LeConte Bay and Petersburg
This photo looks like a test of the survival time for humans immersed in icy water. At 40 degrees Fahrenheit, depending on their health, they have 30 minutes to 2 hours before expectancy of death rises to 100 percent. No one decided to test their limits in today’s swim, which was easier for the parents onboard.
The LeConte Glacier that produced the iceberg in the picture flows 90 feet per day, the fastest moving glacier in the world. Its volume of ice calved per day amounts to an ice cube 500 feet on a side! The source is the Stikine Ice Field over a mile above us. It is like an overloaded bowl of vanilla ice cream oozing out of low places in the rim and flowing 22 miles down to dramatically topple into the sea. Most of us didn’t swim with the bergs but merely admired them from comfortable Zodiacs. You don’t look at the ice, but rather into it when you get close. As the bergs melted we could hear a snap, crackle and pop in the waters around us. Highly compressed air was being released, possibly the same air Captain Vancouver might have exhaled 200 years ago. Years later John Muir admired icebergs in this same area. In time, Norwegians and others followed and used the glacial ice to cool fish shipped from a new town that sprang up nearby.
Petersburg is all about commercial fishing. That fact became crystal clear as we entered the harbor, walked through the town and into the stores, read the bumper stickers, saw the dominance of the seafood processing buildings and watched the locals in their Extra Tuff boots. As you leave the docks and are at a point where you are becoming immersed in the fantasy of becoming a fisherman, independent and self-reliant, at the helm of boat heading home to your family with the hold full of salmon that will pay your winter’s way, you come upon the memorial. It is near the Sons of Norway Hall and the Valhalla, a replica of a Norse sailing vessel. It is a bronze sculpture of a fisherman, a monument to those who lost their lives in the surrounding seas. It is so easy to forget about the sometimes tenuous situations these fisher folk must endure, one hundred and ten inches of rain a year and loved ones that never return.
The town was only one component of our visit here. Plane flights took people over an even more three dimensional land than they had been seeing from the ship the past few days. Hikers that crossed the muskeg entered a land that seemed almost mystical with bizarre plants and bonsai trees. Spreadwings, meadowhawks, and darners hunted their insect prey. Some of us found a four-spotted skimmer, another type of dragonfly that is Alaska’s state insect. The aerobic hikers made their way up Petersburg Mountain on this most beautiful and warm day.
During our daily recap we had a special guest. Becky Knight talked with us about life as a fisher and about raising a family in Petersburg. Her kind personality shined through as she shared her immense firsthand knowledge of the details of fishing facts of Southeast Alaska. We feasted on crab for dinner then stayed until nine that evening to obtain all we could from this most authentic town.
This photo looks like a test of the survival time for humans immersed in icy water. At 40 degrees Fahrenheit, depending on their health, they have 30 minutes to 2 hours before expectancy of death rises to 100 percent. No one decided to test their limits in today’s swim, which was easier for the parents onboard.
The LeConte Glacier that produced the iceberg in the picture flows 90 feet per day, the fastest moving glacier in the world. Its volume of ice calved per day amounts to an ice cube 500 feet on a side! The source is the Stikine Ice Field over a mile above us. It is like an overloaded bowl of vanilla ice cream oozing out of low places in the rim and flowing 22 miles down to dramatically topple into the sea. Most of us didn’t swim with the bergs but merely admired them from comfortable Zodiacs. You don’t look at the ice, but rather into it when you get close. As the bergs melted we could hear a snap, crackle and pop in the waters around us. Highly compressed air was being released, possibly the same air Captain Vancouver might have exhaled 200 years ago. Years later John Muir admired icebergs in this same area. In time, Norwegians and others followed and used the glacial ice to cool fish shipped from a new town that sprang up nearby.
Petersburg is all about commercial fishing. That fact became crystal clear as we entered the harbor, walked through the town and into the stores, read the bumper stickers, saw the dominance of the seafood processing buildings and watched the locals in their Extra Tuff boots. As you leave the docks and are at a point where you are becoming immersed in the fantasy of becoming a fisherman, independent and self-reliant, at the helm of boat heading home to your family with the hold full of salmon that will pay your winter’s way, you come upon the memorial. It is near the Sons of Norway Hall and the Valhalla, a replica of a Norse sailing vessel. It is a bronze sculpture of a fisherman, a monument to those who lost their lives in the surrounding seas. It is so easy to forget about the sometimes tenuous situations these fisher folk must endure, one hundred and ten inches of rain a year and loved ones that never return.
The town was only one component of our visit here. Plane flights took people over an even more three dimensional land than they had been seeing from the ship the past few days. Hikers that crossed the muskeg entered a land that seemed almost mystical with bizarre plants and bonsai trees. Spreadwings, meadowhawks, and darners hunted their insect prey. Some of us found a four-spotted skimmer, another type of dragonfly that is Alaska’s state insect. The aerobic hikers made their way up Petersburg Mountain on this most beautiful and warm day.
During our daily recap we had a special guest. Becky Knight talked with us about life as a fisher and about raising a family in Petersburg. Her kind personality shined through as she shared her immense firsthand knowledge of the details of fishing facts of Southeast Alaska. We feasted on crab for dinner then stayed until nine that evening to obtain all we could from this most authentic town.
