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When the tip of an
iceberg topples, it is a rare and precious sight. Most shatter into
chunks and melt near the glaciers from which they calved, but occasionally
a mammoth mountain of thousand-year-old ice floats far enough south
for humans to see. The one we’ve just encountered has survived
a trip of about 22 miles, all the way to the end of Admiralty Island’s
Tracy Arm, where it has grounded in about 70 feet of water. What remains
of its 30-foot-tall, 85-foot-wide snowcap is heaved over on its side,
dripping a slow death under the August sun.
We approach in our
suddenly very small, 18-foot Nautica RIB. To starboard, endless layers
of 4,000-foot-tall mountains collapse into one another like cleavage.
The iceberg’s exposed belly glistens like a crystal pendant, so
compacted by time and pressure, so flawless without air bubbles or fis
sures, that it cannot absorb the color spectrum’s indigo rays.
It reflects them like the most turquoise Caribbean waters, only in a
deeper, more penetrating blue, the kind that makes it impossible to
look away and deny that it has captured you.
“I’d sure
like to climb all over that thing,” says John Martin, the college-age
deckhand at the wheel.
He carefully noses
the Nautica’s bow under the beads of water rolling off the sideways
ridge of snow. A travel magazine editor from Texas pokes his face underneath
the cold droplets. He grins as they run down his cheeks, then laughs
like a child.
Another guest, the
grandson of a Vietnamese prince, rubs his hands and exhales a cloud
of warm breath into the cool air. “I’m going to take a photo
to a sculptor,” he says, “to keep it on my desk.”
A guest from Florida
who lays tile for a living thinks, then says, “I wonder if we could
chip off a few cubes to put in our drinks later.”
No matter your background,
your age, or your previous journeys, moments like this—which we
enjoyed just five hours outside of Juneau—will captivate you in
ways unimaginable. I found the majesty of the Alaskan landscape difficult
to internalize even when I was smack in the middle of it, as if I were
trying to guess how many gallons of water the Grand Canyon might hold.
However, my more intimate memories are countless: touching that dying
tower of ice with my bare fingertips, listening for the shotgun-loud
blasts that precede a glacier’s visible crack, lapping my kayak
paddles in near silence as a brown bear searches for breakfast along
the shore.
It’s the stuff
of thrilling adventure and solitary exploration, and it’s accessible
only by private yacht.
Next page >
Part 2: What a difference nine months in the yard and a healthy dose of woodwork make. > Page 1, 2,
3, 4
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