Hubbard Glacier

One of the days we were looking forward to the most, our visit to the Hubbard Glacier. It's technically an 'at sea day' as we didn't get off the Century, we just cruised around the glacier.

When we woke up we were shrouded in fog but as we made our way up Yakutat Bay the fog cleared and we had yet another day of stunningly beautiful weather.

As ice started appearing in the water the ship slowed down and by the time we were approaching the glacier we were going no more than 2 knots. About 4 miles off the glacier the captain decided the ice conditions were too great and we couldn't go any further, but after rotating 360 degrees a few times on our thrusters he decided to go in a bit further.

I think we ended up being about 3 miles off the glacier. If you get as close in as 1.5 miles you can hear the ice crashing into the sea, but getting this close rarely happens, especially in May when there is still a lot of ice in the sea.

The naturalist on board who was doing commentary over the PA system said he had rarely seen it as clear and warm as it was on our visit.

And after 3 hours of glacier watching, we about turned and started heading south again.

We were pretty much on the 60 degree north line at this point, which is the furthest north we'd go and put us in line with Anchorage and back home in Shetland.

I struggled to pick a photo for this Blip, I had too many. While this photo doesn't show the glacier too clearly, it shows the whole area and the amount of ice in the water.