Cruising Alaska Off-Season — Studying Endicott’s Steep Walls

The walls of Endicott Arm are steep. Very steep. And myriad waterfalls cascade down their sheer dropoffs into the cold, glacier-fed waters below. The pictures shown today were taken on Cruise 2 of our back-to-back off-season Alaska voyages. So, the photos you see today were taken on 6 October in bright sunlit conditions.

We also enjoyed these scenes from our Cruise 2 balcony, and I took advantage of the sunlight illuminating the walls on our way into the fiord since I knew that we would be on the shadowed side on the way out. On this excursion the tide was out. The water was much lower than our 30 September transit, so we didn’t get as close to Dawes Glacier on this trip:

The low water level actually worked out to my benefit when photographing the fiord walls, as the levels of color enhanced the images:

Still, because of the steep walls, some shots were going to wind up in shade no matter what. Even so, I was able to get a few gems along the way. This colorful reflection shot, for example:

Now for some growlers and icebergs:

This week’s Fun Photo Friday concludes this series on cruising Alaska in the off-season. I’ve not yet decided what I will begin next week, but I’m leaning toward a series on some interesting revolvers I’ve recently stumbled across. Or, I might throw in a particularly interesting little discontinued .25 ACP/6.35 mm Beretta. If a weeks of firearms is what I go with, the following week I’ll begin with series on our recent (28 October) visit to Barcelona, Spain, followed by a transatlantic cruise we took from that port city.