Wrangell & Petersburg

Getting further and further behind now. Spending too much time either off the boat exploring or on it gazing at the frankly incredible scenery as it passes by.

Wrangell was two, or was it three days ago? Who cares. Whenever it was, it was a real Alaskan isolated town, inaccessible except by air or sea, and had the feel of a frontier town. We may have only spent a few hours there but it was enough to get a brief feel for the place, wander the admittedly not extensive streets, and of course find coffee in a small place by the port run by a local, who of course doesn’t feel the place is isolated at all, it being where she was born and raised. Perspective and context is all.

But to me it does rather feel like the middle of nowhere, albeit a beautiful middle of nowhere. We saw our first humpback whale drifting by in the bay, just off the coast and to locals this would be utterly unremarkable. But to us it was yet another magical moment on a trip of multiple magic moments. Only a small part of it captured on film of course!

We are trying to simply stay in the moment and not worry too much if we get the “money shot”. There is always another one comes along not long after. I’m sure I will get an award winning picture of a whale eventually! In the meantime you'll have to put up with a totem pole selfie.

Then after another peaceful night cruising the fjords of south east Alaska we arrived in the early morning in Petersburg, another “isolated” town, inaccessible by road but boasting the largest halibut fishing fleet in Alaska.

And perhaps more importantly as far as I was concerned, a float plane “airport”. Nareesa has vowed never to get in a plane without an aisle, after our experience in Guyana, crammed into a 8-seater in a tropical downpour over a dense tropical rainforest. But that is another story. The implication is that only I booked to take the 6-seater float plane to the LeConte Glacier.

Not cheap admittedly but worth every penny, to see the glacier from the air, extending around 100km into the interior and calving icebergs into the Stikine River just upstream from Petersburg, named incidentally after its Norwegian founder, Peter Buschmann, and known locally as Little Norway. I knew there was reason Hurtigruten just has to find a way to stop there.

Our pilot Scott, took us from the quiet harbour to the pristine slopes of the surrounding mountains to see the apparently over 1000m depth of snow and ice that forms the LeConte Glacier, the most southerly tidal glacier in North America. No, I’m not entirely sure what that means, but it sounds impressive. A final flourish with a low pass over the front/mouth(?) of the glacier and we were homeward bound for a smooth water landing.

The afternoon was spent exploring the town and its surrounding countryside on foot. A nature walk brought us “face to face” with a bald eagle, common as muck round here, of course without the camera! We are in the moment, so we don’t care. A distant iPhone shot is the best we could do. But we were there!

Access to and from the ship was by a short lifeboat ride, but that allowed a close pass to the buoy favoured by the local sea lion population. The best sunbathing position is contested regularly and there are frequent “fights” as one or another launches, gets pushed back, and slithers back into the sea.

And so another fabulous day was brought to a close by about 8 people being left ashore as the boat was due to leave. Given the confusion amongst the crew as to when the last shuttle was due to leave I can’t say I was that surprised! They did go back to get them though! And so to yet another amazing meal, this one halibut, and being lulled to sleep by the boat’s very gentle rocking. We are right in the fjords now and the water is a calm as a millpond. Long may it continue. A few more pictures of the LeConte Glacier.