Tuesday August 22 – Gulf of Alaska, then to College Fjord

Today we sailed all day. Our destination won’t be reached until later this afternoon.

After breakfast we went for a walk. We lasted one circuit on the outside promenade, as it was too windy and cold. We came inside and worked out a route over two floors that took in some stairs. We attended a talk on bears by our naturalist, and later had a go at trivia again. They are including some Australian questions now, but we still couldn’t answer them all!

The frustration we’d all felt because of the weather over the last few days was suddenly rewarded. The weather cleared as the day went on, and we entered Prince William Sound in beautiful clear sunny weather, showing in all their glory, the beautiful ice-capped mountains. The sun on the distant mountains lit up the glaciers, and it was magnificent.

College Fjord so named because the glaciers (both alpine and tide water) are named after colleges and universities in the US (except Princeton – seems the scientists didn’t like Princeton!). Among them was Oakdale, Yale, and the biggest, Harvard, which is fed by some 21 glaciers over a 20km distance in the mountains. The face of the glacier is 100m high and 1.4 miles (about 2km) long. We got to within a few km of it, and could hear it rumble and thunder as it calved a couple of times while we sat there watching it. Just spectacular! Most of the passengers couldn’t take their eyes off it.

Harvard, calving

Yale Glacier

New snow overnight on some of the peaks meant we had lovely fresh gleaming white alpine glaciers.

An ‘oh wow’ type of day!

We disembark tomorrow, early, so had to have our bags out tonight.