July 30 – Tracy Arm – Sawyer Glacier
In route from Taku to Tracy Cove we spotted a black bear on the beach, and a group of Puffins out for a ‘walk’.
The Mighty Seven moved into Tracy Cove and anchored, well all except Magic and Noon Balloon. Those two were the designated tour boats today.
The Jim, Cheryl, Brian, Lenore and Gary were aboard the Balloon. Pete and Steve stayed back waiting for Steve and Chris’s brother Mike to fly in by float plane. They would follow in Nellie and catch up with us. Michelle, Linda, Tom, Chris, Diane, Willard, Mike (Sea Life guest), Maryann, Dave, Glen and I were all aboard Magic. We left our anchorage as usual a bit behind schedule, it’s hard to get that many people and boats on the same schedule. All aboard we headed out. It was about a 23 mile run up Tracey Arm. We’ve heard many stories this summer about too much ice in Tracy for boat travel; the cruise ships are not going in at all using Endicott Arm instead. There were medium to large to very large icebergs in the water. The weather was clear enough to see the tops of the hills along the way and thus we could see many of the hanging glaciers, and places where clearly there had been glacial activity in history. This place is amazing, we love it!
The first glacier (hanging glacier) that we saw was Sumdum. I just love that name … where are you at …. Some dumb glacier. <grin>.
Everyone brought their sack lunches and we filled our bellies while looking at rock walls, waterfalls, glacial water of odd colors, and ice bergs, and bergettes. Lots of imagination was used when looking at the icebergs and seeing their shapes, a tug boat, submarine, two swans kissing, woody wood pecker, ski jump, sea on a berg (both live and of ice), angel fish, a block of ice with a diving board, …. the list goes on. The bergs were in colors varying from snow white, dark blue, medium and light blue, greenish, striped, blackish brown (aka dirt), rocks embedded or not, and crystal clear. The clear ones are a bit tougher to see for the skipper of the boat.
Glen did a great job of weaving Magic thru with Noon Balloon often following us along. Gary branched out and broke his own path as time went own.
We saw two sail boats coming out of the arm to the South Sawyer glacier which looked to be more packed with ice, and 3-4 small tour boats racing back out from our target the North Sawyer glacier. We made it to within about a mile of the face of the glacier before we were stopped by the ice pack. This glacier is amazingly beautiful.
There was lots of talk about how it looked compared to our 2008 and 2013 trips.
2008 - June 18th
Taken from the dinghy as we could not get the big boat up thru the ice. We left the big boat drifting about 2 miles behind.
2013 June 30th 
Taken from the deck of Reflections. We got pretty close that year.
2016 Today July 30th
We’re almost there, just another couple corners!
Beautiful blue glacier.
Caving in action
Beautiful colors
Icebergs of all shapes and sizes
The tubing center
Nellie and a berg
Woody Wood Pecker
Angel Fish or an Arrowhead?
Blue Berg
v
Whale Tail
Ice Whale
On the way back down the arm, a couple of us talked about what it would be like if we could go back in time 100 years, just for a couple days, to see this place then. We decided that we’d want to take our camera’s and cell phones (for selfie photos) with fully charged batteries to document what we saw, and to wear the high tech clothing of today – we don’t want to be cold. The plan, to explore, see how much more ice there was, and to bring the past to the future thru higher tech photography etc….
As you might guess there were many many photos taken. Jim took his drone along and did a photo flight. We can hardly wait to see that movie.
On the way back to the big boats we spotted a black bear minding it’s own business taking a walk on a beach. Then we noticed further down the beach was a Grizzly also out for a walk. Well these two types of bears generally do not like each other. The black noticed the griz and stopped frozen in place. The Griz was down wind and noticed the black bear and started to run toward it. The black bear turned tail and ran. The chase was on. The black ran along the beach continually looking for a place to exit the beach to the safety of the woods. Finally finding a good place and disappeared into the woods. The Grizzly continued to run but stayed on the beach and went past the ‘exit route’, then slowed down and scavenged the beach, eventually moving into the woods. Both ran very fast, but the Griz being much bigger had a longer stride and was gaining fast. It was a great show but the bear were too far apart to get a photo of both at the same time.
Nice day for a stroll
The stop
I’m outta here!
….. Run Forest Run! And boy did he run.
Time to climb
Get off my beach!
Trail cold, he got away. Wait, what is that I smell? … humans! He stopped and then looked right at us for a bit before heading on down the beach.
The Roche Harbor members who were aboard Magic today.
After dinner I spotted another griz on the beach in our anchorage cove.
A great day.
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