlingit Elder, Storyteller, and House Leader (which is like a tribal chief). It was an honor to listen to him share some of his culture and stories with us. He even taught us some words in Tlingit! There are 12 to 13,000 Tlingit people in Southeast Alaska today. Only about 500 of them speak the Tlingit language. For John, the Tlingit language is his first language. He told us the Tlingit words for dolphin or porpoise, squirrel, black-tail deer, whale, and whale song. I couldn’t even say them, let alone write them! Whale is yi (pronounced yee), and whale song is yi shay. Squirrel is something like gunnusock, and I think dolphin is chich (pronounced cheech). But I’m not sure about any of those! He told us a funny story about the origin for the Tlingit word for British. The word, Kingiwon, was their attempt to say King George Won. He also told us that their symbol for peace is, I think, the black-tailed deer. (I am an example of why the Tlingit people don’t want just anyone writing down their stories! I am mangling all the details! From what I’ve learned from other people, the Tlingits did not have a written language until recently, and all their stories are passed down orally. Only a few are allowed to be Storytellers for the stories they own. This preserves the accuracy and history of the stories, and their culture. Again, too, if I understand that correctly.) Lastly, John told us that the Totem Pole is a historical document that tells a story, tells the history of the people.

As we headed back toward Juneau, we saw the wreckage of a ship that went aground in 1901! We also saw that the skies above Juneau had let through the sun! It seems that Juneau has one thing in common with New England: “If you don’t like the weather, wait a minute!”

It amazed me how Lissa gave us so much information without using any notes or cue cards. She just talked. When I had the chance to talk with her later, she told me that she just says whatever comes to mind, and so it’s often different things on each trip! Without the lifetime of gathering knowledge and experiences here as she’s had, I cannot hope to share so much information just from the top of my head! But I still think it would be really cool to spend my summers doing something like that – if I went on a few more trips with her, absorbed more of her knowledge, and used lots of notes and cue cards!