The ship's planned itinerary for Wednesday was to spend the day sailing the Tracy Arm Fjord, a narrow and curvy waterway in southeast Alaska, to see the stunning Sawyer Glacier. However, en route we discovered that Tracy Arm was clogged by many icebergs that the glacier had calved (glacier term for the ice cracking, breaking off, and dropping into the water). Thus, it made the fjord impassable and we had to turn back.
The Captain quickly came up with another plan to cruise down the Endicott Arm Fjord toward the Dawes Glacier. Both Tracy Arm and Endicott Arm both meet in Holkman Bay which flows out to Stephens Passage. However, contrary to Tracy Arm, the Endicott Arm is nice and straight, so when the glacier calves, the icebergs have somewhere to flow and not get all stopped up. We sailed down the 27 miles through the Endicott Arm, viewing the beautiful scenery of the coastal mountains and the ice flowing past.
At the end of the Endicott Arm, we reached the massive Dawes Glacier (photo below right).
The face of the glacier has an elevation of 2,375 feet, and despite its visual size, much of the glacier is submerged underwater. Dawes Glacier is a very active glacier and it calves immense amounts of ice into the fjord (like those above left). Occasionally, the ship would hit an iceberg and visions of the Titanic would flash in our heads.
We spent the afternoon transiting northbound back out of the Endicott Arm to Stephens Passage, with of the benefit of getting a second look at this dramatic landscape.
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