Bears of Glacier Bay
Glacier Bay is huge. The Park is the size of the State of Connecticut, and the bay itself is sixty-five miles long. Fortunately, we began our Glacier Bay experience the night before. Stopping by the town of Gustavus, we picked up a Park Naturalist and a Tlingit Interpreter and made our way up Glacier Bay through the night.
We awoke in the upper Bay near Russell Island. The broad outwash plains here are good places to find wildlife. Sure enough, we found two brown bears prowling about the beachside meadows. While we were glad to see the bears, heavy rain obscured them, so we moved on.
At breakfast we met our guests, Park Naturalist Marylou Blakeslee and Tlingit interpreter Faith Grant, who joined us to share the natural and cultural history of Glacier Bay.
During breakfast we approached Margerie Glacier. We sat before a huge wall, white and craggy. The glacier is so full of crevasses that its surface is a series of ice pinnacles or seracs, some of which may have towered two hundred and fifty feet above the sea! Of course, we hoped to hear the roar of falling ice and Margerie did not disappoint. We saw several crumbly ice avalanches that alerted us to a weak spot in the ice. Sure enough, a much larger calving followed.
Making our way down the bay, we passed several more glaciers and came to Gloomy Knob. This is a mass of limestone, steep and polished by the ice. Since vegetation grows poorly on limestone, bare “alpine” conditions exist right down to the waterline. This makes it a good place to look for mountain goats. Normally goats move to higher elevations as the summer progresses, but recent rainy weather seems to have brought them back down. We saw several, including one particularly low down and visible.
Not far away we found a brown bear. The creature was walking steadily along the shore, so we were all able to get a good look at it.
Later in the afternoon, we entered Geike Inlet. This fjord in in the more heavily wooded lower bay, so different wildlife can be expected. This time, the bear we found was a black bear. As before, the bear walked a long way over the beach, so we all got good views. The comparison between this and the brown bear were clear. This bear was smaller, darker, with larger ears and a more barrel-shaped body.
Our last major attraction in Glacier Bay was South Marble Island. Like Gloomy Knob, the polished limestone limits plant growth, which makes it a fine place for sea creatures. Familiar sea lions loll about the rocks. Here we saw a particularly engaging “formation” of ‘lions, with the thimotactic creatures in tight bundles like packaged sausages. Seabirds of many sorts nest at South Marble. Nesting season is over, and the birds showed distinct signs that they were preparing for a winter at sea. Still, we saw murres, gulls, guillemots and everyone’s favorite, puffins.
And at last, we reached Bartlett Cove. After dinner we walked the loop trail. Here we walked through the oldest forest of Glacier Bay. I might have said “we saw” the oldest forest, but it was already rather dark! Still, the trail was clear, and it was great to have a leg-stretcher after a day on the ship.
Glacier Bay is full of geological spectacle, superb wildlife and rich history. How lucky we are to have and to know it!
