Glacier Bay
Early this morning we arrived in Glacier Bay. We had traveled to the far northern end at Tarr Inlet, below the conjoined terminus of rubble-covered Grand Pacific and blue-faced Marjorie Glaciers. Here we watched in awe, speaking in superlatives: “Fantastic. Incredible. Awesome. Wonderful.”
Lit by dawning light piercing wisps of fog, Marjorie gushed gray water from beneath its snout and dropped blue bergs into a narrow inlet choked with growlers. White sea birds swirled as shattered pinnacles fell from Marjorie’s 200 foot face. Meanwhile, insulated in a blanket of moraine, the Grand Pacific was quiet. Eventually the Sea Bird turned and we motored off to John Hopkins Inlet.
The entrance to John Hopkins was steep and high. Less than 100 years ago, John Muir reported this place buried in ice. Today its south facing cliffs to a height of 300 feet are green with alder brush and even cottonwood trees. Heading up the inlet, this small bit of forest and brush gave way to green herbs and moss, and that bit of life gave way to rock, ice, and snow atop a barren geology of plucked schist and polished granite.
The Sea Bird pushed past icebergs into head wind and shadow. Chilled fingers focused cameras and binoculars on a glossary of glaciology: hanging, valley, and tidewater glaciers spilling from ice-fields and cirques; seracs, cornices, horns, and arêtes framing summits and ridges; crevasses, moulins, and moraines adorning perennial ice. Below us plunged twelve hundred feet of fiord water. Above us rose twelve thousand feet of mountain mass.
We glacier gazed for hours beneath a brisk, cloudless sky. Then the captain turned the Sea Bird to take us back to the vegetated Bay in search of bears. As reported here previously, we have seen most of the “must-see” mammals: otters, harbor seals, Steller sea lions, orcas, and humpback whales. As for brown bears—only their sign.
Suffering from a touch of “bearanoia,” an unreasonable fear of NOT seeing a bear, we scrutinized the coast. In the glacier colored waters bordering the cobble beach, we found birds aplenty, but nary a bear. Eyes weary, we took lunch al fresco.
After eating we stopped at the mouth of a creek draining a dramatic dolomite headland and birded on the balmy bow: dense rafts of scoters, small gangs of puffins, clusters of murrelets, flocks of harlequin ducks, pods of mergansers. Upstream gulls, ravens, and a trio of eagles picked over salmon. Above on multi-colored ridge tops, white mountain goats moved over meadows and scree. It was an altogether idyllic scene from sea to summit.
It was there, in that lovely cove of wild diversity, that someone called, “Brown bears!” Shoulder deep in water, a tawny brown mother fished with her straw yellow cub. Exhilarated with this climax to our day, we studied them in whispers. Eventually they moved behind alders and we drifted on, blessed by good luck and magic in Glacier Bay.
Early this morning we arrived in Glacier Bay. We had traveled to the far northern end at Tarr Inlet, below the conjoined terminus of rubble-covered Grand Pacific and blue-faced Marjorie Glaciers. Here we watched in awe, speaking in superlatives: “Fantastic. Incredible. Awesome. Wonderful.”
Lit by dawning light piercing wisps of fog, Marjorie gushed gray water from beneath its snout and dropped blue bergs into a narrow inlet choked with growlers. White sea birds swirled as shattered pinnacles fell from Marjorie’s 200 foot face. Meanwhile, insulated in a blanket of moraine, the Grand Pacific was quiet. Eventually the Sea Bird turned and we motored off to John Hopkins Inlet.
The entrance to John Hopkins was steep and high. Less than 100 years ago, John Muir reported this place buried in ice. Today its south facing cliffs to a height of 300 feet are green with alder brush and even cottonwood trees. Heading up the inlet, this small bit of forest and brush gave way to green herbs and moss, and that bit of life gave way to rock, ice, and snow atop a barren geology of plucked schist and polished granite.
The Sea Bird pushed past icebergs into head wind and shadow. Chilled fingers focused cameras and binoculars on a glossary of glaciology: hanging, valley, and tidewater glaciers spilling from ice-fields and cirques; seracs, cornices, horns, and arêtes framing summits and ridges; crevasses, moulins, and moraines adorning perennial ice. Below us plunged twelve hundred feet of fiord water. Above us rose twelve thousand feet of mountain mass.
We glacier gazed for hours beneath a brisk, cloudless sky. Then the captain turned the Sea Bird to take us back to the vegetated Bay in search of bears. As reported here previously, we have seen most of the “must-see” mammals: otters, harbor seals, Steller sea lions, orcas, and humpback whales. As for brown bears—only their sign.
Suffering from a touch of “bearanoia,” an unreasonable fear of NOT seeing a bear, we scrutinized the coast. In the glacier colored waters bordering the cobble beach, we found birds aplenty, but nary a bear. Eyes weary, we took lunch al fresco.
After eating we stopped at the mouth of a creek draining a dramatic dolomite headland and birded on the balmy bow: dense rafts of scoters, small gangs of puffins, clusters of murrelets, flocks of harlequin ducks, pods of mergansers. Upstream gulls, ravens, and a trio of eagles picked over salmon. Above on multi-colored ridge tops, white mountain goats moved over meadows and scree. It was an altogether idyllic scene from sea to summit.
It was there, in that lovely cove of wild diversity, that someone called, “Brown bears!” Shoulder deep in water, a tawny brown mother fished with her straw yellow cub. Exhilarated with this climax to our day, we studied them in whispers. Eventually they moved behind alders and we drifted on, blessed by good luck and magic in Glacier Bay.
