“Ephemeral.” “Moody.” “Mysterious.” “Majestic.” These are all words used to describe the atmosphere created by the heavy band of fog we awoke to this morning. Cut loose near the entrance to Le Conte Bay, four GPS-aided boats slipped out of sight, bound for an unseen destination. Two miles to the east a shallow bar of silt and rock supposedly ensnares large icebergs as they drift from North America’s southernmost tidewater glacier, Le Conte. For two obscured miles it was hard to imagine anything else existing but our small inflatables as we sliced through this featureless, yet eerily calm environment. Gradually, as if only an apparition, muted forms began to take shape through the mist, their amorphous outlines turning to opaque sculptures of ice, perfectly mirrored on the water’s surface. Sure enough, the deeply keeled icebergs, born of the Le Conte glacier, had drifted to the end of the fjord and gotten hung up in the shallows, destined to spend the rest of their lives as sentinels to their source of origin, five sinuous miles further south and east.
As we pulled away from the ghost-bergs of Le Conte Bay and headed up Frederick Sound the fog lifted, the world reemerged, and the landscape was thrown back into vertical relief. We were northbound for Petersburg and the weather looked promising. Within two hours we were pulling into our tight berth in Petersburg harbor and getting ready to set off on various excursions. From flightseeing, to fishing, to hikes through a muskeg (bog-like environment), to a dock walk amongst the fishing vessels that give this town its pulse, the afternoon was not wanting for options. The kids were fishing, the sun was out, and a crab feast awaited our return from the aforementioned activities. What could be better..?
…Enter the humpbacks. 9 p.m. A setting sun warms the low hung clouds and puffs of whale breath begin to dot the horizon. All hands on deck. The next hour becomes a whirr of excited hoots punctuated by shutter clicks, of a blood-orange sun silhouetting the outlines of humpback tails, of smiling faces, set aglow by the last rays of light on this ephemeral, moody, mysterious, majestic landscape.
