Glacier Bay

We spent Friday on an all day boat tour of Glacier Bay, arranged for us through the Glacier Bay Country Inn.

Glacier Bay National Park extends across 3.3 million acres of varied ecosystems (mountains, glaciers, fjords, coastline and temperate rainforests) and is part of a four park, 25-million acre World Heritage Site, one of the largest protected areas in the world.

Glacier Bay itself covers about 608,000 acres, including 760 miles of coastline, multiple islands and over 50 named glaciers.  Part of the Inland Passage, it is prime viewing territory for cruise ships.

All of these glaciers were once part of one sheet of ice that extended across the entire bay.

Towards the end of the 17th century, there was a broad valley located at the terminus of this gigantic glacier, site of a thriving Tlingit community.

At the beginning of the 18th century, the glacier, which had been largely stationary for generations, started to advance very quickly, completely covering the valley in less than 50 years. The Tlingit clans dispersed into lands around around the Icy Strait and nearby inlets.

By the latter half of the 18th century, the glacier was in retreat, having already receded by five miles when Captain George Vancouver arrived in 1794.  By the time John Muir arrived (searching for active glaciers to confirm his hypothesis that the Yosemite Valley was glacial in origin), the glacier had retreated more than 40 miles since Vancouver’s visit. Muir visited Alaska seven times between 1879 and 1899, and his compiled notes and studies were published posthumously as Travels in Alaska (downloadable for free from the Sierra Club). Muir’s naturalist writings put Glacier Bay on the tourist map.

Today, the jumbo size glacier that once covered the bay is gone, divided into much smaller tributaries. Boats travel 65 miles up the bay to view the toes of these tidewater glaciers. As the NPS says, “Polar regions respond to changes in climate at faster rates than temperate and equatorial regions do. How will Glacier Bay change in your lifetime?”

The (non-cruise ship) Glacier Bay boat tour departs from the public landing dock at Bartlett Cove, site of the National Park Service Visitor Center, HQ and visitor lodge. It chugs up and down all 65 miles of bay, visiting wildlife sites and glaciers along the way.  (There is a downloadable NPS app with loads of information on Glacier Bay – and 400 other parks.)  

I’ve tried to reproduce the route in pictures, below. Please forgive any glacier naming errors: I’m no geologist, and they all look pretty much the same to me. 

This was the largest boat we rode, with two levels and a capacity of about 150 people.

This “day boat” is operated by Allen Marine Tours, with bookings through the Park’s concessioner, Glacier Bay Lodge, or other lodges in the area. All boats have 2 rangers on board, one to provide tour information and another on the bridge to spot whales (about which more later).

Our first wildlife viewing stop was South Marble Island, a birders’ paradise which earns its own spot on the NPS app. ,The Audubon society raves about these islands, and we could see why. There were hordes of black guillemots, tufted puffins, pelagic cormorants, glaucous gulls and harbor seals.

For us, the Tufted Puffins were the stars of the show. In the breeding season (now) these little guys sport long, pale yellow head plumes and huge red beaks in a white face.  (When not breeding they are much more drab: gray face, orange and gray bill and only a hint of plumes.)  Like all puffins, they live at sea for most of the year, only returning to land to breed on the nesting cliff from which they hatched. They are always in motion and very hard to photograph.

Leaving the Marble Islands, we steamed north to Muir Point, where we picked up four kayakers.

Backcountry kayakers jump through a lot of hoops to get an NPS permit, then arrange drop-off/pick-up times with the Allen Marine Day Boat. They can’t camp within the intertidal zone due to high tides (generally 5-18 feet) and must camp within 1 mile of the pickup point on the night before pickup. Backcountry hikers are usually dropped off by plane.

We turned down the Tidal Inlet located just before Gloomy Knob to watch a brown bear galloping across the shingle beach.

The steep cliff at Gloomy Knob was mountain goat territory.

From Gloomy Knob, we sailed into glacier territory, passing several steep, narrow inlets with glaciers at the end.

Our first glacier stop was at the end of the bay, where the Margerie Glacier and the Grand Pacific Glacier terminate.  Thirty years ago these 2 glaciers touched in the water. Now the Grand Pacific glacier is only visible from the water as moraine.  

We spent some time here, watching for glacial calves and listening to the snap-crackle-pop of bergy bits in the water.

Turning south, we steamed around Jaw Point to take a peek at Johns Hopkins and Lamplugh Glaciers.

Why Johns Hopkins, we wondered? Johns Hopkins was a 19th century philanthropist who made a fortune in business and used part of that fortune to found a university and teaching hospital. He lived in Baltimore and had nothing to do with Alaska. The glacier was named after the university by a geophysics professor who worked at the university and did early work on glaciers and earthquakes.

In the Reid Glacier Inlet, we saw another brown bear on the shoreline.

We saw 2 humpbacks near the Geikie Inlet (which used to be a glacier) and picked up 2 more kayakers at the Muir Inlet across the way.

And that was the day! Eight lovely hours in the bay, with the weather turning fine as we steamed back to dock.