Hubbard (Glacier Bay)

After sailing overnight we arrived in Glacier Bay to view the Hubbard Glacier. It is about 150 miles long. The ice takes about 300 years to reach the sea. At the shoreline it calves (breaks) off the end of the glacier into the sea. You hear a loud breaking noise and then a crash as the ice falls off into the water. This is one of only 3 or 4 glaciers still growing in Alaska.

Getting up to the glacier isn't always possible. There is a lot of floating ice that sometimes freezes together into an ice sheet. The day before us a ship like ours got in the bay and then the bay froze up behind it and they needed the coast guard to rescue them. As big as these ships are their hull isn't made to break through ice.

Here is the glacier up close. It rises over 200 feet into the air (higher than our ship is tall) and extends under the surface up to 500 feet.Because sometimes the glacier under the sea explodes outward, they don't want the ship to get too close to the glacier. We were approximately 3/10 of a mile away from the glacier for an hour and a half. The ship has thrusters that can actually spin it around on a dime. The captain surned us around a couple of times so we could all see it.

I got some of the calving on video.