By Evelyn Kanter, American Safari Cruises

It sounded like the crack of a rifle shot. 

Instantly a wall of ice, the size and shape of the Empire State Building, sheared away from the Tracy Arm portion of the huge Sawyer Glacier, some 50 miles south of Juneau, and crashed with a roar into the water below, setting off a minor tidal wave that headed toward us. Aleria Jensen, our ecologist-guide, slammed our little motorized dinghy into a u-turn and we roared out of the narrow cliff-lined fjord the glacier feeds into.

The best time to see Alaska’s glaciers is in summer, when warmer temperatures fracture the glacial ice and set off so-called “calving,” and daylight extends until nearly midnight. I was lucky – most visitors see only boulder-size chunks break off the 300-foot-high wall of ice. But, then, the entire week aboard the 12-passenger former private luxury yacht “Safari Spirit” was filled with surprises.

There was the surprise of being in the center of a pod of about one dozen humpback whales, flinging their massive tonnage into the air, sometimes doing half-flips before sinking back below the surface with a flick of their wing-shaped tails. Whales generally “sound” two or three times – rising partly out of the water and showing a hint of tail – before launching themselves skyward, or “breaching.” 

The trick was to try to follow a particular whale through a sounding pattern and be ready with binoculars or camera for the breaching. It was easiest to follow a mother swimming alongside her calf, their spouts like two parallel fountains, just off one side of the ship. What an amazing sight to see them sounding, the calf trying ever so hard to rise as high as mommy. Even though we watched them for a long time, she never breached, perhaps out of concern about landing on her baby.   

I was in Frederick Sound, a popular feeding ground for whales, as well as for Dalls porpoises. With their black and white patterned skins, they look like miniature Orca whales, but these little guys are lightning fast and truly playful. A dozen of them swam alongside the boat until they were pulled along in its draft, entertaining us all too briefly by playing leapfrog under and across the bow before swimming away. 

Another favorite creature was the pigeon guillemot, a strange little black bird with bright orange feet, which takes off from water by running across the surface before lifting off.  And, of course, the harbor seals, dozens of them, furry brown blobs, sunning themselves on their own little floating homes – chunks of ice that had calved off the Tracy Arm Glacier. My little skiff threaded slowly through the colony. Most of the seals ignored us – many were dozing and snoring loudly  – but the ones that were watching us back did so with unblinking, huge black eyes. I found myself talking to them much like I coo at my housecat. 

Small vessels can explore more 

Although all Alaska cruises go through the Inland Passage, bigger, ocean-going vessels are limited to busy and wider channels. They bypass the narrow inlets, nooks and crannies where the wildlife hangs out – like Frederick Sound. American Safari is a relatively tiny 105-foot length, which allowed us to moor overnight close to shore in tiny coves well out of sight of any other vessel. 

Safari also carried four sea kayaks, and I was usually paddling happily in the half-light before breakfast or after dinner, looking for animals or just listening to the profound quiet of a genuine wilderness. One evening, I watched a bear fishing for dinner in a small stream that emptied into the cove. Another evening, a harbor seal played hide-and-seek with me as I paddled near shore. One morning, I steered the kayak underneath the mushroom cap lid of an iceberg to enjoy the play of sunlight refracted through its surface. 

Ah, the sun. You don’t go to Alaska for a suntan. Summer in the Inland Passage means mostly cloudy, often drizzly, weather, usually in the 60s. Fleece pullovers and windbreaker jackets were the norm; my bathing suit never got used, even though there was a hot-tub on the top deck. Luckily, the sun was out the day we were in Tracy Arm, and the brilliant light bouncing off the icebergs tinted them a luminous neon blue. 

Actually, the term iceberg refers only to something of titanic size. Slabs of ice the size of an 18-wheel truck are called “bergy bits,” Volkswagen-sized chunks are known as “growlers” and the smallest floaters are called “brash.”  I fished out a chunk of brash to bring back “home” from the skiff to chop into ice cubes for our pre-dinner drinks, and a rope-like piece of seaweed. Back on the boat, while I cut the seaweed into slices in the galley (we all had access to the galley, something else you can’t do on a full-size cruise ship), Aleria prepared her grandmother’s pickling recipe. Aleria grew up in Juneau – her great-grandparents were homesteaders at the turn of the century.   

The seaweed pickles were delicious. So were the salmon berries picked on a hiking expedition around St. Petersburg, a fishing village at the edge of the Tongass National Forest. They’re called salmon berries because they are the size and shape of blackberries, but their salmon color makes them look like a nugget of salmon caviar. The chef made berry tarts out of the ones that didn’t get nibbled on the way back to the boat.  

The food on board was consistently excellent. The chef joked on the first day that he would not take responsibility if we gained weight en route. Fresh local salmon – really fresh and really local – with asparagus risotto for dinner, eggs benedict with fresh local shrimp for breakfast and Portobello penne for lunch were typical. 

St. Petersburg’s biggest employer is the fish processing plant. I watched in fascination as one set of machines and conveyor belts de-veined, peeled, packaged and flash froze five-pound bags of shrimp. In another area, huge glistening salmon were being sorted by weight into dumpster-sized shipping containers, and in the next room, the salmon roe was being washed and strained – the workers use tennis rackets as strainers to avoid breaking the fragile eggs – and packed into restaurant-sized containers. 

That night we hung out with the Safari’s crew, some of the fish plant’s workers and off-duty US Coast Guard personnel in the only bar in town, Kito’s Kave. Life preservers, fishing nets and spears, and miscellaneous other retired nautical stuff cover every inch of the varnished wood walls, and entertainment was a three-piece local band. . 

Cruise ship routes start or end in Juneau. If you can, begin your trip on the southern end and head north to Juneau, because the scenery and wildlife becomes increasingly more dramatic each day.  It is much more memorable to end on the high note of glaciers calving and whales breaching, than to begin your trip with these most dramatic scenes.

Evelyn Kanter is a longtime journalist who specializes in outdoor adventure, history and the environment.  She has written numerous several about her hometown, New York City, and skiing, one of her favorite leisure activities.  Also an award-winning photographer, her articles and photos appear in publications including the New York Post and Budget Travel magazine.