Merely two minutes on from the moments documented in #25, we were flying over the same lake, but had turned its “corner”.
Now, we were facing the glacier which fed the lake.
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This post’s photos were taken within a single minute, on the afternoon of 24 May 2015.
Our nimble, but not speedy floatplane was only eight minutes or so into our scenic flight from Juneau.
As you can see, the landscape was becoming progressively “bigger” & wilder.
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This post’s photo was taken just three minutes after the previous one’s.
Circa five minutes earlier, our float plane had lifted off from Juneau’s Gastineau Channel.
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On the afternoon of 24 May 2015 “our” floatplane took off from the Gastineau Channel – the fiord adjacent to Alaska’s capital city.
Juneau is a surprising place, as is true of all of the low-lying, coast-adjacent terrain on southeastern Alaska’s “panhandle”.
This “strip” is not a cold place, by northern North American standards, at least.
Snow falls are infrequent, usually modest. Much of the natural vegetation is temperate rainforest.
In “the season”, cruise ships disgorge huge numbers of tourists onto Juneau’s tourist-tacky foreshore.
In terms of permanent residents, however, Alaska’s capital city is a small town; if it were in China, it would be a “village”.
Australia calls the likes of Mount Gambier, Albany, and Bathurst “cities”; Juneau is a little more populous than “The Mount”, but a deal less so than Albany or Bathurst.
Juneau is unique among capital cities in one crucial respect: no roads connect it to anywhere more than a few kilometres distant.
The mountains and glaciers just inland of “the strip” are so formidable that all visitors – and all supplies – reach Juneau via sea or air.
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You may be surprised to know that this post’s featured image involved a considerably shorter lens than did the “5A” photo, taken 38 minutes earlier, when we were still offshore.
When I took the above photo, we had for some minutes been strolling along the rather young beach which had formed/emerged as the glacier retreated – and lost its former status as a “tidewater” glacier.
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First, please have a close look at this post’s image.
It offers a much closer view than that presented in “4A” of this series.
When I took the “5A” & “5B” images we really were much closer to the same glacier’s snout, but for the “5A” image I also deployed a telephoto rather than a wide angle lens.
Now, have another look at the “4A”image, which shows all of this glacier’s snout, rather than a small portion thereof.
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This series’ “4A” image was dominated by several square kilometres of a glacier, but also included what appeared to be a very small boat.
The very same boat is the obviously-substantial star of “4B”.
For eight nights and almost nine days my beloved and I were among the 16 people (12 passengers) who were comfortably accommodated and very well fed on MV Catalyst.
The boat also carried kayaks for us all, and towed the tender that speedily transported us to and from many of Glacier Bay’s glorious shores.
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In some places and circumstances a human’s eyes and brain find it nigh-impossible to gauge just how close – or how far away – is whatever you are looking at, intensely.
The absolute (and relative) sizes of things – things-natural and things-manufactured by humans – can likewise remain an almost total mystery, until one is actually in or on the man-made thing, and/or within not very many metres of a landscape feature’s “face”.
One such place and circumstance: Alaska’s Glacier Bay, when “exploring” it by boat.
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This post’s actual footprints come from bears in Alaska, birds on the Indian subcontinent and continental Australia, a Tasmanian wombat, and humans in an African desert and Australian suburbia.
The musical bonus is courtesy of one of the greatest jazz musicians – equally so as composer, virtuoso instrumentalist and inspired improviser.
There’s also a metaphorical footnote which involves New Zealand’s largest farm…
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Chapter Two is international, and includes a musical bonus – audio of two of my favourite rain songs. (one of them is an “unissued” version)
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