Stephen Chew, is rousted from his bunk
at 0600 to stave off ice threatening
their Tarr Inlet anchorage, just west
of mammoth Margerie Glacier.
Photo by Dick Drechsler.
Alaskan Ice
By Sharon Drechsler
Our friends, Stephen and Katie,
Glacier Bay is enormous,
torpedo your fiberglass hull before
my husband, Dick, and I cast off in you know it. (Dick had spotted his
our 47-foot sailboat, Last Resort, from
4,400 square miles of
first berg - a little, itty-bitty old thing
the security of Bartlett Cove ranger
creaking, cracking glaciers,
- in Stephens Passage on the way to
station’s broad, wooden dock and
skyscraper-mountains and
Juneau, a few weeks earlier. He’d
enter Glacier Bay National Park. Since made a federal case out of it; practically
Dick and I left Los Angeles in February,
gunmetal grey,
netted, tagged and released it.) Beyond
we’ve toiled 2,400 arduous miles up the
silt-clogged water…
the obvious Titanic-like event that can
coast for this one event that is to be our result from hitting an iceberg, grinding
crowning and supreme achievement.
you get the feeling you
your prop over one of these babies is
Like a gorged bear in summer,
are very isolated in all
akin to munching on a mouthful of
we’re bloated with experiences which
that vastness.
nails. It’s not recommended.
range from the very scary (a moonless, It’s easier to dodge the apartment
after-midnight, near-sinking episode building-sized icebergs that move as
miles off the coast of Oregon) to the park regulations limiting the number slowly as one of those monsters in a
laughable (a fit of the giggles after the of pleasure boats such as ours to 25 at Japanese horror film from the ‘60s.
first time we don enough foul weather a time, you get the feeling you are very Many of them are cerulean blue - the
gear for a moon-walk). isolated in all that vastness. same color as my husband’s beautiful
We had picked up Stephen and We enter the silence like it’s a pit - eyes. As we watch for bergs on the
Katie from the airport earlier that week like landing in a whale’s belly. Icebergs way into the park, I cheer myself by
in Juneau and had departed from nearby of every dimension and shape ease humming would-be rapper Vanilla
Auke Bay in near-gale-force winds. eerily by our boat, their hulking masses Ice’s song from the ‘80s: “Dum-dum-
But, by the time we reach the park, the dragging with effort through murky dum, dee-dee, dum-dum...ice, ice,
wind is only dimly remembered in the waters. baby!”
icy stillness. Glacier Bay is enormous - Our cruising guide says to watch The VHF radio says a 207-foot
4,400 square miles of creaking, cracking for bergy bits – chunks of ice that tour boat, the Spirit of Alaska, has just
glaciers, skyscraper-mountains and disguise themselves as part of their run aground on a shoal in Tarr Inlet,
gunmetal grey, silt-clogged water. With surrounding element, but which can home to the most popular of the park’s
48° No r t h , Au g u s t 2009 PA g e 41
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