After listening to the mountain biker across the aisle on my Alaska Air flight from Seattle to Anchorage tell me in detail each biking trail he has ever been on, liked to be on, or read or heard about, I knew the serenity of Prince William Sound on CruiseWest's Spirit of Glacier Bay was the antidote.

	Click photo to book the Sheraton Anchorage.

The next morning I am met by a CruiseWest tour representative and we jumped on a bus for the short ride to the rail station. The rambling, rumbling reminiscent 1920's era rail cars slip out of the station for the two-hour, 51-mile jaunt to Whittier. A naturalist on board for the duration of the tour and cruise details the natural elements we pass, including the second largest tidal bore at 40+ feet in Turn Again Bay (2nd after the Bay of Fundy tidal bores), and flats where many fishermen get trapped and drowned, sucked into the glacial silt unable to pull out before the next tide rolls in. Days before a lucky fisherman was saved from this fate by the Anchorage fire department.

Three trains depart Anchorage daily: Whittier or Seward southbound, and Fairbanks northbound. The Glacier Discovery to Whittier train didn't rate as a panoramic domed liner, but it did have an expansive dining car in the entourage, featuring Alaska gourmand choices of McKinley Breakfast, Bird Creek Chicken Sandwich, and Reindeer Sausage, Indian River Sandwiches, or Bristol Bay Grilled Pan-fried Salmon Filet.

Many passengers are taking pictures from the caboose's rear open-air smoking platform. Rail service to Whittier is from mid-May to mid-September, with the southbound leaving at 10 a.m. and arriving in Whittier at 12:30 p.m. Hand carry luggage only. The rail voucher is included in your CruiseWest trip, or call 800/544-0552. Round-trip is $51 and one-way is $26 if booked without a cruise. Great Alaska Train Adventure (DVD)

The Alaska Railroad winds around Turn Again Arm Bay, named by Captain Cook on his 1779 voyage. He had to "turn again" to avoid sandbars, spits, glacial silt, low water and mud. Nothing much has changed across the barren low tide mud flats. Fishermen along the creeks casted flies amongst the salmon heading up stream to spawn. There are five types of salmon in Alaska: chum, coho, silver, pink, and king.

We tunneled out of the WWII Army Engineers blasted hole to reach Whittier. After an $80 million car access renovation, with lighting and ventilation, the train shares the tunnel with RVs, cars, buses and SUV's hauling boats to the nearest saltwater marina from Anchorage. A toll is expected in 2001; access to Whittier before was only by plane or ferry from Seward.

A quick tour of Whittier, named after the poet John Greenlief Whittier, sees all the dynamic sites within a few minutes. The local bards proclaim the fishing port: "Nothing Is Prettier Than Whittier." There are three deep-water ports in Alaska: Whittier, Anchorage, and Seward. Most adventure cruisers joined in for bison burgers at one of the local restaurants as the Spirit of Glacier Bay was outfitted for our arrival.

There are eight adventure cruise ships in the CruiseWest fleet, with the Spirit of Glacier Bay the smallest. Built in 1971, it cruises Prince William Sound in summer, moving to the Columbia River for seven weeks of Fall river cruising, including a jetboat ride up the Snake River, before dry-docked for the winter. (Read The Jetsetters Magazine feature on that adventure entitled: "Cruising Historic River Roads.")

I got a great bunk on the main starboard deck, close to the lounge and small restaurant at the stern. Our bags had arrived by earlier motorcoach transport. If you take this cruise, get berths 201, 202, 203 or 204. Some people paid more for below water and third deck (300 series) cabins that were not as convenient. The third deck cabin windows do not look over the water directly, and the gangway makes traffic by those cabins at all hours unnerving. The below deck cabins get engine noise complaints. My cabin, 202, allowed me to watch the scenery glide by while in bed.

Cabins are equipped with spartan amenities, toiletries, shower (pull the water spigot out of the wash basin and snag it on a hook), and a loo. The bunks are narrow. There is an in-cabin intercom system with wildlife alerts at all hours. When in your cabin before dinner is served or special events on board switch the intercom to 'B' for wildlife reports and 'A' for piped in music. This was a nice nature feature. I never missed sightings of whales, sea otters, or harbor seal colonies.

After the mandatory life jacket use and safety lesson by Tahitian Captain Patrick Marere and then crew introductions, there is a free champagne and cheese and wine party before dinner. There is no open bar on the boat, with an Alaska beer going for about US$4.50, so the US$1.50 for a root beer looked pretty good. The 5:30 p.m. daily happy hour offers free coffee, tea, and hot chocolate and snacks.

Dinner is served banquet style, with guests seated before the staff serves the nightly entrée. I was amazed that fresh seafood was not served more often. The salmon entrée occurred only on the first night. But every meal was fresh and wholesome.

The first night on the 3-day cruise was along Passage Canal. Kittiwakes are the first sighted bird life. The next morning I looked at my eggs on my breakfast plate. No! Not Kittiwake eggs?

The first evening we are cruising toward Icy Bay, when the alarm goes out . . . Hump Backed Whales. Even though it is after 8 p.m., the sun glints warm off the water and the whales. The glowing waters are filled with a pod of sounding whales. Everyone is on deck. The whales dive on one side, coming up on the other. For hours they are the main entertainment as the Spirit of Glacier Bay does slow cookies in the water. Finally, the sun takes its nocturnal sounding around 11 p.m. I can't believe how late it is. I am not even drowsy!

Diana, our onboard naturalist, wakes the passengers at 6:30 a.m. with breakfast served at 7 a.m. Diana fills us in on the day's sailing and wildlife expectations; after all, she doesn't want us to miss any of the 100,000 glaciers in Alaska.

On the first morning aboard ship, the alarm goes out . . . orcas or killer whales are spotted chasing salmon. None breach, but they pop up to give us an eye (spy-watching), like a submarine periscope, and then dip down again. Orcas have great eyesight, but only one blowhole, while other whales have two.

There are transient and resident orca pods in Prince William Sound. Most of the orcas we see are resident pods. Transient orcas pluck the black cod off fishing boat long lines, so they are unwelcome pests to the fishing fleet. Orcas are matriarchal and toothed (non-baleen). There are only three complete orca skeletons in the world, with now the fourth at Cordova, a fishing village at the south end of Williams Sound.

Orcas have a click and whistle type of sonar that is very precise, so harbor seals, Orcas favorite meal, stay on the icebergs at the face of the glaciers. The drifting pack ice deflects the sonar and the seals blend in with the ice. Resident orcas are noisier than transient orcas. They can cruise at 47 miles per hour.

The Chugach National Forest is the oldest and second largest forest in the USA and it surrounds Prince William Sound. The Chugach Mountains are mostly in the 2,000-4,000 foot range, with a few at 14,000. The valleys fill with mist in winter, with tons of snowfall. Valdez, in the center of the Sound, receives more than 900 inches annually. Chugach is a temperate rainforest (150 inches annually). It takes 250-1000 years for the old growth forest to mature, with not much logging because of the poor quality of the wood and inaccessibility. Average temperature during the day in PW Sound is about 55º in summer. Check Jetstreams wilderness lodging database for Chugach wilderness cabin rentals at www.cabinweb.com.

We visit College Fjord on the second day. The Harriman Expedition of 1899 included Sierra Club founder John Muir on-board. The Expedition was organized for health reasons (stress) by the railroad tycoon Harriman, who named the glaciers after eastern U.S. colleges. One side of College Fjords is named for women's colleges (pre co-ed) Brown, Bryn Mawr, and the other side after men's college, Harvard, Yale.

There are two types of glaciers in PW Sound: hanging—like a hoary eyebrow, or tide water—pushing muck, mud, and glacial silt before it into a moraine where the icebergs can not pass. A retreating or advancing glacier can be either a hanging or tide water glacier. Baltimore Glacier is a hanging glacier feeding into Harvard Glacier — over 25 miles long.

We hear white thunder, or glacial ice krispies (snap, crackle, pop) forcing oxygen out of the ice from the College Glacier face. A few chunks crack off (calving) falling before I see them. We saw the most calving at Meares Glacier. Our boat stays about a 1/4 mile away from the glacier face to prevent ice berg pop-ups from gouging holes in the hull. After snow falls, it turns to ice or firn and then the compression turns it into translucent blue ice, 100 times denser than an ice cube.

Ice worms are one inch long and feed on the bacteria and algae in the ice, so the ice is not totally pristine. I kidded the other passengers that ice worms grow into snow snakes, and many believed me, including Larry, the refrigerator salesman from White Plains, New York, who I said his next refrigerator ad should read "I froze my rump so you can freeze yours." We took a picture of him in a Santa Claus hat. I await my royalty check.

As we descend College Fjord, heading to Barry Arm, keep an eye out for sea otters. Once hunted to near extinction, Prince William Sound now forms a home for a high concentration of these playful otters that have more hair in one single inch than all the hairs on a human's head.

"The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness," according to John Muir, in his book '

, written on the 1899 expedition. Upon leaving Barry Arm we cruise through Esther Passage. This is a seven-mile stretch of narrow wilderness waterway, taking us into the heart of Prince William Sound. We are close to the shoreline, looking for bears, but alpine mountain goats are the only critters spotted.

Nunataks are mountain peaks that peek above a glacier and are never glaciated. The largest nunatak is at Columbia Glacier, a huge, 330 square mile retreating glacier (3^rd largest in Alaska) that has receded over 20 miles in the last few years, with the moraine holding back calved ice in a large fjord filled with glacial flour. If dredged, I bet the fjord flour would speckle with gold.

Blackstone Glacier, seen on the last day, is home to hundreds of waterfalls and a large colony of kittiwakes. The Watch Company in 1987 took ice from Blackstone and took it to Japan where it sold for $6 a kilo.

The 1964 Alaska earthquake, at 9.2 on the Richter scale, epicentered in Prince William Sound. Most of the sound dropped over 30 feet, with tidal waves washing all the way to South America. Anchorage had extensive damage. Many people were killed along the Sound.

Valdez is the northern-most ice free port in the United States, and the terminus of the Alaska Pipeline running from Prudoe Bay. The community boasts a population of about 4,500 year around residents. The most recent boom was during the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill clean up. The 1,200-mile-long oil slick took months to clean up, and it is still toxic in certain areas of PW Sound. Our adventure cruise ship was used as a flotel for environmental workers.

Before heading into the shipping channels of Valdez Narrows, we stop to snap photos of Stellar sea lions brooding and breeding, hauled out on the rocks across the strait from where the Exxon Valdez ran aground on Bligh Reef, near Bligh Island. It seemed appropriate that one of the world's worst ecological sea disasters happened on a reef named after one of the world's most despicable sea captains of Mutiny on the Bounty fame. Maybe the Exxon Valdez crew were mutineers, while Captain Hazelwood was below with one too many grogs.

Hazelwood can no longer work in Alaska waters as a captain. Exxon lost $4.5 million in oil that day, was sued and fined $5 billion by the U.S. government and the Alaska government, with settlement unpaid, in appeals until 2002 and collecting interest in a special account. Hazelwood returns each year to Alaska for 1,000 hours of community service.

The US Coast Guard now is in charge of all oil spills nationwide; all oil tankers must be doublehulled, there is now quicker response time with oil skimmers, and a tug captain must accompany tankers out of PW Sound. The last boat to run aground here, before the Exxon disaster, was in 1910.

The species most affected by oil goo were loons, killer whales or orcas, and harbor seals; with the five types of salmon making a comeback.

We port in Valdez for the half-day. Valdez was established in 1897 as a port of entry for gold seekers. The Valdez Trail to the Klondike was dangerous because of Glacier crevasses, snow blindness and exhaustion. The 1964 earthquake destroyed Valdez and claimed many lives. The epicenter was only 45 miles away. Today's Valdez is four miles west of the original town site. At one time 10,000 workers labored on the pipeline, but fell to 4,000.

Passengers are invited on optional fee extra tours in the Valdez area, including whitewater rafting, a city bus tour, or a tour of Alyeska Oil Pipeline Company facilities.



Keystone Canyon Adventure Tour - $56

Duration: 2 hours (1 hour boat trip and 1 hour transfer)

Enjoy the mountain scenery as you ride up the Lowe River Valley where your rafting adventure begins. Float down the river through Keystone Canyon with its sheer cliff walls rising all around and waterfalls, including Bridal Veil Falls, cascading 800 feet from the canyon wall.

Alaska Pipeline Terminal Tour - $15

This fascinating tour of Alaska's state-of-the-art engineering marvel begins at the Valdez airport for a security check and opportunity to see the Pipeline Museum; highlights include pipeline artifacts and several videos explain the construction. Continue to the Alyeska Marine Terminal and a tour of the facilities by bus. See the docks load 75,000 barrels a day into oil tankers.

Columbia Glacier Flightseeing Tour - $155

1 hour flight and 15 minute transfers.

Board an authentic Alaskan bush plane for a flight over Valdez, Prince William Sound, and Columbia Glacier. See the Alaska Pipeline and Valdez Narrows Flight is over the 440 square mile Columbia glacier.

Prince William Sound Heli Tour - $179
1.5 hours (1 hour flight and 30 minute transfer)

Encounter the beauty of Valdez, the "Little Switzerland," and fly over town, the Alaska Pipeline terminus, Chugach Mountains, and the face of Columbia Glacier. You fly through Anderson Pass and land at Shoup Glacier before heading back to Valdez.

Sea Kayak On Duck Flats - $62

Three hours kayaking on Duck Flats around Valdez. You will see nesting birds, sea otter, harbor seals, and sea lions,

After leaving Valdez we make our way to Columbia Bay, en route to Columbia Glacier. A farewell dinner is spread before us as we depart Valdez that evening, and everyone is disappointed that they can not cruise on. This is a great cruise for families and young adults, seniors, for everyone.



CruiseWest offers the Quyana Club for repeat cruisers, saving US$100 on your next cruise, or about 5%. Sign up at the end of the cruise for:

The Alaska Experience
British Columbia Coastal Cruises
Columbia and Snake Rivers
California Wine Country
Baja Mexico Sea of Cortez



Previous names - New Shoreham I, Glacier Bay Explorer
Over all length - 125 feet
Beam - 28 feet
Draft - 6.5 feet
Year built - 1971
Began service in 1990 with CruiseWest
Max speed - 12 knots
Cruising speed - 10.5 knots
Passenger capacity - 54
Number of cabins - 27
Number of crew - 17
Main engines - 2 Detroit 12V71N
Generators - 2 Detroit 671
Gross Tonnage - 97



After motorcoaching back from Whittier, save this tour at the end of your trip, passes are then complimentary from CruiseWest. The Anchorage Museum features Art of the North, temporary exhibitions, Children's Gallery and Activities Room, Atrium, The Alaska Gallery, Library and Archives.

The museum has an exceptional Alaska art gallery with masterpieces from the Klondike era. Upstairs is filled with historical dioramas and cultural showcases. Local artisans display their artistic wares in the main lobby, near the small museum deli serving soup and sandwiches.

Anchorage Museum of History and Art
121 West 7^th Avenue
Anchorage, AK 99501
907/343-4326
The $6.50 admission is free on a CruiseWest tour package.

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