Alaska Summer Solstice Cruise - Cruising Prince William Sound

Cruise Day 7

Saturday, June 15, 2024

Instead of visiting a port today we'll be having a day of scenic cruising through Prince William Sound including the College Fjord.  This is of particular interest to me as I have been reading a book called “The Harriman Alaska Expedition of 1899” by John J. Michalik that chronicles a voyage that started as a family vacation and turned into one of the greatest explorations of the Alaskan Coast of its time.

Edward Harriman was a railroad tycoon and financier who was told by his doctor he needed to ease up and take a rest.  Being a devoted family man, he decided to buy a steamship and take his family on a trip to Alaska from Seattle.  Because the steamship he bought had much more room than his family needed, this evolved into a scientific expedition that included many of the most highly regarded scientists, explorers, artists and writers of the time.  In all there were 126 people on this expedition including the family, scientists, support staff and crew.  They traveled 9000 miles exploring the southern coast of Alaska, the Aleutian Islands and all the way to Siberia.

The College Fjord that we’ll be sailing up today is one of the expedition’s discoveries.  It was named the College Fjord because they named all the glaciers they found after US colleges.  They also found another deep fjord with a glacier at the end that had never been explored before and aptly named it the Harriman Fjord and Harriman Glacier.  This expedition wasn’t the first in this area, but because the entrance into the fjords had been blocked it had never been explored, but an earthquake had opened up the entrance for the first time and that allowed the expedition to sail up into it.  This has been a rather lengthy description of the Harriman Expedition, but I found it fascinating and would highly recommend this book to anyone who is traveling in the area or just interested in the area.  

The red marker is the Harvard Glacier at the end of College Fjord.

Here is a detailed view of College Fjord.  The rightmost yellow marker is the Yale Glacier and going counterclockwise from there is the Harvard Glacier, Smith Glacier, Bryn Mawr Glacier, Vassar Glacier and Wellesley Glacier.  The Harvard and Yale Glaciers are by far the largest with the other four being very small or have only the scar remaining.  To the far left the Harriman Glacier is marked at the end of the Harriman Fjord.  We did not sail up into the Harriman Fjord.

When Val and I got up at eight this morning we had to scramble a bit because we had already entered College Fjord and were getting close to the Harvard and the Yale Glaciers that were at the end of the fjord.  It was a beautiful area and as we neared the glaciers, I went up to the bow of the ship to take some pictures, but there were so many people up there, I decided I could view things just as well from our balcony even though we only had a view from one side of the ship.

The bow of the ship was very crowded.

The Smith Glacier on the left and the much larger Harvard Glacier on the right.

The Harvard Glacier on the left and the Yale Glacier on the right.

There was no wind, and it was surprisingly warm as, once again, we had a nice sunny day.  Except for a quick break for breakfast in the Neptune Lounge, Val and I spent most of the morning on our balcony taking way too many pictures, but it was an amazing site as the captain brought the ship very close to the Harvard Glacier where we spent most of our time.

The Harvard Glacier

 

There was lots of calving activity taking place on the glacier and we tried to get pictures and movies of it happening, but it happens so quickly and randomly, you have to react very quickly.  We think we got a few good shots of it happening, but we haven’t looked at our pictures yet, but if we did, they’ll be below.

The big splash after a calving.

And another.

The captain rotated the ship a full turn so everyone had a good view and then around eleven started the sail out of the College Fjord; what a wonderful morning we had.  We will be spending all day sailing through Prince William Sound to Seward where we’ll be, bright and early tomorrow morning.

 

As we sailed away from the Harvard Fjord we got another look at the Yale Galcier.

The Harvard Glacier as we leave.

One last look at the glaciers.

Back out of the fjord and into open water.

As the ship started out of the fjord, our balcony was now in the shade and the wind was blowing and it turned too cold for us, so we came back inside.  I spent the rest of the morning writing up the blog from our trip to the Columbia Glacier yesterday, and Val had some forms from the escrow company to fill out for the sale of her sister’s house.  Luckily, she can do all of that online so we can enjoy our Alaskan adventure and still take care of business at home.

After lunch we headed off to the World Stage to hear a talk by Wildlife Guide Kurt (we never have learned his last name) on the history of Prince William Sound.  He is a very good and entertaining lecturer, and we were sorry to have his presentation end as he is so good.  He also did commentary during the sail in through the College Fjord and visit to the glaciers today.

After the lecture and since it was conveniently on the way back to our room, we stopped in the casino and lost a little money.  I spent much of the afternoon writing up this morning’s activities for the blog and then downloaded the pictures we took.  Val and I went through our pictures for the day, and we did get some pictures of the glacier calving.  They aren’t great pictures as it is very hard to anticipate it happening and then get a well-focused picture, but we did our best.  We also took many more pictures of the glacier, adding to our large collection of glacier pictures on this trip.

We spent the rest of the afternoon relaxing and then, as usual, it was dinner and the casino.  The casino has not been kind to us lately, but we keep trying anyway.  After the casino, we called it a night as we have to get up early tomorrow for a ship excursion.