Glacier Bay National Park
When Captain George Vancouver passed the mouth of this bay in 1794, he gazed upon a glacier 4,000’ thick, 20 miles wide and 100 miles long. By 1879 when Scottish naturalist John Muir ventured in by Indian canoe, barely half remained: it had retreated nearly 50 miles. Neither explorer would recognize the area today. We are at 59° 02.68’N, just two miles below the Canadian border. We come on deck at first light to gaze upon the shriveled face of the once Grand Pacific Glacier, its ice barely visible beneath unsightly scree and rubble. This once-proud sculptor of landscapes can barely raise its head now, but still looks south to the glorious works of its youth. In tracing its route from north to south today, we can see 20,000 years of glaciation revealed in two rapid centuries.
We start next to Margerie Glacier whose gleaming white facade collapses spectacularly in an explosion of spray and ice. Above us the polished walls of the valley rise 6,000’, all burnished by ancient glaciers. Next we enter Johns Hopkins inlet. All the side glaciers here are in rapid retreat, exposing the amazing genesis of Southeast Alaska. Geologists, after painstaking detective forensics, deduce that the complex rock frittata here is a multiple continental pileup: rocks from Australia, the tropics, and the Golden Gate all collided to create these mountains. From bare, ice-scraped rock cliffs, we move to the barely vegetated limestone ledges of Gloomy Knob, where mountain goats gaze down upon us with lofty disdain. Here the first mountain avens grows like a fuzz on the rock, and in paltry pockets of soil the first cottonwood saplings strive for footing. South again, and across to Geikie Inlet, where time and warm Pacific rain have now nurtured a dense cottonwood forest. From here we steam southeast to South Marble island: sprawling sea lions flaunt tanned torsos on polished rocks. We scan the last gulls but the grassy ledges are empty of other seabirds. Summer is almost over: cormorants stand in line at the departure lounge, kittiwakes trade clamorous farewells. Averting our noses politely from the smell of sea lion slums, we too turn south. And just as we had given up hope, there on the polished pewter sea swells we spy them: puffins! A lone horned puffin clatters away from under the bow, but a splendid tufted puffin, still in his breeding finery, lingers on the water so we can admire his flowing flaxen locks and royal red bill. How lucky we are: a full day brought to a fine close with the last puffin of summer. At dusk we dock at Bartlett Cove and take a dusk walk in mature spruce forest, where Vancouver himself once gazed on nought but ice and rubble. We have wended our way in the wake of a glacier: from rock to rainforest in just 200 years.
When Captain George Vancouver passed the mouth of this bay in 1794, he gazed upon a glacier 4,000’ thick, 20 miles wide and 100 miles long. By 1879 when Scottish naturalist John Muir ventured in by Indian canoe, barely half remained: it had retreated nearly 50 miles. Neither explorer would recognize the area today. We are at 59° 02.68’N, just two miles below the Canadian border. We come on deck at first light to gaze upon the shriveled face of the once Grand Pacific Glacier, its ice barely visible beneath unsightly scree and rubble. This once-proud sculptor of landscapes can barely raise its head now, but still looks south to the glorious works of its youth. In tracing its route from north to south today, we can see 20,000 years of glaciation revealed in two rapid centuries.
We start next to Margerie Glacier whose gleaming white facade collapses spectacularly in an explosion of spray and ice. Above us the polished walls of the valley rise 6,000’, all burnished by ancient glaciers. Next we enter Johns Hopkins inlet. All the side glaciers here are in rapid retreat, exposing the amazing genesis of Southeast Alaska. Geologists, after painstaking detective forensics, deduce that the complex rock frittata here is a multiple continental pileup: rocks from Australia, the tropics, and the Golden Gate all collided to create these mountains. From bare, ice-scraped rock cliffs, we move to the barely vegetated limestone ledges of Gloomy Knob, where mountain goats gaze down upon us with lofty disdain. Here the first mountain avens grows like a fuzz on the rock, and in paltry pockets of soil the first cottonwood saplings strive for footing. South again, and across to Geikie Inlet, where time and warm Pacific rain have now nurtured a dense cottonwood forest. From here we steam southeast to South Marble island: sprawling sea lions flaunt tanned torsos on polished rocks. We scan the last gulls but the grassy ledges are empty of other seabirds. Summer is almost over: cormorants stand in line at the departure lounge, kittiwakes trade clamorous farewells. Averting our noses politely from the smell of sea lion slums, we too turn south. And just as we had given up hope, there on the polished pewter sea swells we spy them: puffins! A lone horned puffin clatters away from under the bow, but a splendid tufted puffin, still in his breeding finery, lingers on the water so we can admire his flowing flaxen locks and royal red bill. How lucky we are: a full day brought to a fine close with the last puffin of summer. At dusk we dock at Bartlett Cove and take a dusk walk in mature spruce forest, where Vancouver himself once gazed on nought but ice and rubble. We have wended our way in the wake of a glacier: from rock to rainforest in just 200 years.
