Scenic Cruising: Hubbard Glacier

This was my first experience with scenic cruising, so I didn't really know what to expect. It was incredible! Basically, instead of cruising to get to a new port, we sailed into a bay to get a close look at a big, beautiful glacier.

First, a few notes about glaciers:

• Glaciers are formed when there is so much snow that it doesn't melt, and new snow falls on top, and the pressure, over lots and lots of time, compresses the snow so much that it turns into ice.
• Glaciers move and flow: they can be advancing (moving forward) or retreating (shrinking back). This seems to depend on how much new snow vs. melting happens in a season.
• The glacier ice is much denser than regular ice. It's also a dark blue color any place that hasn't been exposed to air for very long. 
• When a glacier flows down to sea level, parts of it will break off. This process is called calving. After a calving, you can see the blue color of the newly exposed ice.
• Calving produces small icebergs. 7/8ths of an iceberg is beneath the surface of the water.
• Glaciers look "dirty" because as they flow down the rock of the mountains, they grind it up, and that debris, called moraine, gets layered into the glacier ice.

To get close to the Hubbard Glacier, we sailed into Yakutat Bay, and as we got closer to the Glacier, the captain had to navigate among all the little icebergs, but we kept getting closer and closer. Ultimately, the ship's naturalist said we got closer to the glacier than she'd ever been during her 12 years of cruising! The ship stayed close up to the glacier for quite a while, and the decks were full of people watching. The naturalist narrated a bit from the bridge, broadcast over the speakers on deck. While we watched, we saw the glacier calf quite a few times. It's pretty much impossible to describe, but before the ice breaks off, there is a noise like thunder, then the ice falls, making a huge splash, which we could usually hear, too, then we could watch the ripples move out from where it fell, moving the little icebergs on the waves. It was so amazing! As we sailed out of the bay, we spotted some sea lions on the icebergs. Okay, now I'll show the pictures:

Approaching the glacier.
(It was really windy--I should not have worn my hair down!)

Iceberg with moraine.

This iceberg looked like a whale to me.

Mark getting a better look with binoculars.

An iceberg that had recently turned over
(we can tell because it's such a dark blue).

This is a glacier, too, just very dark with moraine.

One of the spots that experienced a lot of calving while we watched.

Sea lions!

And a few cool panoramas from Mark's phone;