Day 2: 26-Glacier cruise

July 13, 2015

Today I spend the day in Whittier just to do the 26-Glacier Cruise which departs at 12:30. So I have a lazy morning to look around and watch the rain. It has rained nonstop since I arrived in Whittier.

I got up at 7:30 and had a leisurely breakfast in my own kitchen. Then I walked past the fishing harbor and the fancy Whittier Inn to find the location of the Phillips Cruises dock. It's past the harbor, but the Alaska railroad has a passenger platform right next to the cruise dock, with covered walkways in between.

Alaska Railroad's passenger service is synchronized to ferries and local attractions. This stop is used by trains that do glacier cruise day trips from Anchorage. Other trains are timed for the ferries and go a mile farther to the ferry dock. Alaska Railroad and Alaska Marine Highway ferries are both owned by the state of Alaska and are important components of Alaska's transportation system. The railroad even makes a profit thanks to the huge volume of passengers supplied by cruise ships.

The Inn at Whittier anchors the west end of the harbor. Much more expensive than my condo across the tracks.

Whittier harbor is used for commercial fishing and sport fishing.

Then I walked back across the harbor to look around the business district a bit more. It's a little plaza with 5 or 6 businesses. That's a lot of businesses for a town of 220 people, but Whittier gets hundreds of tourists each day.

Business district east of the harbor. Three restaurants and two gift shops.

Begich tower and the Whittier railroad switch yard.

The fenced railroad switch yard is a huge barrier between the harbor (where everybody works) and Begich tower (where everybody lives). Recently a long pedestrian tunnel was built under the tracks to make it easier for the locals to get around. I probably went through the tunnel a dozen times.

My cruise departs at 12:30 PM but I'm supposed to be there at least 30 minutes earlier. Lunch is included with the $149 cruise. Halibut and chips, as usual. I was given an assigned seat at a table with a family from Missouri. The assigned seating is only for the first few minutes while lunch is served.

Catamaran for the 26-glacier cruise. It cruises at 35 knots (40 mph, 65 km/h).

The cruise is 5.5 hours, so everybody spread out after lunch. It rained nonstop for the entire cruise. Clouds were very low, so the mountains disappeared behind the clouds. People mostly stayed inside where it was warm and dry, and only went out in the cold rain to take pictures when we were close to something interesting. The boat has a powerful dehumidifying system to prevent the windows from fogging on the inside.

It never stopped raining during the 26-Glacier Cruise.

The boat is a jet-powered catamaran with a cruising speed of 35 knots. That's about 40 mph. The narrator said the 5.5 hour cruise will travel 140 miles, even though we spend a lot of time stopped near wildlife and glaciers.

My cruise didn't go up College Fjord because visibility was too poor to see the glaciers.

Even traveling at 35 knots, it took a long time to get out of Whittier's long fjord. The glaciers are far away from Whittier, and we are taking a detour around Esther Island to see wildlife and Esther passage. Wildlife was the main attraction for the first 2 hours. We saw sea otters, harbor seals, and an eagle. Later we saw an Orca whale which is rare in this area.

Normally the cruise boat goes into College fjord to see a dozen or more hanging glaciers up in the mountains. We didn't go there today because the clouds are so low that we wouldn't see any of those glaciers. So we spent more time in Harriman fjord which has 5 tidewater glaciers that go all the way down into the ocean. And one more glacier that went into the ocean until 2 years ago. So today's 26-Glacier Cruise was actually a 6-Glacier Cruise.

Approaching the first tidewater glacier.

The boat took long stops at each glacier. It was raining nonstop, and noticeably colder near the the glaciers.

Despite the rain and fog we could see the glaciers pretty well when the boat gets 100 feet away. The boat didn't go closer for fear of getting damaged if the glacier calves.

Everything more than about half a mile away just disappeared in the fog. The mountains were probably spectacular, but near the glaciers we couldn't even see the bottom of the mountains.

Fog makes the glacier seem to appear out of nowhere.

The mountains behind the glacier promptly disappear in the fog.

I took a lot of pictures but they all look the same after a while. The ice turns blue when a certain type of mineral-laden water freezes.

Low clouds obscured the view of the mountains and higher glaciers. This might be the highest peak I saw today.

The boat supplied pretty good interpretive information on the PA system. Part from the tour guide, and part from a naturalist at Chugach National Forest.

I think this is Surprise glacier. The fog lifted a bit.

Ten years ago Cascade glacier and two other glaciers merged into one giant 3-pronged glacier. But they have retreated so much that now they are 3 separate glaciers. The boat's GPS map indicated that we were on top of the glacier.

Cascade glacier has retreated so rapidly that the GPS map shows the boat on top of the glacier.

The boat took a more direct route back to Whittier, but slowed to a crawl a few times for notable wildlife sightings. There is a children's play area, but there aren't many diversions on the boat. 5.5 hours is plenty long for most people. I had a conversation with a young Lithuanian woman who is working in Whittier for the summer (she was given a free ticket). Alaska attracts many adventure-seeking summer workers from Scandinavia and the Baltic countries. Nearly all are college students because foreign visitors are only allowed to get a job in the U.S. if they have a student visa.

Near Whittier the boat stopped for us to see some big colonies of Kitti Wake birds. Waterfalls were all around as we approached Whittier. Too bad we couldn't see the mountains the waterfalls came from.

Coming back to Whittier it was easy to imagine the place in the 1950's when it was a Soviet-style military outpost.

Returning to Whittier. Container port and Buckner building on the left, fishing port and Begich Tower on the right.

In the evening I walked around to see the remaining structures in the Whittier Army Port historic district. The concrete buildings all survived the 1964 earthquake and subsequent 105-foot (32m) wave.

The old headquarters building is now the Harbor Inn hotel and grocery. The 3-story communications building is now a bar and restaurant. The giant blue motor pool building is now the city hall, fire department and public works department. The giant cold storage building is now a fish packing plant. The old gymnasium is now a kayak tour company.

Former Whittier Army Port headquarters and communications buildings.

I'm staying in the 14-story Hodge building which was once the base's family housing but is now city-owned housing for the entire town of Whittier. The adjacent school is still open. The building was renamed Begich Towers in honor of Alaska congressman Nick Begich who was killed in a 1972 plane crash (along with Louisiana Congressman Hale Boggs).

The only big building that hasn't been re-purposed is the Buckner building. The sprawling 6-story behemoth was the largest building in Alaska when completed in 1956. It was a city under one roof, with housing, offices, stores, recreation facilities, etc. Used for less than 5 years before Whittier Army Port was closed. A colossal waste of taxpayer money. After being abandoned it didn't take long for vandals to break every window and for rain and snow to infiltrate the building. The 1964 earthquake caused almost no damage. The building is so big that it has no practical use in a community this small.

Once the largest building in Alaska, the Buckner building was completed in 1956 and abandoned in 1960.

Today I didn't bike at all but I walked about 6 miles back and forth in Whittier at different times of day. The rain never stopped. Temperature about 55F in the morning and 60F in the afternoon. I appreciate having a fan in the room to dry clothes and shoes after each excursion outside.

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