Once we were in Seattle, it seemed only sensible to keep heading northwest, so here we are in Alaska, viewing the Hubbard Glacier from a catamaran. The glacier is 76 miles long and 7 miles wide as it enters Disenchantment Bay. The ice wall is 17 storeys high and extends a further 200 feet under the water.
(Disenchantmenr Bay, by the way, was named by the Spanish explorer Alessandro Malespina in 1722, when he discovered that his promising route to the Northwest Passage was blocked by a seven-mile-wide wall of ice)
Unlike most glaciers, Hubbard is not shrinking but expanding, thanks to the generous rainfall in the higher altitudes. It’s calving more or less all the time, though most of the growlers are pretty small. (They didn’t seem so small when they were banging against the twin hulls.) There was one ice tower that was leaning out over the water, and I was hoping it would collapse while I watched, but it didn’t happen.
There were a lot of sea birds flying around, and what looked like dirt on the growlers turned out to be harbor seals curled up on the ice and taking their daily naps.
I took many gorgeous pictures, of which this is only one.
We continue northwest, poking along into the fjords.
