LeConte Bay and Petersburg
We woke up this morning in LeConte Bay amongst a sea of icebergs floating away from LeConte Glacier 7 miles away up the fjord. LeConte Glacier is the southernmost tidewater glacier in North America.
At 8:15am Zodiac expeditions began. There must have been hundreds of icebergs around us of all sizes, shapes and shades of glacial blue. Some were bigger and heavier than the ship! Glacial ice is nine times denser than refrigerator ice. Several of these huge icebergs were actually stranded on the bar, or terminal moraine, while floating ones drifted with the currents. This terminal moraine is the accumulation of rock and rubble in front of the glacier as it bulldozes bedrock down the valley. It marks the furthest reach of the glacier which occurred in the 1750s. As soon as we shut the engines we could hear bergie seltzer, or ice crispies: air bubbles containing atmospheric air from hundreds of years ago popping as the ice they have been trapped in decompresses. We also saw a myriad of gulls, murres, murrelets, scoters, and a mom and calf harbor porpoise swimming around.
At 1:30pm we disembarked in Petersburg. Hikers took a 5 minute Zodiac shuttle across Wrangell Narrows to the head of the Petersburg Creek trail on Kupreanof Island. The trail began through an old growth forest where downed trees have become nursery logs. We followed the boardwalk up and suddenly something happened: the canopy opened up and the vegetation changed. We were in the muskeg (or bog), where the soil has turned acidic, thus limiting growth to plants adapted to this environment. The ground is completely covered by Sphagnum moss, grasses, juniper, bunchberries, Labrador tea, bog rosemary, bogbean, bog orchids, and sundew (an insect-eating plant). The only type of tree present was the shore pine, and its growth was stunted. Dead and dying trees were drooping with dead man’s beard and witches hair lichens. Some of the hikers ventured on to reach the edge of the creek while others continued further on the forest trail along the tidal inlet.
At 7:30pm we feasted on fresh Dungeness crab, the perfect end to another day of exploration in southeast Alaska.
We woke up this morning in LeConte Bay amongst a sea of icebergs floating away from LeConte Glacier 7 miles away up the fjord. LeConte Glacier is the southernmost tidewater glacier in North America.
At 8:15am Zodiac expeditions began. There must have been hundreds of icebergs around us of all sizes, shapes and shades of glacial blue. Some were bigger and heavier than the ship! Glacial ice is nine times denser than refrigerator ice. Several of these huge icebergs were actually stranded on the bar, or terminal moraine, while floating ones drifted with the currents. This terminal moraine is the accumulation of rock and rubble in front of the glacier as it bulldozes bedrock down the valley. It marks the furthest reach of the glacier which occurred in the 1750s. As soon as we shut the engines we could hear bergie seltzer, or ice crispies: air bubbles containing atmospheric air from hundreds of years ago popping as the ice they have been trapped in decompresses. We also saw a myriad of gulls, murres, murrelets, scoters, and a mom and calf harbor porpoise swimming around.
At 1:30pm we disembarked in Petersburg. Hikers took a 5 minute Zodiac shuttle across Wrangell Narrows to the head of the Petersburg Creek trail on Kupreanof Island. The trail began through an old growth forest where downed trees have become nursery logs. We followed the boardwalk up and suddenly something happened: the canopy opened up and the vegetation changed. We were in the muskeg (or bog), where the soil has turned acidic, thus limiting growth to plants adapted to this environment. The ground is completely covered by Sphagnum moss, grasses, juniper, bunchberries, Labrador tea, bog rosemary, bogbean, bog orchids, and sundew (an insect-eating plant). The only type of tree present was the shore pine, and its growth was stunted. Dead and dying trees were drooping with dead man’s beard and witches hair lichens. Some of the hikers ventured on to reach the edge of the creek while others continued further on the forest trail along the tidal inlet.
At 7:30pm we feasted on fresh Dungeness crab, the perfect end to another day of exploration in southeast Alaska.
