Ideal Cove, LeConte Glacier, & Thomas Bay
An early riser breakfast greeted most of us as we prepared for a longer hike than we usually take. Ideal Cove has four beautiful little lakes like jewels set in green. The tide was low so we had to crunch our way over black mussel beds remembering that our path would be a plentiful place for other animals to feed after the tide came up again. We entered a primeval forest. It seemed that most everything was covered by a blanket of moss. Large Sitka spruce and hemlock trees gave a vertical appearance while the bright green leaves of blueberries floated in the foreground. After a mile of hiking on a boardwalk, the vegetation opened into muskegs, a stream and the lakes. A few Sitka black-tailed deer grazed nearby. The “coolest” creature of the day was a rough-skinned newt featured in today’s photograph. This is the most northern part of the range of this salamander. The orange on the underside of this poisonous amphibian is a warning color to potential predators. These creatures secrete tetrodotoxin, one of the most potent neurotoxins known to science. It is 10 to 100 times as deadly as the venom from a black widow and 10,000 times as deadly as cyanide. Fortunately no one was compelled to kiss this little one to release someone from a spell.
After lunch, we boarded Zodiacs and poked around the floating and grounded ice of LeConte Glacier. Winding down 22 miles from the Stikine Ice Field, this river of ice moves downhill at a rate of about 90 feet per day. All that ice calves off the terminus into the sea. That would be like an ice cube 500 feet on each side. It then floats out of the fiord and many run aground on the shallow terminal moraines near the entrance to LeConte Bay. We gazed into 200-year-old ice that possibly fell as snow when Captain Vancouver was exploring nearby. If the saying is true that the ice appears bluer on overcast days, then we were here at the perfect time. It sure looked blue to us.
Soon after warming up, we cruised north to Thomas Bay. On the way we watched a black bear foraging on intertidal sedges. Beyond the braided streams and glacial outwash plain lies the Baird’s Glacier. Scenic Cove is one of the small protected offshoots that beckons one to enter. High cliffs and a small meadow at the end give this little place its name. It was here that our day came to an end.
An early riser breakfast greeted most of us as we prepared for a longer hike than we usually take. Ideal Cove has four beautiful little lakes like jewels set in green. The tide was low so we had to crunch our way over black mussel beds remembering that our path would be a plentiful place for other animals to feed after the tide came up again. We entered a primeval forest. It seemed that most everything was covered by a blanket of moss. Large Sitka spruce and hemlock trees gave a vertical appearance while the bright green leaves of blueberries floated in the foreground. After a mile of hiking on a boardwalk, the vegetation opened into muskegs, a stream and the lakes. A few Sitka black-tailed deer grazed nearby. The “coolest” creature of the day was a rough-skinned newt featured in today’s photograph. This is the most northern part of the range of this salamander. The orange on the underside of this poisonous amphibian is a warning color to potential predators. These creatures secrete tetrodotoxin, one of the most potent neurotoxins known to science. It is 10 to 100 times as deadly as the venom from a black widow and 10,000 times as deadly as cyanide. Fortunately no one was compelled to kiss this little one to release someone from a spell.
After lunch, we boarded Zodiacs and poked around the floating and grounded ice of LeConte Glacier. Winding down 22 miles from the Stikine Ice Field, this river of ice moves downhill at a rate of about 90 feet per day. All that ice calves off the terminus into the sea. That would be like an ice cube 500 feet on each side. It then floats out of the fiord and many run aground on the shallow terminal moraines near the entrance to LeConte Bay. We gazed into 200-year-old ice that possibly fell as snow when Captain Vancouver was exploring nearby. If the saying is true that the ice appears bluer on overcast days, then we were here at the perfect time. It sure looked blue to us.
Soon after warming up, we cruised north to Thomas Bay. On the way we watched a black bear foraging on intertidal sedges. Beyond the braided streams and glacial outwash plain lies the Baird’s Glacier. Scenic Cove is one of the small protected offshoots that beckons one to enter. High cliffs and a small meadow at the end give this little place its name. It was here that our day came to an end.
