IT took me 38 years to learn that
icebergs come from glaciers.
I must admit I never gave it much
thought, as you don't see a lot of icebergs in Australian waters, but it was after
visiting Ilulissat early in this cruise I discovered that 80 per cent of the
icy boulders floating in the Atlantic Ocean come from Greenland's wild and
formidable west coast.
The rest start life as part of the
Canadian glaciers on this side of the David Strait and today I was able to
inspect one of these iceberg factories up close by cruising along the face of a
frozen river at the northern end of Croker Bay.
For a couple of hours this
afternoon we drifted past the 3km face of a Croker Bay glacier – I say "a
Croker Bay glacier" because there are a couple up here – looking up at the jagged towers rising high
above.
The raw edge of the glacier looked
like the teeth of a saw, or the peaks in a miniature mountain range, and it
creaked and groaned as the ice further along the valley pushed towards the sea.
From a distance it looked like
the glacier was white, with a few dirty streaks where mud from the surrounding
mountains had fallen on the frozen surface, but when we got close I could see
the face was a colour chart of blues from a deep sapphire and a vibrant teal to
a vague duck egg.
A lesson from Clipper Adventurer
geologist Jon Dudley told me the colours were determined by the state of the
water when the glacier was forming.
Snow that falls high on the mountain
and then takes the next 25 year to be compressed into blocks of ice will be
white, while pools of fresh water that freezes when temperatures drop below zero
will take on those vivid shades of blue.
When it was time to leave the captain did a big turn at the top of Croker Bay and cruised slowly away so everyone on board could catch one long, last look at the rivers of ice in this remote spot.
And, as I was getting changed out of my wet-weather gear for dinner, it occured to me it would be the most northerly point in our Arctic journey so I made my way to the restaurant via the television in the bar which shows our position by longditude and latitude.
We were well north of the 74th line of latitude, a number I will always remember because it's the same year I was born.