Valdez is an amazing place. It is the northern most harbor that doesn’t freeze in the winter and gets 25’ of snow a year in town and 75’ at Thompson’s Pass coming down into Valdez. The southern terminal of the pipeline ends on the far side of the bay and brings an enormous amount of money into the town so schools, town departments and hospitals are very well funded.
Because we missed the ferry ride across Prince Williams Sound, I really wanted to go on another wildlife/glacier tour. We chose the Lu-Lu Belle, a 75’ custom built vessel that was originally designed as a fishing charter boat in the Puget Sound Area. As the regulations became more cumbersome Fred, the owner/captain, has been taking the boat up to Valdez for the past 20 summers for tours. The boat winters in Pt. Angeles, WA.
Aside from some great sightings of orcas and distance humpbacks, it really wasn’t about the wildlife. Fred talked the whole 9+ hours about everything you might want to know or not. I wanted to tell him to take a breath. What was really cool was going up into the fjord to the toe of Columbia Glacier. Fred picked his way through many chunks of ice to within a quarter mile of the face. As we were coming in, an iceberg close to the length of boat calved off a huge piece that caused the berg to rock straight up into the air, down, back up and down again. Unfortunately my camera wasn’t set up for video, I chose a lens too long and there were many heads on the bow to work around but have included some shots.
Leaving Valdez, we all headed up to Wrangell St. Elias National Park. It is the largest national park with 13.2 million acres, larger than Switzerland with higher mountains. Nabesna Road is one of only two roads into the park and our destination for a couple nights. Most of the park is only accessible by air, boat or on foot.
