On the way out to the glacier face we find these sea otters, they stay together in the ocean in groups of dozens
They float on their backs and often you see the babies laying on their mothers stomach.
The Steller sea Lion weigh up to 1200 pounds, they eat and sleep. (welfare lions) Too lazy to go to shore they climb on the bouy.
Ice bergs from the Columbia Glacier, there we so many that the face was closed. This one has melted down quite a bit. You can see the water running off on the right. Only 10 % of icebergs are above the surface so must be very careful to approach them.
This one is incredibly beautiful. Ice absorbs all colours except blue therefore ice looks blue
We are approching Meares. Glaciers are formed when snow piles up over many hundreds of years and become so heavy that all the air is forced out and turns into ice. When they get heavy enough they begin to slide down the mountains. Most of the one that are on land melt and just tapers down to nothing like the ones we saw earlier. This one flows into the ocean and the front breaks off as it gets to warmer seawater so it is still a wall of ice . It is about 1/2 mile wide and 7 miles long at the face is is about 150 feet high.
Here we are still about 2 miles away so you can see how big it is. We get to about 1000 feet from the face. Its pretty hard to describe, so I'll let you just enjoy the pictures.
On the way out to the glacier face we find these sea otters, they stay together in the ocean in groups of dozens
They float on their backs and often you see the babies laying on their mothers stomach.
The Steller sea Lion weigh up to 1200 pounds, they eat and sleep. (welfare lions) Too lazy to go to shore they climb on the bouy.
Ice bergs from the Columbia Glacier, there we so many that the face was closed. This one has melted down quite a bit. You can see the water running off on the right. Only 10 % of icebergs are above the surface so must be very careful to approach them.
This one is incredibly beautiful. Ice absorbs all colours except blue therefore ice looks blue
We are approching Meares. Glaciers are formed when snow piles up over many hundreds of years and become so heavy that all the air is forced out and turns into ice. When they get heavy enough they begin to slide down the mountains. Most of the one that are on land melt and just tapers down to nothing like the ones we saw earlier. This one flows into the ocean and the front breaks off as it gets to warmer seawater so it is still a wall of ice . It is about 1/2 mile wide and 7 miles long at the face is is about 150 feet high.
Here we are still about 2 miles away so you can see how big it is. We get to about 1000 feet from the face. Its pretty hard to describe, so I'll let you just enjoy the pictures.
Those dark spots are Harbor seals. they are great swimmers but poor on land so they spend most of their resting time on the small ice bergs in front of the glaciers. They can dive to over 600 feet for food.
We had to wait a extra 2 days for the weather to clear but sure are glad we did. Pictures cannot show how magnificent this really looked .
No comments:
Post a Comment