Glacier Bay National Park
Spending a day in Glacier Bay National Park is like traveling through a geological and botanical time tunnel of over 200 years. When explorer George Vancouver passed by in 1794 there was no bay, only glacier. He traveled in a strait filled with icebergs, and thus named it Icy Strait. Today, however, the glaciers have retreated over sixty-five miles and Icy Strait rarely contains any ice.
As we proceed this sixty-five miles up the bay, we journey in reverse botanical succession with early in the morning seeing land that has been glacier free for over 200 years and a nice forest of Sitka spruce and western hemlock. The next few hours pass through scrubby willow/alder forest all the way up to the glacier with bare rock and the pioneer covering of lichens. The first spores arrive by wind and colonize bare rock that was covered with ice possibly only this winter, thus completing our journey from forest to ice in a matter of only a few scenic hours.
Arriving at the Grand Pacific and Margerie glaciers, we are amazed at the difference in the two. The Grand Pacific is a massive, dirty wall of ice covered in rock and silt brought in by the Ferris glacier on its side. The two-mile face is brown and appears inactive, and attention is quickly diverted to the brilliant blue face of the neighboring Margerie glacier. Rising over two hundred feet above the water, the face is crenulated and large chunks plunge into the water as about nine feet of thickness of the entire face calve every day. The nearby Johns Hopkins glacier provides for a stunning view, with hanging glaciers in the surrounding valleys and the water filled with icebergs.
Abundant wildlife is another reason for exploring Glacier Bay. Tufted puffins nest in burrows on South Marble Island and are comical with their long yellow tufts. Steller’s sea lions haul out nearby, and sound like a group of barnyard animals having minor battles with each other. Otters roll in the kelp, mountain goats cling to gloomy knob, and harbor seals patrol the shoreline. All of this with a backdrop of snow covered peaks makes for one of the most stunning locations on earth. As described by John Muir, “Never before this had I been embosomed in scenery so hopelessly beyond description.”
Spending a day in Glacier Bay National Park is like traveling through a geological and botanical time tunnel of over 200 years. When explorer George Vancouver passed by in 1794 there was no bay, only glacier. He traveled in a strait filled with icebergs, and thus named it Icy Strait. Today, however, the glaciers have retreated over sixty-five miles and Icy Strait rarely contains any ice.
As we proceed this sixty-five miles up the bay, we journey in reverse botanical succession with early in the morning seeing land that has been glacier free for over 200 years and a nice forest of Sitka spruce and western hemlock. The next few hours pass through scrubby willow/alder forest all the way up to the glacier with bare rock and the pioneer covering of lichens. The first spores arrive by wind and colonize bare rock that was covered with ice possibly only this winter, thus completing our journey from forest to ice in a matter of only a few scenic hours.
Arriving at the Grand Pacific and Margerie glaciers, we are amazed at the difference in the two. The Grand Pacific is a massive, dirty wall of ice covered in rock and silt brought in by the Ferris glacier on its side. The two-mile face is brown and appears inactive, and attention is quickly diverted to the brilliant blue face of the neighboring Margerie glacier. Rising over two hundred feet above the water, the face is crenulated and large chunks plunge into the water as about nine feet of thickness of the entire face calve every day. The nearby Johns Hopkins glacier provides for a stunning view, with hanging glaciers in the surrounding valleys and the water filled with icebergs.
Abundant wildlife is another reason for exploring Glacier Bay. Tufted puffins nest in burrows on South Marble Island and are comical with their long yellow tufts. Steller’s sea lions haul out nearby, and sound like a group of barnyard animals having minor battles with each other. Otters roll in the kelp, mountain goats cling to gloomy knob, and harbor seals patrol the shoreline. All of this with a backdrop of snow covered peaks makes for one of the most stunning locations on earth. As described by John Muir, “Never before this had I been embosomed in scenery so hopelessly beyond description.”
