HUBBARD GLACIER

Saturday, June 22 - Icy Beauty

We were due to approach Hubbard Glacier in the early afternoon this day, which dawned (early) mostly sunny.

I attended the Meet and Mingle in the Quill and Compass Pub at 10:00. It was a pretty subdued affair, but then so was our roll call. Very nice people, and CD Paul Rutter came to speak. There were about 35 or so people there. I even won a door prize bundle - highlighter, lanyards, small photo album, and luggage tags. I chatted with a couple folks then headed out to meet Bruce, who was attending a talk by a retired Royal Canadian Mounted Policeman in the Colony Club. After the talk we spent a lot of time on the outer decks and our balcony, admiring the stunning scenery.

Mt. St. Elias:

The first dedicated glacier viewers claiming spots on the helipad:

The boat that dropped off the pilot:

On his noon update announcement, the Captain had warned us that there was fog in Yakutat Bay, but he would get us as close as possible to Hubbard.

I was torn - spend all the time on our aft balcony, and hope that the ship did the typical slow turns? Or find a spot on the deck with a forward view? I chose the latter and joined the crowd on the helipad. It was chilly but the company was fun, with lots of friendly bantering. I love the camaraderie of cruising in general, and Alaska seems to attract an especially unpretentious, amicable crowd.

It was a stunningly beautiful day, with the blue skies and blue ice so bright and water so still. But the glacier was obscured by low fog, and the ice field was thick.

It's hard to tell from this pic, but there were two decks of people up there, the lower of which was for those holding gold seapass cards only.

The Captain said we would hold and wait a while to see if the fog dissipated, and sure enough, it slowly started to do just that:

This kayaker was heading into the fog - quite the adventure:

The dissipating fog almost seemed to come toward us, quite eerie and beautiful.

Soon we could see the glacier in the distance, but the thick ice field prevented us from getting any closer. We learned later at the Captain's Corner talk that we were 5 miles from Hubbard.

The Captain announced that he would be doing several slow turns before departing, so I decided to leave all my new "friends" and head to our balcony.

Bruce had watched elsewhere, and said that the Alaskan expert on board had been making announcements throughout the whole process, but we could not hear anything out on the helipad. Bruce said we didn't miss anything.

Room service spinach and artichoke dip, quite tasty. I'll never understand why it is on the main dish menu and not appetizers.

We were glad we saw an up close calving the day before on our Kenai Fjords cruise, but even though we could not get close to Hubbard, it was a gorgeous day for cruising.