The two-hour adventure involves a scenic chopper ride over snow-topped mountain ranges to a glacier that you explore on foot – while wearing special boots with Gore-Tex soles to prevent your feet from freezing. I'm a little worried about Mom, who's not as steady on her feet as she used to be, but she gamely dons the boots, listens to the safety lecture and clambers onto the tiny chopper – six people max – just fine.
In the 30 minutes we're given to explore the ice field, we learn that Mendenhall, which resembles a frozen river because it winds and curves along sheltering mountain ranges, measures 12 miles long and 1½ miles wide. It is receding at the equivalent of 12 Olympic-size pools per day.
The silence is interrupted only by the sound of the wind and exclamations like "Awesome!" and "Majestic!" from the passengers. This is, indeed, a unique experience. The ice, in parts, is the color of a blue snow cone. Gray bits are the remnants of gravel that got caught up in the ice as it slid over the mountains. Here and there, rivulets of melting ice run through miniature canals carved by their warmth. We lie down on the ice and sip from it.
The Outdoor Scene
No outdoorswoman, I chose my Alaska cruise more for the style of the ship and its fancy accouterments – plush cabaret theater, Milanese coffee bar, spa with Thalassotherapy pool – than on what I would see outside it. But after Mendenhall, my mother and I are transformed. We see things differently. Our cruise ship, nice as it is, has become irrelevant. We're hooked on this wild place – its nature, its history, its disregard for man and his foibles.
In other cruise regions – the Caribbean comes to mind – where the scenery tends toward the unvarying sea-'n'-sky, the focus of shipboard life is directed inward. Not so in Alaska; a trip along the Inside Passage is all about the landscape. On Celebrity's Infinity, the view is all-important. Decks are wide, with lounge chairs facing outward instead of pool-ward. Glassed-in deck space protects passengers from weather (even in summer, Alaska is all about weather). There's even a glass-walled bank of elevators.
Another difference between Alaska and other popular multi-generational destinations like the Caribbean is that cruise lines visiting Alaska make a greater effort to integrate the destination into the voyage. There is an emphasis on providing an educational component. Most ships supply a running commentary by naturalists, who report from the captain's bridge on the scenic wonders or the occasional humpback whale sighting.
On nearly every Alaskan itinerary, passengers spend a morning or an afternoon anchored in a glacial bay so they can watch the ice calve. On Infinity, we get our chance to mingle with locals that day, even as we float around the bay, never docking. While anchored in Yakutat Bay – and it's amazing that, with all the ice shards and icebergs, the captain can pull this huge ship to within two-thirds of a mile of the glacier – we can see the six-mile-wide, 300-foot-high face of Hubbard Glacier with perfect clarity.
Every couple of minutes, chunks of ice as big as a Bill Gates's mansion peel off the glacier, sounding like the crack of a baseball hitting a bat, and then shatter on impact with the bay's surface. Providing commentary is David Ramos, a member of the Tlingit tribe who lives in the town of Yakutat. Sitting nearby are his teenage kids. Son D.J. and daughter Melody are dressed in native garb, complete with feather headdresses, waiting for Dad to finish talking so they can wander through the ship, chatting informally with passengers.
For 18-year-old D.J., slouching on the floor in a corner of the bridge looking bored, this is his summer job. The worst thing about it, he says, grinning, is "when people ask us if we still live in igloos." (They don't.) Most common question, he says: "How often do you wear your native costume?"
"You mean besides coming on cruise ships?" he asks, laughing. "Never."
The costume is getting quite a workout this summer. With David's commentary complete, D.J. follows his father and sister out into Infinity's public rooms for what will be a busy day – this ship is the first of three that will come today.
Cruising Trend
With 22 ships plying the Inside Passage during the five-month Alaska season (May through September), cruise line executives estimate that more than 600,000 cruisers visited last year – approximately triple the number of passengers who visited in 1990. That number will increase, they say, as cruise lines continue the trend of bringing bigger ships with higher passenger capacities; this year, Princess's 2,600-passenger Star Princess, a vessel whose 109,000 tons means it is too big to pass through the Panama Canal, will sail Alaskan itineraries.
But despite the obvious economic benefits bestowed upon Alaska by cruise passengers' dollars, many locals – from politicians to park rangers to residents – are concerned about the negative effects of rampant tourism.
