Dec. 12 - Preparing to disembark at Pia Glacier

In preparing to disembark from the Stella and board one of the zodiacs, we had to don our life jackets. Each cabin had two life jackets in the closet. On our first day, we had been told to try ours on and, if necessary, ask for a larger or smaller one. Ours fit perfectly. These were no-nonsense life jackets too. Each had a light that went on if the jacket was in water, a whistle, two or three buckles across the chest and a strap that went from the back to the front in between one's legs. See the little blue circle on my vest? That has our room number on the other side and every life jacket has this thing.  You can see Ivan's too. Once in the line to board the zodiacs, we were to un-clip the number and hang it on a board that had hooks for each cabin on the boat. Then, when we returned to the ship, we retrieved our number and re-clipped it to the life jacket. The theory was that, should anyone be inadvertently left behind, their number would still be on the board when everyone else is on the ship and has retrieved their numbers. I'm pretty sure that this never got tested with our group of 110 passengers, but it was comforting to realize that there was a safety plan in place to be sure that all were accounted for. Additionally, as we became first in line to board the zodiac, a crew member would check each person's life jacket to be sure it was properly fastened and that the little room number thing was not still attached.

So, we all zoomed off to see Pia Glacier up close and personal and then, those of us who felt so inclined would be led on a somewhat strenuous hike up a nearby hill for even better views of the glacier. This photo was taken after we had climbed the hill near the glacier. I include it here because it gives a good sort of panorama of the whole glacier.

Pia is to the left. The other glacier, whose name I do not know, was full of debris and was melting quickly from underneath. It looked like there was a large cave at the right side of that glacier, caused by this sub-glacial runoff.

I took this photo of Pia Glacier from sea level:

A huge portion of Pia had recently calved off on the left. We heard loud cracking and booming as the ice slowly moved. You can see all the bits of ice floating in the water.
Once on dry land, we were allowed to remove our life jackets, so this is what that looked like:

The Stella certainly looks far away, doesn't it?

Water seemed to be flowing everywhere, so many of us stashed our life vests in whatever trees or tree-like plants we could find! The air temperature, and I am not kidding, was around 50°F (no, I am not kidding!), so several of us shed raincoats and jackets too.

We sat on the bare rock at the left of the recently calved face of the glacier and listened to the weird cracking sounds. Sometimes we saw smaller bits of the face fall into the water below. Many of these popping sounds came from what seemed like the right side area of the glacier, but nothing of any consequence happened. The guides rousted us up for the climb to the top of the hill which had even better views. Some chose to stay put and just watch the changing face of the glacier, while about 30 of us headed up, following the guides. Along the way, we were delighted by some non-glacial, floral sights:

Chaura berries

Chaura plant

Small white flower and Chaura

Trillium? Orchid?  Tom, we need some help here!