Zaffiro Images: Day Ten –Hubbard Glacier

Hubbard Glacier is a tidewater glacier. Named in 1890 after Gardiner G. Hubbard (regent of the Smithsonian Institution and first president of the National Geographic Society), it is the longest tidewater glacier in Alaska, with an open calving face over 6 miles wide.

The longest source for Hubbard Glacier originates 76 miles from its snout and is located at about at about approximately 5.0 miles west of Mt. Walsh with an altitude around 11,000 feet. A shorter tributary glacier begins at the easternmost summit on the Mt. Logan ridge at about 18,300 feet. Before it reaches the sea, Hubbard is joined by the Valerie Glacier to the west, which, through forward surges of its own ice, has contributed to the advance of the ice flow that experts believe will eventually dam the Russell Fiord from Disenchantment Bay waters.

Woke up today to some thick fog. I was excited because the ice will be that beautiful blue again. And bummed because we would not be able to see the towering Mountains above the glacier. It was about 6:30am when we got our first glimpse of Hubbard Glacier. Honestly, at first, I thought to myself “This ain’t all that big”. We head outside, it’s raining and freezing cold.

<">I was slightly disappointed. I know, compared to Mendenhall Glacier, this is one monster of a glacier. But I was expecting much, much more. Maybe the fog that played a part in not seeing the entire thing, but still, it wasn’t as ‘huge’ as I thought it would be.

As the ship gets closer, we notice another glacier off to our left. For some reason this one seemed larger.

Maybe it was because this glacier didn’t have such an abrupt cliff like Hubbard.

The closer we got, the larger it became, but, again, not as big as I thought. I started to take pictures of the small icebergs in the water. Some were white, some were light blue, and some were very blue. You know only ¼ of the entire iceberg is above the water.

We spent about an hour slowly pulling up to the Glacier. Once we arrived, the captain turned the boat around so we were parallel to the glacier. It was big, but again, I thought it was going to be towering the ship!

The Captain came on the speaker and with his very thick accent, starts off giving symptoms of hyperthermia. He said “You are suffering from hyperthermia when you start to understand clearly what I am saying.” Boy, is he right. He’s very hard to understand. He continued to talk about Hubbard Glacier. When he said “We’re approximately 1 mile from the Glacier” I put my camera down and said “What?!” It did not look 1 mile away. I thought we were a few hundred feet from this thing! Over a period of time, while he was talking, he moved the ship as close as ½ mile away. Now, it was setting in how big this thing really is!

This glacier is massive. And the blues flowing through it was amazing! Layers upon layers of blue. The captain said it takes about 400 years for ice to move down the length of the glacier, so what we’re looking at is about 400 years old. Amazing!

While admiring the blues and taking all this in, I kept hearing what sounded like thunder. Thinking it’s going to start raining any minute a huge boom goes off. It almost sounded like an explosion. All this noise is the ice cracking. I couldn’t believe it! Then, I noticed a piece starting to give way. I kept my camera on that area hoping a ‘huge’ piece would fall off. And one did. It’s about the size of a 3 story building! This is called calving when ice falls off the glacier.

Another section with a larger and wider piece of ice was breaking apart. But it never came down while we were there. Maybe it’s a good thing that huge piece did not come off. I’m sure that would have created large wave!

We turned around and headed back to sea and watched the glacier disappear into the fog. On the way out I took more shots of the icebergs around the ship.

The rest of the day we’re at sea heading to Seward where we will disembark. I was sitting on the floor in our cabin getting our suitcases together. We need to have them outside the cabin this evening so the steward could pick them up and transfer them off ship in the morning. The weather was getting worse and the seas rough. I was starting to feel quite sick to my stomach. Ray was looking out the window and said “OMG! We almost got hit by a boat!” I jumped up, ran to the window and a fishing boat, approximately 30’, was coming out of a very sharp U-turn heading away from the ship. The weather outside was raining and very foggy, so he must have been on auto-pilot, heading straight into the shipping channel, and not paying attention to where he was going. We watched as he disappeared into the fog.

We almost died!

I stood up and got very dizzy. My stomach was feeling weezy, so I sat back down on the floor where I didn’t feel it. Each time I stood up, I sat right back down. So, I’m stuck in the cabin, on the floor, watching TV.

Ray wanted to go out and enjoy that Cuban Cigar he bought in Canada when we were up at Whistler Mountain. I told him to go ahead I had to stay put. About a ½ hour later, he returns back to the room, completely soaked. I asked what happened. He went up to the back of the ship, grabbed a double Jack Daniels, found a light for his cigar, and walked around the outside of the boat, in the rain, enjoying his Cigar, Jack, Wind, Rain and the rocking of the ship.

Now, I really, really wish I had a shot of that! But I don’t. I was on the floor in our cabin.

After a couple of hours, I decided to head out and try to capture some shots of the rough sea. These pictures don’t do justice on the size of the waves.