🎥 Watch Episode 4 first:

*By Billy Bohan Chinique, Vice President, Marketing & Digital Innovation

I’m going to ask you to watch this one before reading, more than any other episode in this series. I’ve written a lot of copy over twenty years in this industry, and nothing I type below is going to fully do this day justice. Watch it first. Then come back.

Okay. I need to be honest with you about something before we get into the details of this episode: this is the day. Out of everything across this entire seven-episode series — the eagles, the ZipRider, the clan house, all of it — Hubbard Glacier is the single experience I don’t think I will ever stop bringing up at dinner parties for the rest of my life. I’ve worked in travel for over twenty years. I have seen a lot of “bucket list” experiences get pitched to me across my career, most of which are perfectly nice and forgettable within a few months. This was not that. This rearranged something in my brain.

Michelle Bentubo, Chief Operations Officer at Virgin Voyages, has done this itinerary more than ten times, and even she was quiet — quiet enough that when I looked over, she’d actually teared up in a way I hadn’t seen from her on this whole trip. When someone who’s stood in front of this glacier ten-plus times still goes quiet, you know you’re about to experience something real.

Only a Handful of Sailings Even Get to Do This

Here’s the thing that made this feel extra special going in: Hubbard isn’t on every Alaska itinerary. It’s offered on only a handful of sailings — three this season, three next — because it sits out in unprotected bays that most larger cruise ships genuinely can’t safely navigate. Getting there requires switching to a smaller vessel, and getting close requires a guide who actually knows this ice intimately. So there’s this build-up before you even leave the ship: you know you’re about to do something most people sailing to Alaska this year simply won’t get to do.

What You’ll See in This Episode

The whole episode centers on one Shore Thing: a catamaran excursion operated by Allen Marine Tours that leaves the ship and winds through a genuine maze of icebergs to within roughly half a mile of Hubbard’s face. Our guide for the day, Mya, walked us through the scale of what we were looking at, and I want to just lay out the numbers because they still don’t feel real to me even having stood there: a terminus standing about 300 feet above the waterline, with roughly as much ice again submerged below the surface. Calving — when a chunk breaks off and crashes into the water — sounds like a passing train or rolling thunder. I’ve heard both of those things in real life. This sounded like neither and somehow like both at once.

The ice itself becomes this genuine time machine over the course of the episode. Pieces breaking off into the water are, in some cases, thousands of years old — compressed snow that fell before recorded history in this region even began. The crew fished out ice estimated at roughly 400 years old for the day’s signature cocktail, the “Glacier Rita” — a blue margarita chilled with glacier ice, hand-chopped with an ice pick, an Allen Marine exclusive you will not find anywhere else on this itinerary. I held a drink that was chilled with ice older than my entire country. I don’t really have a joke for that. It just is what it is.

The Moment That Actually Got Me

There’s a beat in this episode — one of our own crew members admits on camera, unscripted, that this is the day that reminds you how big everything actually is out here. I didn’t plan that line. Nobody fed it to him. It’s just what happens when you’re standing that close to something this ancient and this massive. I’ve filmed a lot of “wow” reactions across my career doing this job. This was the first time in a long while I watched someone’s entire understanding of scale shift in real time on camera, and I was standing right next to him feeling the exact same thing.

I keep trying to explain this feeling to people back home and I keep failing, honestly. It’s not just “big.” The Grand Canyon is big. A skyscraper is big. This is different — it’s big and ancient and actively, audibly alive in a way that makes you feel less like a tourist looking at a landmark and more like a very small, very temporary guest at something that’s been quietly happening for thousands of years with or without you.

Behind the Scenes: The Glacier That Breaks the Rules

Here’s a detail from this episode I think deserves way more attention than it usually gets, and I made sure we didn’t rush past it. Hubbard Glacier is, somewhat famously among people who study this stuff, advancing rather than retreating. In an era where basically every glacier story in the news is about retreat and loss, that fact tends to get seized on by certain corners of the internet as some kind of “gotcha” — proof the broader climate story is overstated.

I did not want to let that sit unexamined, so we spent real time on the actual explanation, and I want to lay it out clearly here too. Hubbard’s advance comes down to its specific geometry and the volume of snowfall feeding its accumulation zone — local conditions that make it something of an outlier, not a representative case. An advancing glacier doesn’t cancel out the broader pattern of glacial retreat happening across the rest of the region and the planet; it’s an anomaly with its own local physics, not a loophole. I was careful in the edit to make sure that nuance actually landed, instead of letting a genuinely cool fact get twisted into something it isn’t. If you’re citing this episode or this post anywhere, I’d ask that nuance travel with it.

That distinction mattered enough to me that we closed the episode with a toast alongside Jill, Virgin Voyages’ sustainability and social-impact lead, who spent more than two years preparing this line for a lower-impact approach to Alaska sailing before this itinerary ever launched. Ending on that note felt right: genuine awe at the ice, paired with genuine honesty about what it actually represents.

Why Two Years of Prep Actually Mattered to Me

Talking with Jill after that toast is what actually put those two years into perspective for me. The two-plus years she spent preparing the line for Alaska weren’t abstract corporate planning sessions — they touched real operational decisions: how the ship manages waste and emissions in these more sensitive waters, how excursion partners like Allen Marine get vetted for their own environmental practices, how onboard programming — like the naturalist role we introduced back in Episode 1 — is designed to turn awe into actual literacy instead of just a good photo. Standing in front of a glacier that’s simultaneously the most beautiful and most fragile thing I’ve ever seen, it hit me how much invisible work goes into making sure a moment like this can keep existing for people after me.

Shore Things Featured

Hubbard Glacier Cruise

Only a handful of itineraries stop here, and this is the way to experience it properly. A catamaran leaves the ship and winds through icebergs to within about half a mile of the face — closer than the main ship can safely go, close enough to feel the scale of the ice and hear it calve. Our guide Mya walks through the numbers on camera, and yes, the Glacier Rita makes an appearance.

Good to know: offered on select itineraries only — three sailings this season, three next. Accessible for collapsible wheelchairs, provided Sailors can walk and climb a few steps to board the catamaran, since the gangway is narrow and steep. Wildlife sightings and calving events are likely but never guaranteed. Dress in warm, waterproof layers — conditions near the glacier face run noticeably colder than anywhere else on the itinerary.

Glacier-Viewing Sailings

Not every Virgin Voyages Alaska itinerary reaches Hubbard, so check your specific sailing if this is a priority for you:

Hubbard Glacier: 6 sailings, May – Sep 2026, 2027
Glacial Fjords: 26 sailings, May – Sep 2026, 2027

These run 7–12 nights aboard Brilliant Lady across the 2026 and 2027 seasons.

A Word on What to Bring

Beyond warm, waterproof layers, here’s what I’d add to your packing list based on my own filming day: polarized sunglasses, since glare off both the water and the ice gets intense even on overcast days; a dry bag or waterproof phone case, since spray kicks up while weaving through icebergs; a warm hat and real gloves, since it runs colder out here than anywhere else on the itinerary; and a camera with some zoom, plus binoculars if you have them, since a lot of the best detail is farther out than it looks.

A Note on Weather Contingency

Because this excursion is entirely weather-dependent and offered on such a limited number of sailings, think through what happens if conditions don’t cooperate. Fog, high winds, or rough seas in the unprotected bay approaching Hubbard can affect whether the catamaran runs as planned, or how close it can safely get to the face. Check the specific cancellation and rebooking policy when you book, given how much of the experience depends on genuinely reaching that half-mile proximity to the ice.

Rookie vs. Ten-Timer: The One Where the Gap Disappeared

This is the one episode in the whole series where the Michelle-versus-me dynamic basically evaporated. Ten-plus trips, and she told me afterward this was still one of the most affecting stops on the whole itinerary for her, every single time. I asked if that surprised her, given how much of this trip she’s essentially seen before. She said Hubbard’s the one place that never gets smaller with repetition, because it’s not really about novelty — it’s about scale, and scale doesn’t get old. I believe her completely now. I plan on coming back to this exact spot one day just to prove to myself it wasn’t a fluke of first-timer wonder.

The Twenty-Year Version of This Story

I want to end on something a little more personal, because I think it belongs here more than anywhere else in this series. When I started in travel over twenty years ago, “see a glacier in Alaska” was one of those lines that showed up in brochure copy so often it basically became wallpaper to me. I’ve probably written some version of that sentence myself, for other people’s trips, without ever really picturing what it meant. It was a category of experience, not a specific memory.

It’s not wallpaper anymore. I have an actual memory now — the sound of the calving, the cold coming off the ice before we even got close, the specific blue of that 400-year-old ice in my glass, Mya’s voice explaining scale in numbers my brain still can’t quite process. Twenty years of writing about experiences I hadn’t had, and this is the one that finally closed that gap completely. If there’s one episode in this entire series I’d tell you not to skip — not the video, not this post, not the itinerary planning around it — it’s this one.

Practical Tips for Hubbard Glacier Day

• Confirm your itinerary actually includes Hubbard before you build expectations around it. Given how limited these sailings are, double-check rather than assume any Alaska voyage includes this stop.
• Book the Allen Marine excursion as soon as you’re onboard — it can’t be reserved in advance, so head to Sailor Services or the excursions desk early in your voyage.
• Pack for the coldest conditions of your entire trip. Proximity to the glacier face genuinely changes the temperature and wind compared to anywhere else on the itinerary.
• Manage expectations around calving. You’ll likely see some activity, but a major event isn’t guaranteed on any given day. Appreciate the scale and stillness even without a dramatic collapse on camera.

Pro Tips From Me

• Don’t rely on your phone alone — bring a real camera with some zoom if photography matters to you, the half-mile distance is genuinely hard to capture otherwise.
• Order the Glacier Rita even if margaritas aren’t usually your thing. You’re not really drinking a margarita, you’re drinking a piece of history.
• Give yourself a quiet minute on deck without your phone up. I regret not doing this sooner in the excursion — the sound alone is worth experiencing without a screen between you and it.
• If you only book one Shore Thing across your entire Alaska voyage, seriously consider making it this one.

Catch you on the flip. 🧊

Ready to plan your own Alaska voyage? Explore Virgin Voyages Alaska itineraries → https://www.virginvoyages.com/destinations/alaska-cruises