I'm off to our tour now. Will post this from Juneau.
Back from a late dinner. Had two starters, as recommended by Mlad, our chief waiter. Too much food for both of us but we had a big day.
Our first tour took us to the summit of the mountain pass here, that formed the start of the 500 mile trail to the Yukon gold fields, centred around Dawson City. We saw a bear!
Our charming guide gave an informative tour of the town - such as it is - and then a long climb up a road - something Juneau, tomorrow's port of call cannot claim - leading somewhere else in Alaska. There are some scary folk here!
Cyano bacteria
Davidson glacier recession
demarcation line
Pocahontas
I'm trying a new idea here to remember some of the highlights. These are some words I knew I should use in this entry. Here goes. (tomorrow - I'm too tired!)
Tomorrow (16 July 2011)
The passage to Skagway is lined by a black mark just above the high water mark. They have 20 foot tides here (sorry to go imperial but it is America and I never did find metres terribly human friendly) and from a distance, the line looked to me like a track or road had been carved in to the edge of the cliff. The only signs of life were these seals.
Our tour was bound for the Davidson glacier, once a tidal or ??? glacier but now reduced to a valley one. I wonder if Oki visited it in "76?
We steamed back up the passage for over an hour and then beached and transferred to a school bus for a short slow drive through some forest to base camp, where we donned wellingtons and life jackets for stage two.
We had a nice small group so we were easily accommodated in two of these thirty foot canoes.
We then paddled and motored about one mile up against quite a swiftly flowing milky glacial stream, dodging and collecting lumps of ice along the way. Jessica was full of information about moraines and random arrets (?) and the icy air and ... well too much info so we fell well behind the other boat which was enjoying closer views of the glacier.
After paddling a bit, we landed on a gravel beach and walked quite close to the face of the glacier and could see a waterfall and scrabbling rocks feeding into the stream. We took some more photos,
boarded our boats and on the way back the other guide - Renae - serenaded her boat with "Colours of the Wind" from the Disney film Pocahontas. She works Winters at Tokyo Disney world. A talented gal and a vivacious tour guide.
- All my own work. RV. Except for the bits by Tess.
Location:Broadway,Skagway,United States
No comments:
Post a Comment