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LeConte Glacier
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Busy day! Woke up and made breakfast for ourselves using products provided by the B&B. Then walked down to the dock for our scheduled 8AM jet boat tour to
LeConte Glacier, with Breakaway Adventures. This turned out to be one of the highlights of our trip.
Weather was cloudy and foggy. We were a small group (about 8 people) together
with a captain and his 'hand'. The boat was fairly basic and the ride towards
Leconte Bay was very bumpy but we still enjoyed the sail and the misty scenery around us.
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On the way to LeConte Bay
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On the way to LeConte Bay
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As we approached LeConte bay
opening. we started to see more and more ice floating on the water.
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Ice in LeConte Bay
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Deeper inside the
bay and towards the glacier itself we became more and more surrounded by huge amounts of ice in all sizes,
shapes and colors (although the crew said this is the lowest amount of ice they
saw this season!).
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LeConte Bay
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The dark cloudy skies only provided contrast and intensified
the effect of the sparkling blue and white ice – a truly out-of-this-world vision (this term
will repeat itself more and more in our trip...).
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LeConte Bay
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| LeConte Bay |
Finally we reached the glacier –
our first Alaskan glacier so it was definitely impressive!
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LeConte Glacier
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As can be expected, LeConte glacier is very active and we witnessed multiple calving events.
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LeConte Glacier Calving
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The captain kept maneuvering the
boat and pushing aside large amounts of ice so that we can get better views on
the seals, the glacier itself, and the nearby waterfalls. Pushing the ice made
us a bit nervous but he explained the boat thick aluminum hull is specially
designed for such environment (as opposed to boats made of steel or
fiberglass).
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| Surrounded by Ice |
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| Ice Formations |
We were almost alone in the bay - except for one fishing boat, nor sure what they were doing there but they looked so tiny in front of the glacier, giving proportions to this wonder of nature.
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| Man vs. Nature |
While there were very few people around, there were hundreds of harbor seals lying on the ice. Most of them are pups but the pups were larger now and difficult to distinguish from adults.
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| Seals on the Ice |
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Seals
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There were also thousands of sea birds, on the ice and on the sheer canyon walls around us.
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Sea Birds on the Canyon Walls
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LeConte Bay
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Overall we stayed near the glacier about 90 minutes. It was very
cold and drizzly but we put on our extra layers and overall had incredible time. And this was only half the day!
Here are few more incredible views from LeConte. I highly recommend doing the detour to visit there.
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