It gets light between 4:00 and 5:00 a.m., so it was no problem for us to wake up at 5:30 to meet Steve & Esther for breakfast in the Glacier Bay Lodge at 6:00. We each had side orders of eggs and bacon as we prepared for our day on the water.
We were supposed to be on the dock at 7:15 for a 7:30 departure on the 150-passenger St. Yakov for our 8-hour boat tour into Glacier Bay. This was to be the highlight of our visit to our 45th National Park.
Fortunately, we only had about 40 people on today's tour.
Ranger Erica was our park interpreter and guide for the day.
Most of the folks on our tour claimed seats on the upper deck while a few of us remained down below where we could spread out and move from side to side easily. We would scramble up on top when photo opportunities presented themselves.
I took a sea otter shot before we got very far.
We saw sea otters all day, but we didn't often have the chance to get a good photo.
As we passed the Beardslee Islands on our right (east), we saw lots of distant whale spouts and passed more otters and a few sea lions, but it wasn't worth going out in the rain and cold wind to try to get far off photos.
Eventually, we came to our first wildlife hot spot, South Marble Island. We added layers and went up to the upper deck where others were braving the cold getting ready to view sea lions and more.
As we approached the island, we could see an abundance of sea lions and birds.
The Steller Sea Lion is the largest of all the seal lion species, and the big boy on the top of the rock was definitely one of the largest I've seen.
Around the island we had Glaucous-winged Gulls, Mew Gulls, Pelagic Cormorants, Common Murres, Marbeled Murrelets, and Tufted Puffins.
Here's a puffin in take-off mode.
This was the best shot I could get on a fly-by.
These are Pelagic Cormorants hanging out on the wall with the gulls.
We stuck around the island a while watching the puffins and other birds along with the sea lions.
And off the point on the north end of the island, we had a couple of Humpbacks.
We proceeded up Glacier Bay past North Marble Island where the east arm of the bay veers off to the right. The smaller east arm is closed to motorized boat traffic, so all vessels with motors, including cruise ships and tour boats, must go up the longer, wider west arm. To keep traffic down, only two cruise ships (of at least 100 gross tons) are allowed in Glacier Bay per day, and only 3 tour boats (less than 100 gross tons carrying more than 49 passengers) are allowed per day.
Continuing north, we turned into a narrow fjord called Tidal Inlet where we went in quite a ways. And, on the way out, the captain spotted a brown bear scrambling up the side of the mountain - this mountain.
It was crazy. Even the ranger said she'd never seen a bear climb a mountain that steep.
Once it got to this rock, it stopped to take a rest.
Then it scrambled on leaving little mini-slides from its footsteps ....
and it just kept climbing.
I could barely see it through the camera lens as it was, so I put the camera down and watched through my binoculars until it finally disappeared. That was amazing.
As we were leaving Tidal Inlet, Esther watched the National Geographic Explorer ship Quest come in.
Next, we stopped at these rocks known as Gloomy Knob.
Scanning the rocks we spotted nine mountain goats, although we primarily watched them through binoculars. I tried to get a few pictures, but they aren't great.
These four were lying down, so they were harder to see.
We could check them of the wildlife sighting list, but we had much better views of mountain goats in Glacier National Park in Montana.
Oh yeah, there were more Tufted Puffins in the water below the goats.
Just around the corner from Gloomy Knob, another passenger spotted our second brown bear, and this one was feeding by the shore and didn't seem too concerned about us.
Farther up the coast, just past Rendu Inlet, I spotted another brown bear, and just as I was saying "No, there are two", Linda chimed in with "There are three!". Yep, three brown bears turning over rocks and feeding along the shoreline.
They were flipping huge rocks like they were pebbles ....
and they were eating whatever tiny bits of food they could find under them.
We stayed with those bears for several minutes before needing to move on. That was cool. Ranger Erica thought that those three were sub-adults foraging together.
On the way to our next destination, this Black Oystercatcher flew alongside long enough to snap a shot.
From there, we went east of Russell Island and up into Tarr Inlet. Some folks saw another bear as it quickly disappeared into the trees.
At the end of Tarr Inlet is Grand Pacific Glacier, the grandmother of Glacier Bay. In the 1700s, during what is known as the Little Ice Age, this glacier surged at rapid speed and overtook what had been a fertile valley, and it proceeded all the way past Bartlett Cove and the current Park Headquarters sixty-five miles away. By 1800, it had receded five miles, and by the late 1800s, it had receded 50 miles and saltwater flowed in behind it creating Glacier Bay. It's receded another 15 miles since then to its present face and is continuing to recede. In not too many years, it may no longer reach the sea and cease to be a tidewater glacier.
Grand Pacific is huge at 2 miles across, but the face is black with debris the glacier has picked up, so it isn't as stunning to look at up close. Here's a view from a distance showing the ice above the black face as a cruise ship passes in front.
As impressive as the Grand Pacific Glacier is, especially considering it carved Glacier Bay, most people are far more interested in the prettier, more typical Margerie Glacier next door.
In the photo below, we are approaching Margerie Glacier on the left which is clearly visible and Grand Pacific Glacier on the right which is almost unnoticeable because it doesn't look like what most people expect to see.
We too were more focused on Margerie. This shot with the cruise ship provides some perspective as to the size of the glacier.
Everyone crowded around on the viewing deck as we approached.
In the photo below, in the upper left, you can see a piece of the upper glacier as it comes down out of the Fairweather Mountain Range.
The top of the face of the glacier had some wonderful sculptured shapes.
Margerie also moves faster than many of the glaciers in the bay, so it is more likely to provide calving events for us tourists. We were able to witness a little calving during our short stay.
Here's our crew watching and waiting for the ice to crack and fall.
A Harbor Seal swam by, and this was, surprisingly, our best look at a seal during the tour.
Eventually, we motored away leaving the cruise ship floating in front of Grand Pacific Glacier.
And we left this fishing boat in front of Margerie providing a bit different perspective.
As we exited Tarr Inlet, the low lying clouds obscured the mountain views, but it was still eerily beautiful.
Of course, this was a pretty typical day in Glacier Bay. You are far more likely to have the mountains clouded in than to have a bright, sunny sky.
Heading back, we turned into Johns Hopkins Inlet for a distant view of Johns Hopkins Glacier.
That was supposed to be our "wow factor" view, but it just wasn't quite as impressive as our boat crew had hoped due to the weather. Here's a zoom in on the glacier through the mist.
Now, this glacier is very active and is said to be one of the few advancing glaciers, but we weren't allowed to go any farther as the waters are closed May 1 - June 30 to protect pupping Harbor Seals. We could see a few seals on the ice flows with our binoculars.
From there, we reversed and passed by rocks with high waterfalls flowing into the aqua waters.
We then passed slowly by Lamplugh Glacier, also known as "blue glacier" due to the more intense blue color in its ice facing.
Lamplugh recently ceased being a "tidewater" glacier as it no longer reaches the water - it now terminates on land, just short of the ocean. But it's still impressive.
Actually, I think Lamplugh may be my favorite glacier of the day.
We passed by our next glacier, Reid Glacier, fairly quickly and I just took a single photo through the window.
This Black-legged Kittiwake flew alongside.
They are known to hang out at the faces of glaciers and feed on the fish that are splashed up when calving ice hits the water. I'm not sure it that's a new bird for us. We'll have to check our book and records.
Now, a bird we saw that I'm sure is a new one for us was the Kittlitz's Murrelet, as it has a very limited range and is found almost exclusively in glacial areas of Alaska. I couldn't get a photo of these low flying torpedoes, but we did get some verified looks.
From Reid Glacier, we picked up speed as we made our way back. The only thing that slowed us down were whales in our path.
We had a few more spouts and flukes on the way in to Bartlett Cove.
We thought that was the end of our sightings, but I spotted a Black Bear along the shore very near our campground. It was a long way from the boat, but Ranger Erica confirmed it was indeed a bear, and she thought it was one she recognized.
Before I go on, let me say that Ranger Erica was one of the best guides we've ever had in all of our travels and tours. She was knowledgeable, enthusiastic, and handled the many questions and personalities with grace and tact. We had a great day, but even if we hadn't she would have convinced us we had. Two big thumbs up for her.
Also, the crew on the boat was great. They set out little samplers all day, and they served complimentary tea and coffee along with the included bowl of clam chowder and lunchtime sandwiches, plus peanut butter cookies (which we had to painfully turn down). They also handled our special requests to eliminate the bread and filled our water bottles upon request. Yes, this tour is pricey at about $225 per person, but we got real value out of this one.
As soon as we docked and disembarked, I headed toward the campground to see if I could find the bear that was on the beach. I found two ladies that had been walking the beach, but they just said "What bear?" However, I found another young lady that said she encountered a bear on the trail in the campground. Apparently, they startled each other and it ran off into the deeper woods.
Oh well, I took pictures of flowers while I was on the beach.
These are wild strawberries which are abundant. In fact, before the town was named Gustavus, it was called Strawberry Point.
While I was bear hunting, Linda was beach combing.
She gets so focused, she wouldn't see a bear if it walked out in front of her. Perhaps we should stay closer together.
And as you can see from the above photo, once we got back from the boat tour, the weather started to improve.
Later, we met Steve & Esther in the lodge for dinner, and then we went to an evening program at the Xunaa Shuká HÃt (roughly translated as Huna Ancestors’ House).
As I mentioned earlier, the Grand Pacific Glacier surged down the valley in the 1700s in the Little Ice Age wiping out many of the Huna Tlingit tribal villages and chasing them away from their homeland. They eventually re-established themselves as the glacier receded.
However, the establishment of Glacier Bay National Monument (and it's later designation as a National Park) led to many years of animosity and strained relations between the tribal people and the National Park Service. This "house" is the result of healing and a cooperative effort to promote and re-invigorate the native cultures and activities. This "tribal house" was dedicated August 25, 2016 and was billed as sort of a "homecoming" for the Tlingits.
This evening, as we sat on benches around a fire in the center of the house, Ranger Sonya, a Huna Tlingit, took us on a journey through the history of her tribe all the way up to the cooperative effort to establish this symbol of their return to their homeland. It felt like a sacred space, so the first thing I did was make sure it was okay to take photographs.
She explained that her tribe is divided into four clans, and that each clan is represented on the four "house posts", and in other carvings on the walls.
It was a solemn, informative presentation that we all enjoyed. Afterward, Ranger Sonya, chatted with attendees.
Then Linda and Esther inspected the amazing carvings on the main wall ....
while I took a few more photos and tried to recall the meanings and interrelationships of the various symbols and carvings.
You can read more about the Tribal House here and here, and you can learn more about the 2016 dedication here. It's quite interesting.
When we left, we separated from Esther & Steve and headed back toward the campground. We took the long way along the Forest Trail hoping to see some wildlife and experience some quiet time on the benches next to the pond. Unfortunately, three groups from the docked National Geographic boat were on the trail.
It was still a bit early to go to bed, so we ventured to the beach and looked at the distant mountains.
After one more photo, we finally called it a night.
So, that was a full, memorable day and the costs and logistics to make it happen were worth it. Hope you enjoyed tagging along.
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