Petersburg and Le Conte Bay, Alaska
By morning the Sea Bird had docked at Petersburg, Alaska, an authentic Alaskan fishing town largely untrammeled by tourists. Many of us began the day with a hike across part of Kupreanof Island, just across the Wrangell Narrows from Petersburg. On this walk we traversed a muskeg, an acidic bog that develops only in high-rainfall cool-summer regions, and that supports a unique and interesting ecosystem. The weather began cool and cloudy but soon turned gloriously sunny – perfect for hiking! Our close examination was rewarded with a myriad of different plants, including the carnivorous and beautiful sundew, with its halo of sticky “fingers” to trap insects. Our efforts produced animal sightings as well: along the way we saw Sitka Deer, and once we reached the tidal inlet, we saw two black bears out for brunch, with eagles soaring overhead. Perhaps most interesting of all, once we had returned to our starting point we noticed another black bear, one with only three legs. Whether this bear had a run-in with a trap, a (much larger) brown bear, or something else, we can only speculate – the bear wasn’t forthcoming with an explanation. Many of us spent the remainder of the morning exploring Petersburg, or previewing our afternoon destination from the air on floatplane trips over Le Conte Glacier.
Following lunch, we were treated to tales of Melanie’s firsthand experiences as an Alaska resident, including dog-sledding across Denali National Park, how long it takes to wear out a pair of rubber boots, and how to deal with temperatures of -50 degrees. Just as the talk was ending, we all went up on the bow to watch the Sea Bird navigate across the Le Conte Bay bar. This bar is a very shallow region that traverses the mouth of Le Conte Bay, and was created by the most recent advance of the Le Conte Glacier down its fjord. It is a terminal moraine, a pile of sediment bulldozed and deposited by the glaciers, and left behind when they last began to retreat. There is a single somewhat deeper spot in the bar, which was made as the stream issuing from beneath the glacier eroded through the moraine. We were lucky that the tide was especially high today, and the deep spot was not blocked by ice, as this allowed us to take the Sea Bird in and up towards Le Conte Glacier. Reports from the floatplane observers suggested that the fjord might be free enough of ice to bring the ship up to the face of the glacier.
After a journey between steep walls carved from the rock of Great Tonalite Sill and smoothed by the glacier over the past 20,000 years, we got to within sight of the glacier’s face, and then decided to take to the Zodiacs to get even closer. We were excited as we navigated our way through sometimes dense clusters of icebergs recently calved from the face. These were popping all around us as the high-pressure air bubbles cracked the surrounding ice as is melted, and many of them served as convenient (if perhaps not entirely comfortable) napping places for harbor seals, safe from their killer whale predators. We saw huge blocks the size of houses fall from the 300-foot-high seracs at the calving front of the glacier; we heard the “white thunder” as they splashed into the water, and we felt the large swells as they moved under us down the fjord towards the open ocean. Experiences such as those we had today can hardly fail to instill in even the most cynical of observers a sense of awe in the power and majesty of nature in its wild and pure state.
By morning the Sea Bird had docked at Petersburg, Alaska, an authentic Alaskan fishing town largely untrammeled by tourists. Many of us began the day with a hike across part of Kupreanof Island, just across the Wrangell Narrows from Petersburg. On this walk we traversed a muskeg, an acidic bog that develops only in high-rainfall cool-summer regions, and that supports a unique and interesting ecosystem. The weather began cool and cloudy but soon turned gloriously sunny – perfect for hiking! Our close examination was rewarded with a myriad of different plants, including the carnivorous and beautiful sundew, with its halo of sticky “fingers” to trap insects. Our efforts produced animal sightings as well: along the way we saw Sitka Deer, and once we reached the tidal inlet, we saw two black bears out for brunch, with eagles soaring overhead. Perhaps most interesting of all, once we had returned to our starting point we noticed another black bear, one with only three legs. Whether this bear had a run-in with a trap, a (much larger) brown bear, or something else, we can only speculate – the bear wasn’t forthcoming with an explanation. Many of us spent the remainder of the morning exploring Petersburg, or previewing our afternoon destination from the air on floatplane trips over Le Conte Glacier.
Following lunch, we were treated to tales of Melanie’s firsthand experiences as an Alaska resident, including dog-sledding across Denali National Park, how long it takes to wear out a pair of rubber boots, and how to deal with temperatures of -50 degrees. Just as the talk was ending, we all went up on the bow to watch the Sea Bird navigate across the Le Conte Bay bar. This bar is a very shallow region that traverses the mouth of Le Conte Bay, and was created by the most recent advance of the Le Conte Glacier down its fjord. It is a terminal moraine, a pile of sediment bulldozed and deposited by the glaciers, and left behind when they last began to retreat. There is a single somewhat deeper spot in the bar, which was made as the stream issuing from beneath the glacier eroded through the moraine. We were lucky that the tide was especially high today, and the deep spot was not blocked by ice, as this allowed us to take the Sea Bird in and up towards Le Conte Glacier. Reports from the floatplane observers suggested that the fjord might be free enough of ice to bring the ship up to the face of the glacier.
After a journey between steep walls carved from the rock of Great Tonalite Sill and smoothed by the glacier over the past 20,000 years, we got to within sight of the glacier’s face, and then decided to take to the Zodiacs to get even closer. We were excited as we navigated our way through sometimes dense clusters of icebergs recently calved from the face. These were popping all around us as the high-pressure air bubbles cracked the surrounding ice as is melted, and many of them served as convenient (if perhaps not entirely comfortable) napping places for harbor seals, safe from their killer whale predators. We saw huge blocks the size of houses fall from the 300-foot-high seracs at the calving front of the glacier; we heard the “white thunder” as they splashed into the water, and we felt the large swells as they moved under us down the fjord towards the open ocean. Experiences such as those we had today can hardly fail to instill in even the most cynical of observers a sense of awe in the power and majesty of nature in its wild and pure state.
