Expedition Stories - Pixel and Goliath

Last week the wildlifeHD crew was on its tiny old 18ft boat called the Blue Pixel shooting HD footage of glaciers in Prince William Sound.  We were at the Chenega glacier when a HUGE piece of ice calved and a 40ft wall of water came rushing towards us.  There was a twenty-foot island between us and the glacier, but the wave doubled over the little island, and it sent icebergs flying like fireworks as the wave continued to rush towards us.  Terrified, I fired up the Pixel's outboard, turned away from the wave and plowed through chunks of ice that pounded and smashed against the old fiberglass hull. 

We were racing to get some distance from the wave.   The outboard screamed.   I looked over my shoulder and saw the monster of my worst dreams catching up with us.  I steered hard to port and turned the boat to face the wave. The Pixel and her crew awaited our fate. 

As though time stretched, the wave's approach seemed to slow down, and with every passing second, the depths of the glacial fjord seemed to gobble up its intensity.  As it washed closer, the wall of water transformed into a swell-- now only twenty feet high.  I pushed the throttle forward to climb the face of the wave, and Pixel slowly went up, up, up, and finally over.  A second wave was right behind it-- this one even bigger.  Around us, icebergs were rolling and thrashing in swirling water.  We lined up to climb this next wave, and just then the propeller hit a huge chunk of ice.  I thought we’d lost the prop, but it kept pushing.  We climbed the next wave.  Then another, and then another.  Around us icebergs continued to twist and waves crashed hard against the shore, but we had survived.

Here is some glacier calving footage showing a much, much, much smaller wave we saw during our travels last week.

HD footage of Glaciers Calving

That’s the news from here.

Text copyright Daniel Zatz