Tracy Arm Fjord cruise

South Sawyer Glacier, Tracy Arm fjord

There really aren’t enough superlatives in all of the English language to do today justice.  First off, we’ve been wanting to take trip to Tracy Arm since we moved here, but really wanted to wait for a perfect weather day.  We got it!  It was probably 70 degrees in town, much colder on the water, but nearly perfect blue skies.  What a day!

The tour company (Adventure Bound) has two boats – the Adventure Bound and the slightly larger Captain Cook (at 65 feet long).  We were on the Cap. Cook, and there were about 25 passengers total, maybe room for 30 at full capacity.  From my experiences, that’s a smallish boat, and a good number of people.  It occasionally felt a bit crowded, but not too bad.

Heading down Tracy Arm

The trip leaves from downtown Juneau at 8 am and returns at 6 pm – you head south to Tracy Arm.  Tracy Arm is a long, very narrow fjord that has incredible mountains and nearly vertical cliffs that rise 3000-4000 feet right from the water.  Beyond these cliffs are mountains that are 6000-7000+ high. 

A textbook example of a U-shaped valley carved by glaciers

There are two ‘arms’ at the end of Tracy Arm…the northern most one ends at Sawyer Glacier, the southern one at South Sawyer Glacier.  South Sawyer is much bigger.  These are both tidewater glaciers, which means they end in tidal waters, so when chunks break off into icebergs, they are floating in salt water and can (and do) move down the fjord.  At the mouth of these glaciers, the water is 600 feet deep or more, so chucks can break off from above the water and crash down, or break off from below the water line and surge up.  

Icebergs being born - ice calving off the Sawyer Glacier

Close up of the base of Sawyer Glacier

There were a lot more icebergs in and around South Sawyer Glacier than Sawyer Glacier.  They ranged in colors from white to brown to brilliant blue.  Some were huge, many were very small.

deep blue iceberg

clear ice from the former underside of an iceberg that just rolled over

iceberg that looks like a sea monster

birds chilling on an iceberg

At South Sawyer Glacier there were so many iceberg that we couldn’t get very close to the face of the glacier.  The face was about 400 feet high off the water at the calving line, 600+ further back.

At both glaciers the captain shut the boat off and we were able to sit and listen and watch.  The calving of the glaciers was very loud.  There were seals and seal pups on the icebergs.   

 They mostly ignored us, though this one came over for a look. 

Of course, with thousands of feet of cliffs and lots of snow melting,  there are more waterfalls than you can count.  Incredible.  Here’s some of my favorites:

For wildlife we saw a black bear, a couple of humback whales, two pods of Dall’s porpoise, bald eagles, seals, and sea lions.

The trip was expensive (there’s a ‘locals’ discount that saved us $20 each off the usual $163 cost per person) but it was worth every penny.  Wow.  Happy Anniversary to us!