Dave's Photo World

Back to the Alaska Gallery 2 page

Alaska 2003

Icefloe (?) on the Prince William Sound

2003-06-26

The main attraction of the cruise was to see the Columbia Glacier.  The Columbia Glacier is interesting because it is the only glacier that didn't start to retreat around 1900.  It waited until the 1970s (if I remember the tour correctly) before it started a massive retreat.  It's also interesting in that it fluxuates by inches or feet A DAY, where many others need weeks, or months to retreat a foot.

This little ice floe was interesting because of all the sea birds catching a ride. The Columbia Glacier calves (the technical term) millions of pounds of ice every day.  The day we tried to see it there was so much ice in the water that we had to stay over a mile away to ensure the boat would not get trapped, and damaged or sunk.

This is a very monochrome picture except for the icefloe, and it reality the water was a bit bluer, but not much.  The blue is very accurate.  It was an cloudy, rainy day and other tan the icefloes it was a dark, gray day.