Glacier Bay National Park
The Sea Lion’s bow cuts through milky teal blue water colored by finely ground rock bits suspended in the cold ocean water around us. The retreat of the glaciers far up into the head of this bay left behind exposed rocks heaped with morainal material and the drenching rains of Southeast Alaska wash the finer sediments down into the bay. This opaque coloration is one of the first signs that we are in the presence of massive ice flows.
Noisy and colorful South Marble Island offers nesting sites to many seabirds as well as a haulout for Steller sea lions. Fortunately for us, the delightful and comical tufted puffin has found this small island to be suitable for digging its special burrow nests. Black-legged kittiwakes, glaucous-winged gulls, common murres and pigeon guillemots add to cacophony of the scene while a fold in this smooth white island offers the season’s first flowering magenta spikes of fireweed.
A bit further up the bay, we scan the rocky beaches near the mouth of Tidal Inlet and are rewarded with views of a mother brown bear with an older cub. This area can be very productive for wildlife viewing and within a few minutes, two gray wolves enter the scene and briefly check out the beach so recently vacated by the bears. Then, just as we begin to motor away, a fortunate glance astern reveals four wolves trotting out of the forest and crossing the beach! What a wild, rare and wonderful sight.
As the ship rounded Jaw Point and Johns Hopkins Glacier still lay five miles ahead, we began to grasp the immensity of this raw and wild land. The winding track of the glacier makes it evident that it flows (though ever so slowly) down the mountainside and once we were positioned still about a mile away, its movement was more dramatically revealed by a large and exciting calving.
And so, southbound for Bartlett Cove and sated with so much wilderness and wildlife, we tucked into Geikie Inlet to explore one more sweet cove in a land with so many. There we found a black bear striding across the steep rocky slopes above us and… a wolverine running on the beach! This amazing and very rare sighting brought delight to us all.
The Sea Lion’s bow cuts through milky teal blue water colored by finely ground rock bits suspended in the cold ocean water around us. The retreat of the glaciers far up into the head of this bay left behind exposed rocks heaped with morainal material and the drenching rains of Southeast Alaska wash the finer sediments down into the bay. This opaque coloration is one of the first signs that we are in the presence of massive ice flows.
Noisy and colorful South Marble Island offers nesting sites to many seabirds as well as a haulout for Steller sea lions. Fortunately for us, the delightful and comical tufted puffin has found this small island to be suitable for digging its special burrow nests. Black-legged kittiwakes, glaucous-winged gulls, common murres and pigeon guillemots add to cacophony of the scene while a fold in this smooth white island offers the season’s first flowering magenta spikes of fireweed.
A bit further up the bay, we scan the rocky beaches near the mouth of Tidal Inlet and are rewarded with views of a mother brown bear with an older cub. This area can be very productive for wildlife viewing and within a few minutes, two gray wolves enter the scene and briefly check out the beach so recently vacated by the bears. Then, just as we begin to motor away, a fortunate glance astern reveals four wolves trotting out of the forest and crossing the beach! What a wild, rare and wonderful sight.
As the ship rounded Jaw Point and Johns Hopkins Glacier still lay five miles ahead, we began to grasp the immensity of this raw and wild land. The winding track of the glacier makes it evident that it flows (though ever so slowly) down the mountainside and once we were positioned still about a mile away, its movement was more dramatically revealed by a large and exciting calving.
And so, southbound for Bartlett Cove and sated with so much wilderness and wildlife, we tucked into Geikie Inlet to explore one more sweet cove in a land with so many. There we found a black bear striding across the steep rocky slopes above us and… a wolverine running on the beach! This amazing and very rare sighting brought delight to us all.
