Tracy Arm
Gray was the color of the early morning as we entered Holkum Bay at the entrance to Tracy Arm; our day’s activities centered on what could be argued as the most beautiful fiord in the world.
A low tide allowed most guests to awake to a black bear “chowing down” on seemingly unpalatable barnacles. These crustaceans, known for fouling the bottoms of boats, color the upper intertidal area a pale beige and carry a load of nutrients. Bears have no problem destroying this tiny creature by raking their claws over the surface and pulverizing its elegant cone-shaped architecture. The result is a bouillabaisse that can be lapped up from the rock and off the pads of its paw. Bear droppings show the crushed barnacle pieces mixed in with other undigested food.
After drills and explanations of how to stay alive in bear country, how to not drown in a kayak and how to see with binoculars, we set off into the wild. Some chose to explore by kayak, several groups hiked into a land that most visitors had never seen before, while others toured the wild coastline by Zodiac.
Later we cruised into Tracy Arm and became immersed in a great feast of glacial geology. There are few sights as inspiring as staring up at 5,000 feet of smooth granite embellished with quartz dikes, exfoliated arches, and free-falling water punctuated with massive hanging valleys that span a quarter of a mile. Deeply incised gashes sliced all the way across the fiord from one side to the other. There were hundreds of thousands of hunks of floating ice, some as big as a house, that seemed to endlessly pass. Our desire to truly enter this wonderland was satisfied by Zodiac tours that transported us to waterfalls and hanging gardens of cinquefoil, columbines and lady ferns. A few passed through the ice that choked the inlet and made their way to Sawyer Glacier. A glacial calving powered a swell that bobbed ice and the Zodiac, and pushed a wave up onto the rocks on both sides. The last tours out were slowed on their return by the density of small floating pieces of ice called growlers. Fortunately all were back inside our warm “home” in time for cocktail hour.
