Here is my visit to Sawyer Glacier in Alaska, USA. This visit is unique due to the fact that the Alaskan Pilot drove the Royal Caribbean cruise ship closer than any ship this size had ever gone before.
Sawyer Glacier is located about 100 miles south, south east of Juneau.
View Sawyer Glacier in a larger map
Though not as well known as Glacier Bay, it is at least as spectacular if not more so. Located in the Tracy Arm Fjord, Sawyer Glacier is one of Alaska’s most massive glaciers.
Its 6am, its cold and it takes quite awhile to navigate down the fjord as it is long an narrow. We pass the right side of an island as the ship barely makes it threw the narrow passageway. still no sight of the glacier as we bend around yet another corner. Then finally we see it, the Sawyer Glacier.
As we approached the glacier, we see an ice and snow formation that looks as large as the surrounding mountains. This is an amazing glacier living at the far end of of Tracy Arm Fjord. We see an amazing iridescent blue mass of ice that reminds me of Mendenhall Glacier in Juneau, we had seen earlier in the week.
We heard the loud noise boom around us as the ancient Sawyer glacier calved off a chunk of ice. The ice probably was a big as a house, but it’s hard to gain perspective from the distance we were viewing.
