One of the things I was looking forward to the most on my July Alaska cruise was spending the morning cruising the Endicott Arm fjord to reach the Dawes Glacier. It was quite the journey.
Here’s how Royal Caribbean describes the visit, “Marked by majestic waterfalls, plunging valleys and rugged mountains, Endicott Arm offers a perfect snapshot of Alaska’s wild beauty. This long, narrow fjord in the Tongass National Forest culminates at the monumental Dawes Glacier, an active tidewater glacier towering hundreds of feet high and half a mile across.”
We started down the 30-mile-long fjord around 4 a.m. It was overcast and gray, but fortunately it was wasn’t foggy. We passed majestic mountain tops and incredible waterfalls as we quietly glided along the fjord. As we got closer to the glacier, we began seeing chunks of ice floating in the water — pieces that had calved from the glacier. The color of the water began changing too as the saltwater mixed with melted fresh water from the glacier.
We arrived at the Dawes Glacier around 7 a.m. We were still pretty far away, but fortunately I had my long lens to get some shots of the glacier. My photos couldn’t show the scale of this monster piece of moving ice. It’s 600 feet tall and nearly a mile wide. Our ship, Quantum of the Seas, spun around in front of the glacier and then headed back out enroute to Juneau — and a visit to another glacier.
