Glacier Bay
An amazing day today, exploring the riches of Glacier Bay National Park from dawn to dusk. We began by picking up our National Park Service ranger, Jennie Burr, at Bartlett Cove in the wee hours of the morning, followed by a fog-bound transit through the Tisakaday Narrows against a strongly ebbing tide. Clear skies and close-up views of wildlife greeted us at South Marble Island, a rookery to many species of seabirds, including tufted and horned puffins, and a favored haul-out site for numbers of Steller sea lions. A lone humpback whale, bubblenet feeding near the steep cliffs of the island, proved to be the first of many bonuses served up over the course of the day. A black bear on shore, scraping and eating barnacles off the low tide rocks followed soon thereafter as we continued up bay. Further on, mountain goats resting on the smooth gray rocks of Gloomy Knob drew our attention for several minutes before a small group of killer whales stole the show. The black and white forms of two young male orcas and a probable adult female glided silently through waters milky green with glacial silt. All this, before lunch!
We passed many more miles of scenery filled with freshly carved mountains, landforms created by glacial outwash streams, and the gentle imprint of vegetation returning in choreographed succession, before arriving at the end of Tarr Inlet to greet the contrasting black and white faces of the Grand Pacific and Marjorie glaciers. There we watched Marjorie calve chunks of ancient blue ice into the freezing waters as clouds of black-legged kittiwakes danced in the air. Even after all that our day was far from over. Not only was there sixty-five miles of return trip to transit, there were more tidewater glaciers to view and, somewhere out there, a brown bear was walking along a steep and rocky shoreline. Appropriately enough, it was in the middle of a presentation on animal tracks that a sharp-eyed guest spotted the bear from the upper decks. The lounge population emptied in an orderly fashion and reassembled itself on the bow for views. Seeing an animal the size and strength of an Alaskan coastal brown bear so at home in a landscape as wild as Glacier Bay is a mesmerizing sight. It was not in the least daunted by the steep shoreline nor the need to take to the chilly waters from time to time as it made its way along. They say a bear’s territory is wherever it happens to be and if this bear claimed the entire bay as its own – whales, bears, mountain goats, orcas, glaciers and all – there were none of us watching who would doubt it for a second. Thanks, Glacier Bay, for sharing your riches with us today.
An amazing day today, exploring the riches of Glacier Bay National Park from dawn to dusk. We began by picking up our National Park Service ranger, Jennie Burr, at Bartlett Cove in the wee hours of the morning, followed by a fog-bound transit through the Tisakaday Narrows against a strongly ebbing tide. Clear skies and close-up views of wildlife greeted us at South Marble Island, a rookery to many species of seabirds, including tufted and horned puffins, and a favored haul-out site for numbers of Steller sea lions. A lone humpback whale, bubblenet feeding near the steep cliffs of the island, proved to be the first of many bonuses served up over the course of the day. A black bear on shore, scraping and eating barnacles off the low tide rocks followed soon thereafter as we continued up bay. Further on, mountain goats resting on the smooth gray rocks of Gloomy Knob drew our attention for several minutes before a small group of killer whales stole the show. The black and white forms of two young male orcas and a probable adult female glided silently through waters milky green with glacial silt. All this, before lunch!
We passed many more miles of scenery filled with freshly carved mountains, landforms created by glacial outwash streams, and the gentle imprint of vegetation returning in choreographed succession, before arriving at the end of Tarr Inlet to greet the contrasting black and white faces of the Grand Pacific and Marjorie glaciers. There we watched Marjorie calve chunks of ancient blue ice into the freezing waters as clouds of black-legged kittiwakes danced in the air. Even after all that our day was far from over. Not only was there sixty-five miles of return trip to transit, there were more tidewater glaciers to view and, somewhere out there, a brown bear was walking along a steep and rocky shoreline. Appropriately enough, it was in the middle of a presentation on animal tracks that a sharp-eyed guest spotted the bear from the upper decks. The lounge population emptied in an orderly fashion and reassembled itself on the bow for views. Seeing an animal the size and strength of an Alaskan coastal brown bear so at home in a landscape as wild as Glacier Bay is a mesmerizing sight. It was not in the least daunted by the steep shoreline nor the need to take to the chilly waters from time to time as it made its way along. They say a bear’s territory is wherever it happens to be and if this bear claimed the entire bay as its own – whales, bears, mountain goats, orcas, glaciers and all – there were none of us watching who would doubt it for a second. Thanks, Glacier Bay, for sharing your riches with us today.
