Glacier Bay National Park, Alaska
We awoke this morning to another sunny, windless day and the somewhat alarming but innocent sounds of ice scraping on metal. These were the sounds of icebergs in Johns Hopkins Inlet rubbing against the side of our ship as we slowly made our way past Jaw Point to the tidewater glacier at its head. Named by its discoverer after his alma mater, the Johns Hopkins Glacier was lying before us, sloping down the steep valley it is still carving to this day. Just to the left, and recently merged with its neighbor, is the deeply crevassed and spired Gilman Glacier, named for the president of the aforementioned college. The only advancing glaciers in all of Glacier Bay National Park, it was a wonderful way to welcome the day. The backdrop was an amphitheater of peaks with fresh snow icing their tops at over 10,000 feet. The air was a chilly 41 degrees, but soon warmed up due to the quickly rising sun which slowly moved down the peaks and began to light up the front of the glacier as the show began. Lasting well over two hours, we were endlessly entertained by a thunderstorm of calving ice from both glaciers, at times simultaneously. It was difficult to know which way to look and guests were reluctant to leave the bow for fear of missing another thunderous boom. Our ship rolled along with the resulting waves and icebergs, and eventually had to turn away to explore more of this wonderful World Heritage Site.
Second in size only to Antarctica, this United Nations biosphere reserve is a land reborn, returning to life, a living lesson in resilience. It’s a remote, dynamic and intact wilderness and we were deep within it.
The 65 mile return trip south out of Glacier Bay took the rest of the day. The calm, glassy surface below us provided mirrored reflections of the stunning scenery all around us. Our search for wildlife, which included a visit to the rarely seen Geike Inlet, was not totally in vain – our sharp-eyed park ranger, Marylou Blakeslee, spotted a mountain goat taking refuge from the bright sun, hidden deep within a cave at Gloomy Knob. We also enjoyed watching many sea otters and birds, including large rafts of surf scoters, tufted and horned puffins, cormorant colonies and gull rookeries. A stop at South Marble Island delivered a full sensory experience with the many Stellar sea lions wrestling for sacred space on this popular haul out. Alice Haldane, cultural heritage guide for the Huna Tlingit, gave us some informative lessons on the native Tlingit culture and their language. We topped the day off with an onshore exploration of Bartlett Cove and the visitor center there. Shortly afterwards we were off the dock and underway as darkness settled on yet another day of memory making in Alaska.
