Northwestern Fjord
We started around the orange arrow on the upper right of the map, the Northwestern Fjord is down at the lower left, with the glacier just above that.
As you enter the Fjord, you first notice how incredibly smooth and calm the water is. Then as you start moving up, you start seeing a few pieces of calved ice from the glacier, then more and more of it, until there's way more ice then water available. The captain of the ship, who has taken virtually everybody who has been up here in the last 15 years himself, kept assuring people the ship was built for this and it wouldn't be an issue. Apparently, way too many people have watched the Titanic.
Glaciers come down from both sides towards the Fjord
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Then you start noticing ice all around you, getting more and more intense as you get closer and closer
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Including the occasional Seal and pup out resting. Several very skittish otters were around, but they leave immediately when the ship goes by
After several more turns, the Glacier comes into view (the sudden increase in the amount of ice in the water is explained below)
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This particular glacier is receding, where the flow of it forward is not as great as the amount of it breaking off at the end. The point where it started retreating is usually littered with the items it was pushing, resulting in a natural barrier of debris to shipping, etc. We were told that when the Captain first started doing this just fifteen years ago, the ice was located at about the position of the ship in the last picture above, and the rocks between the two rivers of ice was not at all visible, it was just one block of ice across.
If you have ever been to a glacier, one of the hardest things to describe (not that describing a glacier is ever easy) is the process of calving, where parts of the ice break off and fall into the water. Because light travels faster then sound, first you see it fall off if you happen to be looking in the right direction, then you hear the incredible sound of the explosion. Sometimes you get lucky and it's a constant thing when you are visiting, sometime you see nothing.
We were incredibly lucky.
One of the other things, much rarer (the Captain said maybe two or three times a season he's seen it) is when there's an avalanche of ice that starts. Instead of a house sized block of ice just falling off, something gives way and a giant river of ice starts, and keeps going and going. We were there, and for at least four or five minutes, the ice kept flowing off the middle of this massive block. Even better, I was lucky enough to catch it as it was starting
The ice hits the water with an incredible force, and the rushing noise is non stop. The ice starts spreading across the surface of the water
reaching the edge, but still with enough force to curl back over on itself once it hit the shore.
A couple of views showing the crater being carved out by the falling ice and to give a better understanding of where it's coming from in the ice (just below the rocks in the center of the glacier)
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