Mike and I were on Norwegian Bliss cruise to see Sawyer Glacier in the Tracy Arm Fjord 45 miles south of Juneau. The area is at the center of the Tracy Arm-Fords Terror Wilderness, an area spanning 653,179 acres that the U.S. Congress designated as a national wilderness in 1980.
The Tracy Arm Fjord is over 30 miles long and one-fifth of the area is covered in ice. It formed when a glacier cut the U-shaped valley. During the summer, the fjord has a considerable amount of floating icebergs ranging from hand-sized to pieces as large as a three-story building. The surroundings here are astounding steep granite mountains, 1,000 foot water falls, forested canyons, gorgeous green water, and cool, crisp fresh air. It was simply amazing!
One of the most famous glaciers in Alaska is the Sawyer Glacier and I am beyond blessed that Mike and I were able to see it. Sawyer Glacier is the result of many years of snow falling and compressing. When enough snow falls, and the environment is cold enough to keep that snow in a single location over time, rather than melting into streams and rivers, it turns into a large mass of ice. The face of Sawyer Glacier is about a half mile wide and this is an active tidewater glacier, which means that it can have “calving” events where a large chunk of ice breaks off and falls into the ocean below. The ice that falls off could be a small chunk or a section the size of a cruise ship, depending on the day. The captain navigated through numerous chunks of icebergs to get within a few hundred feet of the glacier for us to see it. AMAZING
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