Icy Strait Point has an exclusive stopover for specialised cruise ships, at the site of a former salmon cannery. Ziplines (the base visible at left) are 5,330 feet long, 1,300 foot vertical drop, 60 mph maximum speed, 300 feet highest point from ground, 1.5 minute ride time!
Hoonah is not a cruise ship port. The tourist port at the cannery goes virtually unnoticed unless a local points it out.
The ferry Le Conte at Hoonah
I got chatting with the owner of these Ingersoll Rand drilling rigs. They don't look that much different to the IR T4 I worked on in 1975/6. He can't get workers - 'You don't want a job do you?' - Nope!
THIS IS NOT MY PHOTO - The 'Baranof Wind' took us on our AWESOME day trip of Glacier Bay on Friday, August 17th. 2 days later the 'Baranof Wind' hit a rock and 72 passengers had to be evacuated. We just scraped that one in!
News Article
Steller Sea Lions
We got in close to a Grizzly looking for food on the shoreline
Same Grizzly
Then up and close to a Mountain Goat. 1 of 2 we saw.
The end of Glacier Bay. The adjacent Margarie and Grand Pacific glaciers are as far as you can go into Glacier Bay. Some scale can be gauged from the cruise ship 'Statendam'
Same 2 glaciers. Margarie Glacier on the left is mainly white, while Grand Pacific is black!
Margarie Glacier again. Most of the glacier is invisible below the water.
Same glacier. It calved twice when we were there - and we were a lot closer than this! An awesome sight as a huge chunk of ice breaks free and falls. Powdered ice debris going everywhere, a huge splash as it hits the water, with waves spanning out - then the noise - crack/crunch/roar. Awesome
Grand Pacific is different. The base is visible where it bulldozes the ground as it moves forward
A distant view of Grand Pacific
The 'Baranof Wind' swerved to miss the larger icebergs. But the noise of chunks of ice hitting the hull was obvious
Heading home now on the west side of Glacier Bay. Lamplugh Glacier.
Reid Glacier on the distant right
Johns Hopkins Glacier
