Glacier Bay National Park
How could Glacier Bay National Park possibly surprise or impress us after the expedition we’ve been having this week? We’d heard that there are record numbers of humpback whales in the lower reaches of Glacier Bay, but we’ve seen so much extraordinary humpback activity that we claimed we would hardly acknowledge whales on this exploration of the 65-mile long bay that has been so recently exposed with the glacial retreat of the last two-hundred years.
Never mind the humpback whale breaching off the dock of National Park Headquarters at Bartlett Cove as we departed with our Park Ranger and Tlingit Huna Interpreter at 0600, or the almost mystical blows across the mirror-still water that resonated in the morning mist. But then…orca! The call came before breakfast as we saw the unmistakable knife-edge dorsal fin of an adult male slicing the stillness of the sea. It was a small pod, moving slowly and effortlessly, a couple of adult males and a few females with curved dorsal fins, minding their own business in the very rich waters around them. Sea otters and marbled murrelets didn’t seem to mind, but the occasional breach of a humpback whale made us wonder if they were broadcasting cautionary warnings.
After breakfast we cruised by the seabird colonies of South Marble Island with spectacular weather and scenery. Then a brown bear, then another – with three cubs – and then a couple of mountain goats. But these mountain goats were not high on the mountains where we would expect to see them through the spotting scope, but down on the waterline directly in front of the ship. And there! One of them has a kid, and it seemed that a little bit of adult or parental quarreling was going on with regards to the youngster.
The jagged peaks and hanging glaciers on such a brilliant day can only be the stuff of art and poetry, and the glacial ice mesmerized us all as we entered the spectacular Johns Hopkins Inlet. Floating ice choked the bay, with hundreds of harbor seals laying like sausages on the bergie bits. We had returned to the Ice Age, 10,000 years back in time. Glacier Bay National Park Ranger Randy Thomas and Bertha, our Tlingit Huna Interpretive Guide gave us the physical, natural and cultural history of the bay, as well as a little bit of insight to life in Southeast Alaska, as we journeyed back down the bay through the succession of plant communities that have started to grow back since the glacier’s retreat.
It was a brilliant day in one of the crown jewels of the National Park System, and the homeland of the Tlingit People. And it’s not over yet. At this writing, guests are out on an evening hike at Bartlett Cove, with report of moose on the trail…
