What sets Alaska cruises apart from other cruises is what you can see from the ship's rail: the state's geological wonders. They're just as much a part of the Alaska cruise experience as stops in port. Here are some of the sights you may see as you sail past.
Columbia Glacier
Most cruise ships that follow the Glacier Route into Prince William Sound near Valdez pass the thick, 3-mi-/5-km-wide edge of Columbia Glacier, an ice sheet that flows out of the Chugach Mountains. (You can also take a sightseeing boat to the glacier or fly over it in a plane.) The Columbia Glacier is about the size of Los Angeles.
At its longest, the octopus-shaped glacier measures 40 mi/65 km—the great expanse is partly hidden by the surrounding mountains (picture ice between the high peaks instead of land and you'll get an idea of its size). Most ships and boats idle for several hours at the mouth of the glacier to give passengers a chance to see it calve: Icebergs the size of office buildings can topple into the sea with an enormous roar, and the resulting ocean swell shifts everyone's weight a little. The turbulence lifts fish to the surface—you may witness seabirds, seals and sea otters taking advantage of this, filling the air with the spray of their dives. Some marine animals use the smaller bergs as platforms.
Columbia Glacier is receding at what's considered to be a fast rate: In a little more than a decade it has backed up about 5 mi/8 km, and it's expected eventually to expose a fjord 25 mi/40 km long. Because receding glaciers calve at a greater rate than advancing ones, iceberg production in Prince William Sound has increased dramatically. There's some concern about possible hazards to navigation, especially for supertankers that stop at nearby Valdez, the terminus for the Trans-Alaska Pipeline.
College Fjord
Cutting straight as a board northeast into the mountainous terrain surrounding Columbia Glacier, College Fjord offers a textbook array of tidewater and hanging glaciers. This area, about halfway between Valdez and Whittier, was explored and mapped by the Harriman Expedition in 1899, which included E.H. Harriman, his son W. Averell Harriman, naturalists John Muir and C. Hart Merriam, and ornithology artist Louis Agassiz Fuertes.
The Harriman Expedition named the glaciers of College Fjord after institutions of higher learning (the Ivy League and the Seven Sisters), symbolizing the class of those who could afford the time and expense to travel so far. Like the colleges and universities they honor, the glaciers have changed over time. Harvard Glacier—at the head of the fjord—has advanced about a mile/kilometer in the past 100 years, and Yale glacier has receded nearly 3 mi/5 km. It's hard to predict what these two and their counterparts will look like in another century. Meanwhile, the ice masses creak, pop and groan with transformation as they crawl inexorably through the valleys they've carved for themselves.
Glacier Bay National Park
When Capt. George Vancouver sailed into Icy Strait more than two centuries ago, Glacier Bay was little more than a dent in a mountain of ice. Today, the waterway stretches for 65 mi/105 km and contains 11 tidewater glaciers—more than any other place in the world.
Ships that cruise Glacier Bay usually idle in Icy Strait long enough to pick up two park service naturalists from the Glacier Bay National Park ranger station near Gustavus. Then they sail up the western arm of the bay. (Mostly, smaller ships sail in the narrower eastern arm.) The weather is often foggy and drizzly, but if the clouds lift, the views of the glaciers flowing down the steep mountains are spectacular. (Interestingly, the glaciers appear a richer blue on cloudy days.) Most ships pause in front of several glaciers to give passengers a chance to see calving. It's breathtaking. Sometimes you can see humpback whales feeding in the bay's nutrient-rich waters and harbor seals floating on icebergs, too. The naturalists, who usually spend the day onboard, give talks, show slides and sell books about the 3.2-million-acre/1.3-million-hectare park.
Hubbard Glacier
Its vastness may be hard to perceive from the deck of a ship, but trust us: Hubbard Glacier west of Skagway is a whopping 76 mi/122 km long, with a cliff face 6 mi/10 km wide. It's the longest tidewater glacier in North America.
It's also one of the fastest. Although most glaciers are very slow-moving (a rate of 3 ft/1 m per day is considered normal cruising speed), some, like Hubbard, possess qualities that propel them in occasional bursts, traveling at up to 200 ft/60 m per day. What causes some glaciers to engage in this uncharacteristic behavior is a combination of glacial plumbing and other environmental factors not completely understood.
Hubbard's last great show of speed was in 1986, when it galloped downhill and blocked off Russell Fjord. As water flowing from the mountains backed up behind this icy dam, there was concern about where the water would go when it eventually broke free. The nearby Situk River could have been completely scoured by the flood, destroying this very productive salmon and steelhead spawning stream. But instead of flooding the Situk, the mountain water—3.5 million cubic feet/99,109 cubic meters of it—poured into Disenchantment Bay (at the head of Yakutat Bay).
Misty Fjords National Monument
Misty Fjords National Monument encompasses more than 2 million acres/810,000 hectares of old-growth forest, granite mountains, waterfalls, islands, lakes, rivers and coastal habitat. Boats and cruise ships thread their way through extremely narrow channels to provide access to these remote areas, which begin about 20 mi/32 km southeast of Ketchikan.
The fjords provide habitat for a wide variety of plants and animals. The cliffs are home to mountain goats, and the forests protect bears and Sitka black-tailed deer. The channels are full of salmon and shellfish that nourish orcas, seals and sea otters. Salmon and steelhead trout migrate along mountain streams flowing into the sea.
The fjords also contain impressive granite formations. Minerals present in the rock include gold, silver, copper, zinc and one of the largest deposits of molybdenum (a metallic element used to strengthen steel) in the world. In Behm Canal, New Eddystone Rock, a remnant of an ancient volcanic plug, rises from the depths.
As you sail through this rich and productive habitat, be sure to scan the waters for whales and seals, and watch for the telltale white heads of bald eagles perched in treetops along the shore.
Tracy Arm
This dramatic fjord off Stephens Passage, about 45 mi/72 km south of Juneau, is a popular cruising area for big and small ships. It's less than a mile/kilometer wide at most places, and its granite walls climb 2,000 ft/620 m. Several spectacular waterfalls drop from the cliffs. The stark beauty of the fjord is accentuated by the North Sawyer and South Sawyer glaciers, which frequently send icebergs crashing into the blue-green water.
