We had an itinerary change for today so that we could take a detour to visit the Arms Dawes Glacier. We were up on deck at 6am for this wonderful sunrise just as we started the journey in to the glacier.
It takes two hours to get to the glacier. At the start the water is clear, dark blue, no icebergs in the water. Some of the mountains had snow & ice on top. They opened up the crew deck at water level for some guests and we had a prime spot there for the morning with absolutely stunning views all the way.
After about one & half hours we started to see a lot of ice in the water and small icebergs floating past. The water we were in was quite narrow so the mountains on each side were close and the ship was going very slowly.
The ice got much bigger as we got nearer with some icebergs easily the size of a large car or van – at least thats what was above the water, with much more below. The ship carefully moved between the big ones, you could hear them hitting the ship.
In the middle you can just see the glacier, we did get much closer than this pic shows. Then the captain very, very slowly turned the ship in a 360 turn – I was surprised how far in the ship got as it was not very wide at all. The views were incredible!
The water colour was changing to a more green colour, the ice floating past was changing to a blue colour the closer we got.
Before the sun came out about 8am – it was cold! really cold! Here we are finally in front of the glacier.
It was two hours back out the narrow passage, through lots of ice, until we reached open sea again, ready to head to Juneau for the afternoon.
