En route to our final destination in Whittier, the ship has a last treat for our guests which is a visit to College Fjord where we arrive around 6:00 pm and where we do some serious scenic cruising towards the end of the fjord.

Some history about College Fjord:

On June 26, 1899, the Elder navigated College Fjord, and the party of scientists (which included John Muir, an Amherst College professor and glacier expert, and Harvard mineralogy instructor Charles Palache) named the Alaskan glaciers there after their Ivy League alma maters and their sister schools. Those names include Amherst, Barnard, Bryn Mawr, Harvard, Smith, Vassar, and Yale. The glaciers of the northwest side feature the names of women’s colleges, and the glaciers of the fork and the southeast side sport the names of men’s colleges. What of Princeton? It is said that the men took delight in ignoring it!

Harvard Glacier is the largest of the College Fjord Alaskan glaciers at its northwestern head, and it is the second-largest tidewater glacier in Prince William Sound. A tidewater glacier flows from a mountain valley into the sea and will dramatically calve when a mass of ice splits off the glacier and plunges thunderously into the water. The most active tidewater glaciers in the world are in Prince William Sound. Harvard Glacier may also be the most dramatic to observe: Its face, at one-and-a-half miles wide, shows off its over-200-foot-thick depth, and it stretches 24 miles back to the Chugach Icefield — part of Chugach National Forest.

Although it looked like the weather wasn’t favorable today, upon entering the fjord, the weather turned for the better and we ended up with a very sunny evening.