Our cruise ship sailed into Glacier Bay National Park (not to be confused with Glacier National Park, which has virtually no glaciers left). We had perfect weather, which happens rarely in Glacier Bay. You are lucky if you just have a cloudy day without fog or rain.
We visited the Margerie Glacier at the end of the Tarr Inlet. Glacier Bay, nicknamed Thunder Bay for the sound of falling ice, offers the most impressive scenery I have ever seen anywhere. 250 feet high glacial walls calve into tidal water. Because visibility was excellent our ship also briefly sailed to the entrance of the Johns Hopkins Inlet, not on the standard itinerary. At the far end of this inlet is the majestic Johns Hopkins Glacier which comes off the St Elias Mountains, which frame this sea-level inlet with ten-thousand foot slopes. The Johns Hopkins Glacier is an anomaly in that it is advancing, not retreating. Near the source of the glacier is Mount Fairweather, at 15,300 feet higher than any mountain in the continental US and even more impressive because it stands between the Pacific Coast and Glacier Bay, rising from sea-level. Mount Fairweather was named by Captain Cook who saw it on a fair day. The park ranger said the joke is that that was the last time the mountain was ever seen. But is was clearly visible today with its big white dome.
Oh yes, forgot a few details … We saw a bear family spending a day at the beach, countless seals, many birds, some sea otters and a pod of humpback whales breaching in the distance.
My first trip to Glacier Bay, thirty years ago with my Dutch friend Gerard, we sailed all the way into the Johns Hopkins Inlet on a small excursion boat. Very few people get to go there now because of the iceflows and because the park service closes it most of the summer to protect the harbor seals who raise their young on the ice. The weather was not as brilliant back in 1982, but visibility was good enough. Near the glacier the tour captain cut the engines. I then became aware of the deafening silence that hung over the place. There was a high overcast that obscured the mountain tops. The walls of the inlet and the glacier disappeared into the cloud ceiling, as if forming a giant cathedral. We were surrounded by seals and their young on iceflows but they did not make a sound. For a moment it seemed every one and everything was quiet out of respect for this majestic place. Then the glacier started to put on a show. At one point a whole ice wall came crashing down, with a thunderous roar and the waves tossed our small boat back and forth.
[Photograph © 2012 P.J. Gardner. All Rights Reserved.]