Glacier Bay National Park
Sunny skies and calm seas are easily taken for granted this trip, but such fine weather is hardly the norm for Glacier Bay and Southeast Alaska where the skies are obscured 85% of the time. It is the height of spring this week as life in the sub-arctic responds to the long hours of daylight and the uncharacteristic brilliant sun. At South Marble Island this morning, the various groups of birds were busy mating or nesting and all of the alcids (puffins and their relations) were sporting beautiful breeding plumage.
A few fog banks added dimension to the scene as the National Geographic Sea Lion made her way northward following the retreat of the glacial ice that filled this bay as recently as 250 years ago. The ‘Little Ice Age’ was a short period of climate change that chased the Tlingit people from their homeland and swallowed the forests as the ice surged 65 miles down the bay. The dramatic glacial retreat has provided many excellent opportunities for research throughout the park.
Mountain goat nannies with newborn kids graced several of the rocky outcrops on the eastern shore of the bay. We held our collective breath as one of the tiny white goats slid down a steep slope several times before joining its mother on a precarious ledge. A bit further up bay, a large caramel colored brown bear made its way up a slope covered with Sitka alders and dandelions.
At the head of Tarr Inlet, many hours since getting underway from park headquarters early this morning, we stopped in front of the magnificent Margerie and Grand Pacific glaciers. Here these great rivers of ice touch the Pacific Ocean, and though the Grand Pacific glacier carved the bay, today it nearly rests on the land. The brilliant blues and whites of the Margerie glacier kept our focus for more than an hour as we sunbathed and enjoyed the sights and the sounds of the falling and cracking ice.
