Tracy Arm Fjord

South from Skagway we approached Tracy Arm. The fjord was a 22 mile long narrow zig zag channel which took some skill for the Captain to manoeuvre such a large vessel as the Rhapsody. At 5am it was still dark as we lifted our heads from the pillow and since we couldn't see any icebergs we slept another 45 minutes and wended our sleepy way up to deck 9 to grab a table on the starboard side for a coffee.
It took 3 hours to reach Sawyer Glacier (the photo below across the ships bow) because of all the ice in the fjord. It was a case of iceberg dodgems! There were some magnificent ones floating past the ship, some quite large and vague thoughts of the Titanic came across my mind even though these were very small in comparison. It is a bit scary when you realise that 90% of the berg is invisible below the water. However they were a fabulous blue colour and looked totally harmless.
We were unable to get very close to the glacier because of the huge amount of ice that had calved from the glacier and it was shrouded in cloud, but from what we could see it was absolutely beautiful. The mountains surrounding the fjord had many moods. They were reminiscent of Milford sound in New Zealand but were solid lumps of granite protruding out of water as deep as they were high. They had a 'Lord of the Rings' foreboding look until the sun later came out and warmed the whole scene.

Iceberg from Tracey Arm Fjord

For the first 2 hours traveling into the fjord it rained heavily and there were dozens of waterfalls cascading off the mountains. The rains were so heavy we had to take a lot of photos from inside the ship and you can see raindrops on one of the photos below.