Bartlett Cove and Gustavus

We spent most of Sunday in Bartlett Cove, the only easily accessible part of Glacier Bay National Park. Two hundred years ago, Bartlett Cove was under the snout of the 100 mile long glacier that filled Glacier Bay.  Today, the accessible portion is a narrow strip of rocky beach (outfall from the glacier), the estuary of the Bartlett River, surrounded by dense forests of sitka spruce. Bartlett was a rich guy from Port Townsend Washington who bought property on the bay in 1884.

A series of salmon canneries came and went throughout 19th century. The last cannery went bust in 1903 and the buildings were abandoned and ultimately collapsed.  Glacier Bay National Monument was created in 1925 but no facilities were built here until the 1950s and 60s.  The Monument was designated as a Park and Preserve in 1980.

The folks at Glacier Bay Country Inn provide local transportation to guests, and we arranged a 9am pick up and 4pm return from the parking lot of the Glacier Bay Lodge.  (More than one visitor arriving at Gustavus Airport was confused about where they were staying: three of the six lodges in the area are named some form of “Glacier Bay lodge.”)

We began at the Glacier Bay National Park Visitor Center, tucked into the Lodge’s second floor. Small but mighty, it had an excellent series of interpretive exhibits. 

Sea otters were hunted almost to extinction in the 18th and 19th centuries, and have now been re-introduced in many parts of Alaska.  I was intrigued by the predator-prey relationship between sea urchins, otters and kelp, and the ecosystem benefits gained from urchin-chomping otters.

I continue to be fascinated by the magic of baleen, key to mystery of how 1.5 tons of food per day can pass through a gullet the size of a small grapefruit.

You may recall that the Old Farts were initiated into the mysteries of smart phone plant identification back in Cordova. We made frequent use of the feature – with decidedly mixed results – and were particularly perplexed by the question, “what berry is this?”  I was pleased to learn that it was not just our poor photography skills – who knew that Alaska had so many varieties of berries?

Leaving the visitor center, we circled around the lodge and visitor cabins to the beach, then walked along the Tlingit Trail.

The Huna Tribal House/Xunaa Shuká Hít is a cooperative project between the NPS and the Tlingit Tribe. Recall that Tlingit clans had villages in this area until 250 years ago when that 100 mile long glacier moved rapidly to fill the entire bay and the people dispersed to create new settlements around Icy Strait.  Today the Tribal House provides a space for the Tlingit to hold ceremonies and activities on ancestral lands, and provides a means to educate visitors on Tlingit culture and history through a film and conversations with a tribal interpreter. Unfortunately, no programs were offered on Sunday, so we were not able to go inside or view the film or programs. 

The Tribal House faces the bay, flanked by Eagle and Raven totem poles standing in their traditional position of welcome to visitors.

There is a third pole on the site, the Healing Totem Pole, commemorating the negotiations between the NPS and the Tlingit tribe that resulted in allowance of some traditional subsistence activities in the Park (like gathering gull eggs), and construction of the Tribal House.

We continued along the beach, then walked briefly along the automobile road to connect to the Bartlett River Trail, a 4 mile round-trip through the forest to the Bartlett River estuary.  The forest trail was very gnarly, with lots of rocks and roots.  Dominique and I picked our way slowly with Matt, while Crystal and Gary motored on ahead. Dominique and I turned back after a mile or so, and Matt walked on towards the estuary. No one made it through the whole loop, however, as the trail became impassably wet after about 2 miles.

NPS warning: “Be prepared to tangle with the alder. Sitka alder is a successional plant that grows in a mass along beach and stream edges, avalanche chutes and up mountain slopes. Hikers have been known to lose their minds attempting to hike through alder.”

We reconvened at the Lodge, lunching on the outside deck with great views of the Fairweather Range across the Bay.

After lunch, we joined Ranger Eli for an excellent guided walk on the one mile long Forest Loop Trail.

Our first stop was the shelter built to hold the skeleton of Snow the Humpback Whale.  Snow was well known in southeast Alaska waters, regularly being photographed and tracked by researchers for over 25 years, contributing to studies of humpback longevity, migration, calf survival, and male competition. She raised 14 calves, doing her bit to help species recovery after centuries of slaughter. Then, in the summer of 2001, pregnant Snow was found dead, floating belly up near the mouth of Glacier Bay.  She had been struck and killed by a cruise ship.  (Humpback whales do not have echo-location abilities like orcas.)

In the legal settlement that followed prosecution by the NPS and NOAA, the cruise line admitted that the crew of the Princess Dawn “failed to operate at a slow, safe speed” (an adopted regulation under the Endangered Species Act) while in the vicinity of two sighted humpback whales.  They paid a $200,000 fine and contributed $500,000 to the National Park Foundation as a form of restitution. The NPS also established a new, more stringent set of regulations for boats/ships operating in Glacier Bay: marine craft must stay in specific channels at a maximum speed of 20 knots, can’t approach nearer than one mile to shore, and cruise boats/ships must have 2 rangers on board, one a biologist who constantly scans for whales. The spotters have collected data on how often the vessels travel near whales—and how close they get – which is used to create a weekly map showing whales’ whereabouts. Cruise ships are supposed to be more vigilant in those hot spots, the cruise ships.

The NPS puts a positive spin on the incident, noting that Snow’s death galvanized an agreement that makes the Bay much safer for whales today. But Glacier Bay is (literally) a drop in the vast oceans that whales inhabit and the reality of whale mortality is still grim: the International Whaling Commission (IWC) reports that “collisions with vessels, strandings, marine debris  entanglement and bycatch in fishing gear (which is the biggest threat are estimated to kill more than 300,000 cetaceans every year.”  (Norway, Iceland and Japan are still whaling commercially.)

Canada recently enacted regulations in the Gulf of St. Lawrence similar to those in Glacier Bay, to reduce cruise ship collisions with whales. In the US, the Maritime Administration last year designated a new “Marine Highway” route along Alaska’s coast aimed at increasing vessel traffic without consideration of impacts to whales. The Center for Biological Diversity and the Sierra Club have sued to block the rule.

Meanwhile, after much deliberation, the NPS decided to keep Snow’s carcass and create an educational exhibit from her bones.  Snow decomposed on the beach for 15 months as rangers and volunteers collected small bones that came loose. Over the next 10 years, volunteers spent more than 1000 hours cleaning and preserving the skeleton, which was then shipped to a whale skeleton specialist in Maine for further cleaning and preservation work, repair of bones damaged in the fatal collision and eventual reassembly.  Snow’s skeleton was returned to the Park and placed on display in 2006, named Tsalx̲aan Tayee Yáyee (Whale beneath Mt. Fairweather) in Tlingit. The screenshot below gives a sense of scale, and the 2020 NPS video from which it’s taken provides a fascinating look at what has been learned and the challenges of ongoing preservation of this skeleton.

The Forest Loop Trail starts along the beach, then meanders through very thick spruce/hemlock forest along mostly flat dirt paths.  We learned to tell the conifers apart based on food metaphors: Sitka spruce bark looks like potato chips, while western spruce bark looks like bacon. 

There were ponds and muskegs deep inside the forest, and the path changed to a boardwalk.

Monday was our last day in Alaska. We were booked on the 5:30 pm (12 minute) flight to Juneau, so, after packing our bags, we spent the day exploring Gustavus. Gary and Crystal borrowed bikes and set off for the Gustavus Town Dock several miles away to go birding. Dominique, Matt and I got a lift from Bryce, one of the Lodge’s van drivers, to Gustavus’ one notable local sight: a trail to a plane crash.

In 1957, Gustavus was home to a military refueling airfield (the forerunner totoday’s airport). On November 23, a National Guard DC-47 tried to land for refueling, but had difficulty seeing the runway through a storm. On the third attempt to land, the plane’s right wing clipped a tree and the plant went down nose first. Four of the eleven men on board died in the crash. The plane’s crumpled and dismembered remains are still where they landed nearly 70 years ago, and locals have made it a memorial to the dead.

The walk meandered through familiar  spruce/hemlock forest: ankle turning roots, closely psaced trees and lots of mosses.

We started seeing airplane bits scattered on the forest floor several hundred yards before the fuselage appeared.

I was surprised at how intact the cabin was after all these years of rain and snow.

Bryce collected us after 45 minutes and dropped us off in downtown Gustavus.  Gary and Crystal conveniently pedaled up after struggling with a not-working bike, and Bryce took them and the bike back to the lodge for a replacement. The rest of us wandered around Gustavus hot spots, starting with Fireweed Coffee and Gallery.

Matt sampled the crepes while I learned about Melissa teaching McGonnegal the Moose to dance. 

There is an operating vintage gas station on the corner, with a local history collection inside.

We walked down the block to the Red Rooster for lunch.  Very fun interior and good food.

We had been hearing a lot about “Toshco,” and Bryce agreed to make a stop when he collected us after lunch. Toshco is a great story: During Covid, Gustavus’ only grocery store folded. There are non roads to Gustavus and supplies must be brought in by plane (expensive) or the by boat (6 hours to Juneau). A community minded business man (and musician) named Tosh Parker started taking people’s grocery lists with him when he boated over to Juneau’s Costco for supplies. Eventually, he decided to set up a small Costco-stocked grocery store – hence Toshco. In some Costco’s mega-packages are broken up and sold separately; in other cases the mega packs are retained. Prices seemed pretty reasonable and we were impressed by the selection – especially for perishables. Seems like a great resource for this small community.

Ever the gardener, I was intrigued by the selection of seeds.

We spent the last night at Juneau’s Best Western West Country Lane Inn, which is walking distance to the airport, had comfortable rooms and extensive free breakfast selection (which some of us could not take advantage of because of an early flight to Seattle).  

My last image of Alaska is flying low over the Icy Strait, watching the splashes and blows of dozens of Humpback whales feeding in the currents.