Cruising College Fjord, and docking at Whittier
The main feature of June 8, Day 8 of our trip and Day 7 aboard the cruise ship Nieuw Amsterdam – our final full day on the ship – was a visit to glacier-studded College Fjord.
The day began with this post on Facebook at 04:51: “Decade after decade, my ‘sixth sense’ gets me into the right place at the right time for events such as this Gulf of Alaska sunrise at 04:32.”
I may have gone back to bed, as there are no more photos until the next one of the navigation screen on the TV at 08:11.
As usual, we began the day in the spa. The next photo shows the heated ceramic loungers where we finish. Ahhhhhh… 🙂
When we got back to our cabin, instructions about the disembarkation process at Whittier the next morning had been delivered. My Facebook post with this photo said: “The beginning of the end 🙁 – 7-day cruises are much too short.”
Seeing these walls of granite and ice often makes me why wonder why the early explorers didn’t just sail away to some friendlier place.
Even on a dreary day, there are some lovely scenes once you enter Price William Sound.
We had a special “Alaska Brunch” for our final mid-0day meal. It featured some dishes with Alaskan ingredients such as reindeer sausage.
I find it quite remarkable that the kitchen staff can feed over 2,000 people in a short period of time and still pay attention to artful presentation.
Entering Wells Passage at about 1:30, the mountains got much closer.
As we neared College Fjord, Cathy and I went up to the Crow’s Nest and listened to the ship naturalist for a while. He’s very good. Going through my literature and even Google, he is never given a name other than “Dominic,” but usually just “your Wildlife Guide.” I find that very disrespectful – it’s taken a lot of work to be able to do that well.
In 2010 I cruised College Fjord 3 times, with a very different seat. The next photo shows me on the bridge of the Coral Princess as we entered College Fjord – I was on a 3-week contract as the ship naturalist (and got a lot of respect from everyone, from the Captain to my tech guy in the theatre).
As at Glacier Bay, the bow deck was opened for viewing. It was very chilly out there.
College Fjord is compact, but there’s a lot going on, with 5 tidewater glaciers, 5 large valley glaciers, and many smaller glaciers including some impressive hanging glaciers.
Looking north up Barry Arm of Port Wells, to the Barry Glacier. Off to the left of the glacier is Harriman Fjord, another spectacular fjord studded with glaciers.
Hanging glaciers like these ones are even more impressive later in the summer when the snow has melted off the ice.
The Yale Glacier at the head of the southeast arm of College Fjord, the Yale Arm. The glacier is about 20 miles long, and 1¼ miles wide at the face. It was named for Yale University by members of the 1899 Harriman Alaska Expedition, the source for the names of most of these glaciers.
Three photos of the Wellesley Glacier. With its forested terminal moraine is very different than the vast majority of Alaska glaciers and is one of my favourites.
The Wellesley Glacier looked very different in June 2010.
The next photo shows the spot where we stopped and sat for a while before heading for Whittier. Harvard Glacier is on the left, Yale on the right.
Sailing away. I haven’t yet seen College Fjord in the sunshine – I guess I’ll have to go back and try again 🙂
A broader look at the Barry Glacier area as we passed.
At dinner in the main dining room that evening, the staff put on a bit of a musical parade show 🙂
We were scheduled to arrive at Whittier at 01:00, but the captain announced that we were going to make a run to avoid an incoming storm so would be there much earlier. We arrived at about 8:50 pm. The next photo shows the head of Passage Canal – Whittier is immediately to the left.
A closer look, with the Portage Pass Trailhead on the left, the chalet-looking entrance to the Anton Anderson Memorial Tunnel to the right, and the City of Whittier Campground in front of it. A friend in Anchorage had offered to come to Whittier to hike the Portage Pass trail with me, but neither the weather nor the timing worked, and I didn’t even get to see him during our brief visit to Anchorage.
Whittier as we started to move in towards the dock. Most of the town’s 270 residents live in the 14-story Hodge Building (now Begich Towers), which was built in 1957. Partly for that reason, the most popular book about Whittier is titled “The Strangest Town in Alaska.”
The other dominant building is the sprawling concrete Buckner Building, a long-abandoned former U.S. military structure that was built in 1953 to house 1,000 soldiers as the Cold War ramped up. The military left in 1966, and a structural assessment a few years ago reported that it was not able to be renovated for any purpose. The cost to demolish it would be astronomical, so there it will sit until Mother Nature makes it falls down.
The cruise ship terminal.
Some of the boats that do “26 Glacier” day cruises to College and Harriman Fjords.
Shortly after we tied up, an ambulance appeared out of the Anderson Tunnel and came to our dock with its emergency lights on. It stayed for a long time and left quietly, which could be a bad sign. Given the demographics, I expect that many people die aboard, and I can think of a lot worse places to die.
At 9:32 pm we got a few minutes of sun breaking through the dark clouds, and with a bit of HDR tweaking, that provided a brilliant photo to end the day.
As I went to bed I was dreading the next day, the very long haul from Whittier to Anchorage, Seattle, and finally Vancouver.
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