Glacier Bay National Park
Mist and fog lay serenely over the ocean this morning as a whale fluked just yards off of the bow. After making a quick stop at the Glacier Bay Lodge to pick up our ranger for the day, Kevin, we continued on into the park– into a clear, crisp, summer day bathed in sunshine. Spending almost all of the day on deck, we carved through two centuries of ice and natural history, experiencing first hand that which we had all read so much about in our guidebooks. As the ship slowed and each of us, binoculars in hand, gazed expectantly at the Marble Islands, we found it almost impossible to imagine that a century and forty-seven years ago this entire area was a sheet of blue ice.
Glacier Bay was first explored in 1879 by John Muir. It is one of the most popular National Park destinations, welcoming more than quarter million visitors each year. The park is also home to over a dozen tidewater glaciers. Alaska itself contains more than 100,000 glaciers, constituting just over a twentieth of the state’s 580,000 square miles of land.
Formed when yearly snowfall is greater than the amount melted, glaciers are the result of excess snow packed tightly under its own weight. Gravity pulls the ice (or glacier) towards the sea; the final moments of a tidewater glacier are when the warmer water weakens the ice, causing it to calve with a massive thunder.
We, the explorers of the M.V. Sea Lion, were lucky enough to visit 3 of the Park’s glaciers today; their immensity and vastness leaving us gaping at their magnificence. As Margerie Glacier calved and our ship rolled slowly in the resulting wake, our bartender, Steve, served us hot chocolate and peppermint patties on the bow…
A magnificent day in a phenomenal place…wish you were here.
Mist and fog lay serenely over the ocean this morning as a whale fluked just yards off of the bow. After making a quick stop at the Glacier Bay Lodge to pick up our ranger for the day, Kevin, we continued on into the park– into a clear, crisp, summer day bathed in sunshine. Spending almost all of the day on deck, we carved through two centuries of ice and natural history, experiencing first hand that which we had all read so much about in our guidebooks. As the ship slowed and each of us, binoculars in hand, gazed expectantly at the Marble Islands, we found it almost impossible to imagine that a century and forty-seven years ago this entire area was a sheet of blue ice.
Glacier Bay was first explored in 1879 by John Muir. It is one of the most popular National Park destinations, welcoming more than quarter million visitors each year. The park is also home to over a dozen tidewater glaciers. Alaska itself contains more than 100,000 glaciers, constituting just over a twentieth of the state’s 580,000 square miles of land.
Formed when yearly snowfall is greater than the amount melted, glaciers are the result of excess snow packed tightly under its own weight. Gravity pulls the ice (or glacier) towards the sea; the final moments of a tidewater glacier are when the warmer water weakens the ice, causing it to calve with a massive thunder.
We, the explorers of the M.V. Sea Lion, were lucky enough to visit 3 of the Park’s glaciers today; their immensity and vastness leaving us gaping at their magnificence. As Margerie Glacier calved and our ship rolled slowly in the resulting wake, our bartender, Steve, served us hot chocolate and peppermint patties on the bow…
A magnificent day in a phenomenal place…wish you were here.
