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We woke up yesterday to sunshine and blue skies. Wait, didn't the forecast say rain? We talked about going the rest of the way up the fiord to see the glaciers but it was going to be a late start so we decided to just explore where we were. We waited for high tide and tried to take the dinghy up the river that lead to the lake. The river, because it runs over a tidal plain, meanders in different directions during different years and water levels. So it took a bit to find the main flow. We never made it all the way to the lake, we were about two thirds of the way up but the current flow was so strong that our poor dinghy was barely making headway. We were worried that the level was going to drop too much before we made it all the way back so we gave up and turned around. After getting back to the main bay we took the dinghy around to check on other points we had noticed that looked interesting. After dinner it started to rain, but we made up our minds to get an early start and look at the weather for the day. At six am there was a lot of fog down low but blue skies and the sun was shining so we decided to get underway, hoping the fog would burn off. It did and we ended up having a perfect day to visit the glaciers.
The glaciers in college fiord are all named after famous universities and the two largest glaciers are Harvard and Yale. Harvard is a huge glacier and is advancing. It is actually made up of or fed by several glaciers by the names of Radcliffe, Eliot, Lowell, and Baltimore of course this comingling of glaciers adds several lateral moraines to it giving it a dirty look. There are also three or more glaciers on the side before you get to Harvard. They are Wellesley, Vassar, Bryn Mawr and Smith. Yale is on another arm off to the right. We had been negotiating ice for a while before we got to Yale arm but what we could see of it made us think it was a prettier glacier than the others so we headed in. We made it almost to the glacier face and are extremely glad we did as it is maybe the prettiest glacier we have seen so far and just to add some sugar to the frosting there was a reasonable calving just before we turned around. Note when we say we got close to the glacier we mean a quarter to a half mile away. This is prudent for any tidal glacier, because a large calving causes rather large waves.
Anyways by the time we made it back to the Harvard arm and started negotiating the ice there, the tides had changed and the wind was up packing the ice a lot closer together so we gave up at about the mile and a half to go line. On the way back down the fiord the weather just kept improving and by the time we anchored in Granite Bay the temperature was nearly seventy with super intense sunshine.
Tomorrow we hope to make it to Cascade Falls. The sound is loaded with waterfalls, most of them flowing from glacier melt. Cascade is flowing down from a large lake so it has a very wide apron and is supposed to be pretty spectacular. We hope to go and find out.
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| all the glaciers that lead to Harvard at the head of the fiord |
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| Harvard Glacier, a little closer |
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| Yale Glacier |
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