Juneau and the Tracy Arm

Monday was a bit of an upside-down day for us. We were originally booked for a day-long Tracy Arm boat tour on Sunday, with our whale watching trip scheduled for Monday, but the Tracy Arm operator cancelled on the Friday before so we had to scramble. Fortunately, the folks at Harv and Marv’s were able to swap days, and Allen Marine Tours re-booked us on the Tracy Arm boat for Monday afternoon.

So we spent Monday morning poking around in downtown Juneau, which is pretty small and not terribly interesting IMO. 

We began our tour in the South Franklin Street Historic District.

The Juneau Public Library is on the waterfront at the end of the historic district. It’s located on the top floor of a downtown parking structure and has spacious rooms and marvelous views.

Greater Juneau’s population is about 32,000 people. The docks can accommodate 5 cruise ships at the same time, with a combined capacity of 13,000-14,000 people. COVID gave locals a taste of life without cruise ships, leading to the current negotiated limit of 5 ships on weekdays with a Saturday cap of 12,000 visitors. But a ballot measure that would ban cruise ships altogether on Saturdays will be voted on by Juneau residents on October 1. Not surprisingly, most of the business community does not support the ban.

We watched with amusement as one of the massive Holland America ships edged carefully into the dock.  With all of today’s high tech navigation equipment, docking still depends on five guys with ropes.

Juneau’s most interesting feature is the Native art scattered around the city, especially the Totem Pole Trail begun by Sealaska in 2023. Thirteen poles have been installed along the waterfront so far, with another 17 planned.

The totems were commissioned and carved by Tlingít, Haida and Tsimshian artists using imagery representing the history and clan symbols of the tribes. Storyboards explain the poles’ symbolism. Traditionally, totem poles stood on the shores in front of Native villages so they were the first thing seen by visitors. These poles are intended to recreate some of that experience for visitors. 

The waterfront also has a memorial to Patsy Ann, an English Bull Terrier who made the docks her home – and herself the official Juneau welcoming official – from 1930 – 1942. Although deaf from birth, Patsy Ann could sense ships arriving when they were still ½ mile away. A much beloved mascot, activities are still carried on in her name today to benefit the local Humane Society.

Matt, Dominique and I had a great lunch at The Hangar on the Wharf. We sat outside (under a rain cover) and watched pontoon planes take off and land ~ every five minutes, right next to the cruise ships.

Finally, it was time to board the boat.

Tracy Arm is a narrow 30 mile long fjord that ends in the spectacular Sawyer Glacier. It is located about 45 miles south of Juneau, reached by boating south out of Juneau past Admiralty Island into the Stephens Passage. The fjord is named after an obscure U.S. Secretary of the Navy who never visited Alaska but was good buds with William Seward (who negotiated the purchase of Alaska from Russia back in 1867, to their eternal regret). Stephens Passage was named in 1794 after a British politician who never visited Alaska but was good buds with Captain Cooke. Thus doth our history of colonialism linger…

We chugged slowly past the cruise ships with rain drumming down and ominous clouds above. Once we cleared the harbor and picked up speed, the ride got bumpy.

As we entered the Tracy Arm, azure blue icebergs began to appear, bobbing in the water. We spent a lot of time coasting up to and around this gorgeous natural sculpture.

As we circled very near, the arch in the berg suddenly calved. The force of the wave hitting our ship almost knocked me off my feet.

The Tracy Arm is about 600 feet deep, surrounded by steep cliffs rising up to 7000 feet high, with vegetation clinging to every cranny.

We pulled in close to view the Hole in the Wall Falls.

Sawyer Glacier is divided into the North Sawyer, visible from a boat at the end of Tracy Arm, and the South Sawyer, which lies behind and is rarely visible. North Sawyer’s face is about ½ mile wide and 1000 feet high, reaching above and below the surface of water. It is an active tidewater glacier, frequently calving chunks of ice as large as cruise ships.

The waters immediately in from of the North Sawyer Glacier are a harbor seal calving area. If you look closely at the picture above, you can see little specks – harbor seals – on many of the icebergs. Their size relative to the wall of ice gives a sense of how massive this glacier is. The glacial silt carried into the fjord makes the water impassable for killer whales, harbor seals’ main predator. So the iceberg’s calves support the harbor seals’ calves – a sweet little circle of life.

We saw a number of humpback whales on our way back, feeding in the currents as the tide rushed in. Most interesting was one whale in the (relative) shallows who was “flashing” fish. It’s a common humpback fishing strategy: the whale lifts its fins above the water to frighten the fish and drive them towards the shore where the whale can encircle them and gulp the down that giant maw. This graphical image from the Smithsonian illustrates the humpback flashing technique.

We returned to Juneau at twilight (which is what passes for night at this time of year), adding a layer of misty mystery to the return voyage.