After a relaxed morning hanging out on the boat Peter (my
twin brother) and mom arrived around 11 AM.
The morning started off with heavy rain, which eased to showers and then
clouds and sunbreaks later on.
As soon as Peter and mom arrived we left Petersburg, bound
for LeConte Glacier. I had been in a
week before and cruised effortlessly almost to the face of the glacier. Unfortunately, today wasn’t quite so easy.
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| A few clearings offered views of the mountains |
To start with, the entrance bar (really a terminal moraine)
had a ton of ice on it. Way more than
last week. I got through easily enough,
but there was a lot of ice in the water.
Mostly the big stuff, easy to avoid, but devastating if you hit it.
As we rounded the first bend I had to slow down to
displacement speed while constantly steering around ice. The ice let up a bit, but soon
thickened. Anyone who’s driven a small
fiberglass boat through an ice floe knows that the sounds are awful…grinding,
crunching, clunking. And the whole boat
shudders. Just a few miles into LeConte
Bay, still five miles from the face of the glacier, that’s what we were
experiencing.
Reluctantly I turned around.
We moved the boat into a clearer patch of water and Peter and mom took
turns paddling around in the kayak for a few hours. We grabbed some ice for the cooler as well,
and watched as some giant bergs floated by.
By giant I mean the size of a moderately sized house!
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| Peter kayaking |
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| Mom kayaking |
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| A bit of scale |
After the kayaking we headed back towards Petersburg. The trip back was easy and I avoided running
into any floating ice.
The World, a 600+ foot condominium cruise ship was still
anchored just outside of Wrangell Narrows when we returned. Interestingly, I had seen this ship in Sydney
Harbour (Australia) several years ago during New Years, and again in Friday
Harbor (San Juan Islands) sometime in the past few years. It sure gets around!
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| The World |
In Petersburg we filled up with gas, bought lots of
groceries, and generally got the boat ready for the next five days out.
38.2 nm today and 2,149.6 total
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