Tracy Arm Fjord - August 6

All photographs on these blog pages ©2013 Janet Brenan Sherry or ©2013 Michael J Sherry
All video ©2013 Michael J Sherry

Tracy Arm Fjord Photos

Day 5 of the Cruise
Our destination for today is Tracy Arm fjord. Tracy Arm was named for Secretary of the Navy and friend of William H. Seward, Benjamin Franklin Tracy.  Located about 45 miles SSE of Juneau, Tracy Arm is roughly 30 miles long, starting at Stephens Passage, and terminating at the South Sawyer Glacier.  The fjord is about a mile wide, on average, and has a maximum depth of about 1250 feet. Tracy Arm (and the nearby Endicott Arm) is part of the Tracy Arm-Fords Terror Wilderness Area.

Tracy Arm fjord

Like most of Southeast Alaska (with the exception of Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve), Tracy Arm is part of the Tongass National Forest. The Tongass was designated by Theodore Roosevelt in 1907 and, at 17 million acres, is the largest national forest in the U.S.  The Tongass is part of the largest coastal temperate rainforest in the
world and is the home to about 10% of the states population.

Williams Cove

The Alaskan Dream carried six kayaks stowed on its foredeck and, the weather being so cooperative, the Captain decided to give anyone who was interested the chance for a some paddle time.

Cannery ruins and plilings from the old cannery pier.

Tongass National Forest

The morning was beautifully warm and clear so, before sailing down the Arm we made a stop in Williams Cove, a cozy bay just in from Stephens Passage.

Alaskan Dream in Williams Cove. Kyakers just off the dock to the right.

Kayakers in Williams Cove.

There are also the remnants of an old cannery and a cabin that is available for rent in the Cove. While some of our fellow passengers went exploring in the kayaks, we explored the ruins on foot.

After several hours of off-boat time we boarded for the journey down the fjord.

Naturalists, travel professionals, and travelers alike rate Tracy Arm Fjord as one of the most dramatic locations in all of North America. It is a relatively narrow passage framed by mountains as tall as 7,000 feet, with sheer granite walls of up to 2000 feet. Cruising along you could easily imagine yourself being in Norway. A Viking longship would not be out of place.

The views are spectacular with countless glacier-fed waterfalls, forests, and interesting rock formations. Naturalist John Muir compared Tracy Arms sheer granite cliffs to Yosemite, saying that this region was even more spectacular than the Yosemite valley. We've never been to Yosemite but it's hard to imagine a more awe-inspiring setting.

There are two glaciers at the end of the fjord, Sawyer Glacier and South Sawyer Glacier.

The Sawyer Galciers

South Sawyer is the larger and more active of the two at about 1/3 of a mile wide and several hundred feet high.
When we arrived at the glacier face the Captain positioned the boat about a quarter mile out. The crew launched the DIB and the passengers disembarked in groups of 10 to get a little closer.
DIB is an acronym for Demaree Inflatable Boat which can accommodate 20 passengers. 
We were in the second group to go out and were able to get up close to a group of seals on a small iceberg. Once we go back aboard the Alaskan Dream we were treated to a decent sized calving which, unfortunately, we weren't quick enough to catch on video. Jan did get some good photos, though, which are in the slide show below. We even got to see a "shooter."  A shooter occurs when ice breaks from the part of the glacier face that is below the water line and shoots to the surface. They can be fairly dangerous because they can surface well away from the glaciers face and tend to be very large. Ours was at least 100 feet long above the waters surface. We didn't catch the shooter on video but here is a link to a Youtube video of a pretty spectacular event. For an idea of the scale of the shooter, the glacier is about 300 feet high just above where the shooter occurs.

First look at the South Sawyer Glacier

Glaciers are noisy places. There are almost constant, very loud, cracking, popping, and thunder-clap noises as the glacial ice flows toward the waters edge. When ice separates from the face the sound is like a cannon firing before the ice falls in what looks like slow-motion.
A few words about the color of glacial ice which can run from bright white to gray-black, to deep blue. Un-compacted snow contains lots of trapped air which causes most of the light spectrum to be reflected. Gray-black ice gets its color from rocks, dirt, and silt that is picked up as the glacier flows. The deep blue colors occur in the oldest, most densely compacted ice which has little, if any, trapped air. The lack of trapped air allows most of the color spectrum to be absorbed leaving only light in the blue spectrum to be reflected.

Approaching the Sawyer Glacier

Once Nature's show was over we headed to the Sawyer Glacier, our final stop for the day. The Sawyer (some call it the North Sawyer) was quiet on this day with no calving activity. It was however, no less impressive.

Once we had all had our fill we headed back down the fjord heading toward Hobart Bay, our port of call for Wednesday, 8/7.