Glacier Bay National Park
The first sounds we heard this morning were the raspings of glacial ice knocking against our ship’s hull and rolling along her sides. This was a fitting welcome to Glacier Bay, as we were cruising into one of the bay’s most dramatic locations known as Johns Hopkins Inlet. All around us, steep rock walls sloped upwards to towering mountains draped here and there with glaciers or slender waterfalls.
In front of the ship, the massive bulk of Johns Hopkins Glacier arched down out of the surrounding mountains, ending in a towering wall of ice spanning the end of the bay. The water of the inlet was milky green with suspended sediments of finely ground glacial silt, and was peppered with “bergy bits” and small icebergs calved from the glacier into the sea. Harbor seals lay quietly staring at us from some of the larger floes.
During the early morning we were introduced to Mary Lou Blakeslee, a Glacier Bay National Park Ranger, who was our guest and local guide today as we toured this remote National Park. Throughout the day, she shared many interesting facts about the park, its glaciers and its unusual history.
After lingering near the face of the Johns Hopkins Glacier, we cruised back out of the inlet, pausing at the lovely, bluish ice in the Lamplugh Glacier. Three brown bears were sighted along the shore, and we pulled in for a closer look, as they wandered from the beach back into the brush.
We crossed the bay and cruised along the shores of Russell Island, scanning for more bears. The gentle green slopes of the hills were accented by yellow leaves of cottonwood trees showing the first hints of autumn. Other brown bears were spotted from the decks. One ambled up a steep sloped, pausing in view as it browsed.
We passed Gloomy Knob where mountain goats were perched on slender meadows between the bare rocky cliffs. The ship nosed into Tidal Inlet where bald eagles rested along the shore, and flocks of black-legged kittiwakes swirled in the air.
As we made our way back “down the bay,” we took another detour to explore the shores of Geikie Inlet, where yet another bear was barely visible lying in the tall shoreline grasses.
We retreated back into the lounge for tea with scones and sandwiches. Rikki finished her presentation on Photo Basics, and then our Ranger, Mary Lou, gave an illustrated presentation about birds, mammals of Glacier Bay, and her sense of the “sweet peace” to be found here.
By late afternoon we reached the Marble Islands. Here we spent time observing Steller sea lions hauled out on the rocky shores, and many roosting seabirds, including glimpses of the first known common murre chick to hatch in the park. There were many black-legged kittiwakes, glaucous-winged gulls and pelagic cormorants flying about the area.
We continued on southward to Bartlett Cove where we docked near the Glacier Bay Lodge, now closed for the winter, and the National Park headquarters. After dinner, many of us disembarked briefly to take a leg-stretching walk on the terminal moraine of the great glacier that once filled this magnificent bay only 200 years ago.
