Stunning Glacier Bay

Tuesday, 19 May 2015

Today has really felt like Alaska. Overnight, we motored up to the entrance to Glacier Bay, which our boat's permit allowed us to enter only after midnight. We stopped to take on fuel and water at Bartlett Cove, and the ranger Marylou Blakeslee (also the girlfriend of our naturalist Rich) and Tlinglit native Leonty Williaams, joined us to be our escorts for the day.

The morning we spent n the bow of the boat, wathcing his magnificent kandscape unfold in front of us, and seeing amazing wildllife.  After breakfast we arrived at South Marble Island, filled with Stelller sea lionis, gulls, cormorannts sand one bald eagle. As the eagle left its perch, all the gulls swarmed up and circled around to avoid becoming the eagle's breakfast. As we moved up the bay, we encountered more birds, the famous tufted puffin, a rare loon, a yellow-billed something,, and then father along, sea otters floating lazily on their backs

Glacier Bay is a relatively recent phenomenon. In 1750 as part o f a Little Ice Age, the glacier went all the way to Icy Strait, so what  is now the bay was covered with glacier fronted by a small delta where the Tlingit lived. Over time the glacier became the fastest receding glacier in the world, so that by 1879 when John Muir came here, the former glacier was now a deep icy bay. Today, the glacier is 65 miles up from where it formerly ended. Were spending the day going up the bay to the head of the glacier, and then later we'll be coming back down to the entrance to walk in the forest at Bartlett Cove. the glacier is the fastest receding and one of  of the fastest melting at the same time.

One of our first large wildllife sighting was a brown bear on the rocky beach at the Tidal Inlet past the Tlingit Point. At first ti was hard to see, then we all spotted it. We were all asked to keep our voices down, and the boat drew close enough to see the bear well through the binoculars. The bear was turning over large rocks as if they were empty shoeboxes, looking for fish. Because it is early in the season (before salmon) they eat small fish and berries. At one point he looked square at us ... the naturalist Rich said the bear could definitely see and hear and smell us and knew we were there. After a while he returned to his feeding and we watched, enraptured.

Turning around we cruised out back to the bay, going around a relatively bare rock called Gloomy Knob. It seemed gloomy indeed, until we began to see the mountain goats, for whom this area is a birthing ground. Suddenly 1,2 3, then 6 white goats appeared, and what seemed to be a barren rock had small grassy areas and some trees. Ranger Bettylou told us that one was likely giving birth soon, as her rear was bloody and she kept squatting and hunching over. We followed her for a while with our binoculars, and it became clear that she was the lead nanny, with all the others following her whenever she moved to a new area.

Continuing up the bay past Queen Inlet and Rendu Inlet, we had a quick lunch of focaccia sandwiches and salad, then back out as we passed Russell Island going toward the very top of the Bay. large Holland America cruise ship came into view (about 13 decks), which loomed large when compared to us, but even it seemed small against the glaciers and mountains.

As we neared the top of the Bay we entered an ice field, with relatively large bits of ice floating in the water, looking so small against the glacier. Finally we arrived at Margerie Glacier, the most remote in the Bay, which was actively "calving" or losing pieces of ice into the water. We learned that when a piece of the glacier hits the water, it makes a huge sound called "white thunder." Suddenly we heard loud cracks and pops every few minutes, signaling some piece would soon break off. Sometimes these were on the front of the glacier where we could see them (short video below) and sometimes they were far back, echoing around the snowy walls behind the glacier face. For more than an hour we sat at the bow, watching and waiting for the "big one" and come it did come, loudly, near the end of the hour. Then we turned and headed the 60 miles back down the Bay through the afternoon, again looking for wildlife. I took the opportunity to sit on the fantail (third deck) in the sun writing my notes so I would not forget them. This is truly a breathtaking landscape.