Yesterday started out with a lovely motor through a tight pass around to the bay which has the Northwestern Glacier at its head. We started with clear skies but things went to pot shortly when a thick pea soup fog rolled in from the east. Apart from the having to deal with visibility that was reduced to one boat length, we discovered that our desired anchorage, which was immediately to the SE of the moraine pass to the Northwestern Glacier, was nothing like any of our charts suggested. Whilst our charts suggested 5-18m of water we found 40m of water close to shore. So we ended up spending the next couple of hours trying out all of our back up anchorages only to discover they all had problems due to water depth. In a last ditch effort we decided to ignore what the Pilot Charts said and investigate the SE corner of Crater Bay; the Pilot Charts said that no good anchorage can be found in there. Yet we discovered a beautifully protected spot with a fairly level bottom; albeit rock and gravel. It turned out to be one of the prettiest little anchorages we had used and a great staging point for the motor up into the Northwestern Glacier.

This morning we motored carefully around the ice to the Northwestern glacier. The range of colours in the ice is phenomenal; everything from bright white, to light steel blue, to grey and a tan brown. We were somewhat surprised that the water temperature was not lower than the 7 degrees we saw as we were motoring around tiny icebergs.

The tourist boat to the right of the photo gives you some idea of the scale of these glaciers.