Alaska's Icebergs - Cruising the Fjords of Glacier Bay National Park (12 Original Photos)

A while back my wife and I took a cruise to Alaska from Seattle, WA up through the "Inside Passage" stopping at various ports along the way. One of the main highlights of the cruise was the slow and careful navigation of the majestic Fjords leading into Glacier Bay National Park.

This was our first cruise together, it was a 7-day cruise aboard the Sapphire Princess from Princess Cruise Lines. It was a nice ship with friendly crew and staff, but as we learned it caters more to the older crowd which is fine for this type of cruise. We met a lot of really nice people, but we were two of only a handful of guests under 50. Yeah - we went to bingo night a few times, why not.

The itinerary brought us from Seattle, Washington through the Inside Passage to the port cities of Juneau, Skagway and Ketchikan in Alaska, then to Victoria, British Columbia, Canada on our way back to Seattle. I will share more about the other stops in future posts.

We really enjoy cruising and try to take a cruise every year. All our cruises after this one have been on Royal Caribbean, now our preferred cruise line.

All the pictures were taken from our balcony suite vantage point with my Fuji S2 Pro using a 70-300mm lens. Enjoy!

Rolling low-level clouds around the mountains.

Entering into the passage ways.

Our "sister" ship the Diamond Princess.

As we were enjoying the peaceful scenery on our way up the Fjord, we were all startled nearly half to death by the unexpected blaring of the ships horn followed by the return horn of an approaching ship. Nothing like scaring away all the wildlife for 2 miles, but apparently it's a maritime rule for the ships coming in close proximity. Of course as the ships passed by each other there was loud cheering, more horn blowing from the ships for fun, and people waving across the way. It was a fun experience.

On the down side, the Diamond Princess passed back bad news about the upper end of the pass being clogged by icebergs blocking passage to the glaciers. The captain came over the intercom to let us know he would get us as far up the passages as he could safely navigate. Luckily, we had an excursion planned to Mendenhall Glacier from the Juneau port anyway, so it wasn't that big of a deal.

Beautiful deep blues of the compressed ice inside the iceberg.

Massive Iceberg, the underwater portion hidden by its reflection.

To put this monstrous iceberg's size into perspective, the tip as seen in this photo was at eye-level to me roughly 100 feet above the waterline. It's length above water was estimated by the captain to be just over half the length of the ship, putting it around 500 feet long. This is just the part above the water we can see. It was hard to judge the size with the distance and huge shear mountains behind them making them seem smaller than they actually were.

To get an idea of the danger that imposes, the RMS Titanic as only 883 feet long and 104 feet tall to the top deck of the bridge.

The distant iceberg was estimated to be longer than the cruise ship.

Interesting shape as the ice melts in the clam water.

We saw a few seals coming around, but they always kept moving.

Thou shalt not pass! This is as far as we could go.

This is the point where the captain stopped the ship and did a stationary 360 turn, about 1.5 miles short of the Glacier viewing area. We then headed back out toward open water and on to Juneau.

Beautiful melting ice formations floating in the open waters.

The captain mentioned the icebergs float free during high tide, then get stranded in place during low tide exposing more of the ice to the sun. This melts away the newer "white" ice exposing the inner blue compressed ice.

Beautiful image of the rolling clouds in the distance.

Sea-side homes as we approached Juneau.

I hope you enjoyed my photos. It was an incredible experience. I have "seen" icebergs in documentaries on TV, but seeing the intense deep colors, compression layers, and shapes in real-life was even more amazing than I expected.

I will share photos from our excursion to Mendenhall Glacier in a future post.

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