Glacier Bay
Grey wisps of morning mist wreathed the intricately mixed blues and whites of the 250 foot ice cliffs at the terminus of the Margerie Glacier. As we watched, the glacier dropped a few desultory calves of ice, but mostly it seemed to be at rest, waiting for a new state of equilibrium towards which it could later evolve.
The good ship National Geographic Sea Bird had sailed all night to reach the upper end of Glacier Bay so we could spend the entire day working our way back down to Bartlett Cove. We left the Margerie looking for a little more action in the Johns Hopkins Inlet. With our Ranger Patrick providing a running narrative, we passed Jaw Point where a fabulous vista of glacial ice and mountain peaks was revealed. Pushing our way through innumerable “bergy bits” and “growlers” of ice in the water, we saw that many of them were temporary homes for harbor seals who find them an ideal place to have their pups with some protection from predatory Orcas that frequent these waters elsewhere. We got within a mile or so of the terminus of the Johns Hopkins Glacier, where the concentration of seals-on-ice got so high that we decided it would be best not to disturb them.
We saw our first Brown Bears of the voyage at a place called Russell Cut. We expected them to be fishing in a nearby salmon stream, but instead they were grazing in a grassy meadow. Either there were no fish in the stream, or bears are a lot less carnivorous than we think they are.
Gloomy Knob lived up to its name, playing peek-a-boo through the mist. We were able to spot a few mountain goats grazing on sparse parcels of grass high above us, but the wildlife hot spot of the day were the South Marble Islands. Here we saw hundreds of nesting birds and at least another hundred Stellar Sea Lions lounging on the rocks. Among the birds, Tufted and Horned Puffins were the runaway crowd favorites.
At Bartlett Cove we got a chance to get off the ship and stretch our legs on a one-mile trail through the spruce and hemlock forest that has grown here since the Grand Pacific Glacier began its high velocity retreat a little over 200 years ago. This completed the remarkable plant succession from barren rock at the current glacier terminus that has made Glacier Bay an ideal living laboratory of forest ecology.
Grey wisps of morning mist wreathed the intricately mixed blues and whites of the 250 foot ice cliffs at the terminus of the Margerie Glacier. As we watched, the glacier dropped a few desultory calves of ice, but mostly it seemed to be at rest, waiting for a new state of equilibrium towards which it could later evolve.
The good ship National Geographic Sea Bird had sailed all night to reach the upper end of Glacier Bay so we could spend the entire day working our way back down to Bartlett Cove. We left the Margerie looking for a little more action in the Johns Hopkins Inlet. With our Ranger Patrick providing a running narrative, we passed Jaw Point where a fabulous vista of glacial ice and mountain peaks was revealed. Pushing our way through innumerable “bergy bits” and “growlers” of ice in the water, we saw that many of them were temporary homes for harbor seals who find them an ideal place to have their pups with some protection from predatory Orcas that frequent these waters elsewhere. We got within a mile or so of the terminus of the Johns Hopkins Glacier, where the concentration of seals-on-ice got so high that we decided it would be best not to disturb them.
We saw our first Brown Bears of the voyage at a place called Russell Cut. We expected them to be fishing in a nearby salmon stream, but instead they were grazing in a grassy meadow. Either there were no fish in the stream, or bears are a lot less carnivorous than we think they are.
Gloomy Knob lived up to its name, playing peek-a-boo through the mist. We were able to spot a few mountain goats grazing on sparse parcels of grass high above us, but the wildlife hot spot of the day were the South Marble Islands. Here we saw hundreds of nesting birds and at least another hundred Stellar Sea Lions lounging on the rocks. Among the birds, Tufted and Horned Puffins were the runaway crowd favorites.
At Bartlett Cove we got a chance to get off the ship and stretch our legs on a one-mile trail through the spruce and hemlock forest that has grown here since the Grand Pacific Glacier began its high velocity retreat a little over 200 years ago. This completed the remarkable plant succession from barren rock at the current glacier terminus that has made Glacier Bay an ideal living laboratory of forest ecology.
