Tracy Arm, 07.10

What an amazing place!

Tracy Arm is about 25 miles long, with no good spots to anchor, so we stayed the night before at Tracy Arm Cove at its head and then went down one way in the morning and came back in the afternoon.

The further we went the greener the water got. I’ve never seen water this color before. The glacial silt turns it this kind of milky turquoise. And the more ice bergs we saw! Navigating through them is insane. We posted on person at the bow with a walkie talkie to tell the person at the helm which way to go to dodge bergie bits. And at some points we had one person with a radio, one person steering the boat, and one person with a pole, pushing away bits because there were just too many to avoid!

That’s Kathy with the radio and the pole!

The arm forks, one to Sawyer Glacier and one way to South Sawyer Glacier. We were headed to the south one until we encountered a channel too choked up with ice to proceed through. This is as far as we got before we turned back:

But, north Sawyer glacier did not disappoint, to put it mildly.

Here it is as we approached.

It’s incredibly active, and you can watch it calving.

Stay tuned for the next post, for what might be the coolest thing I’ve ever seen…