Glacier Bay - Part Two

The second half of our Glacier Bay excursion was heading back south towards the entrance of the park - at a slower pace than our way up to allow for more time to explore.

8/10/2023

We woke on the morning of the 10th still not totally sure what our itinerary would be for the day. Johns Hopkins Inlet was on the consideration list but we were worried about adding 20 nm to our day (10 nm to get there and 10 to get back). We all awoke around 8a and hung out for a while - drinking coffee. At the last minute, Angela decided we should do it. I threw on my clothes immediately and headed up to get going…

We pulled out of Reid Inlet and were confronted by two large cruise ships - both of which were trying to get into Johns Hopkins. Well, this added a whole new dimension. I flipped over to channel 13 and asked for both of their plans (which they were eager to provide to avoid challenges with small boats) and we were able to navigate past both of them to get into the bay. We must have gotten our pictures taken at least a thousand times - I’m sure we were quite the sight, this little sailboat amongst all of the icebergs. The ships do this interesting maneuver where they go to a location and then they just spin for 30 min (presumably so everyone on the ship can see the view). To other boaters however, this is quite the disorienting maneuver as you have no idea what they are doing - unless you call them on the radio in advance like we did.

Johns Hopkins turned out to be a little bit of a bust - you know as much as 3 massive tidal glaciers can be in one bay. We were hoping to see a beautiful glacial valley with glaciers galore and scores of icebergs with seal pups hauled out all over them. The valley was beautiful and the glaciers impressive, but less so than Margerie the day before. John Hopkins was also supposed to be the one which is more active in terms of calving - but we saw no evidence of that during the hour or so that we were there. It also seems as though we were too late for the seals - they give birth on the icebergs and it must be too late in the season for them. We did see some whales departing the bay as we were entering - likely heading away from the noisy cruise ships, so there’s that.

We headed on out of Johns Hopkins Inlet and started to make our way to Blue Mouse Cove - our anchorage for the night. This leg was that weird in between land where there are enough icebergs that you have to be weary, but not enought that you need a bow watch with hooks. It was also really cold, so this called for a new arrragement for our canvas. I unzipped one side of the top and kept the other size zipped. This allowed me to look out for a minute and adjust our course and then step over to the otherside to get the wind protection of the canvas on the other side.

We wanted to stop by Gloomy Knob again - since we were able to see so much wildlife there two days ago. Again, it did not disappoint. Not more than 30 seconds after we arrived, we saw two juvenile gray wolf pups playing on the beach. We didn’t see any adult wolves, so we thought this might have been one of those things where these two were not quite old enough to go on the hunt so they were left behind to play.

A few minutes later after we made the turn down the coast, we saw more puffins! This was the other kind - the tufted puffin. Angela could not have been more excited.

As we continued, we saw a sea otter with a pup on it’s belly. This was the 3rd or 4th time we have seen this, they seem to be much more skittish with a pup so we rarely see them closely. I didn’t get a great picture, but you can kind of make out the pup here.

We got into our anchorage around 4p - very wet but very happy. We slept by a glacier last night and saw three more before coming into an amazing rainforest anchorage for the evening.

We attempted to play a new card game while we warmed up - Unstable Unicorn. While simple on the surface, the game was quite complex and after an hour we were nowhere near done. We paused the game and went ashore to hike around a bit. Blue Mouse Cove is separated by a small tidal channel from Hugh Miller Inlet - which is one of the non-motorized boats only areas of the park. We couldn’t take our dinghy in, but our kayak could - so Angela/Dawn took the kayak up into the inlet while Sara and I took the Dinghy to shore and hiked along the rocky beach into the inlet. There were at least 6 whales in the inlet and got to watch them from shore - probably 200-300 feet out. Sara and I saw two pop their heads out of the water while feeding - coming down with a big splash.

We headed back to the boat just in time - the rain started coming down in earnest. It rained hard all night - great evening to be cozy in the boat. Angela made pad thai - which I ate way too much of. She also made cherry pies in the new pie tins that Dawn brought up to us. I was too full to eat mine so I saved it for breakfast pie… :)

8/11/2023

We woke up to dense fog this morning - thankfully we weren’t planning to go anywhere until noon today to catch the outgoing tide. I ate my breakfast pie with coffee - which was amazing - and got cozy and undertook our intentionally very slow start to the morning. Dawn was gracious enough to accommodate a “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” intro scene and the whole crew got to be cozy together.

At the crack of 10a, we headed out for a morning excursion - kayaking for me and a shore walk for the three ladies. I took a bit of a longer kayak - going a bit deeper into Hugh Miller Inlet than we had the previous day. It was pretty foggy in the morning, which made the kayak trip that much more amazing.

It’s hard to describe the feeling of kayaking in a place like this. I was surrounded by sea otters, 5 or 6 different birds, and whales blowing in the near distance - close enough that they were coming up in the spot where I was kayaking 20 min earlier. This is why the National Parks exist - even though thousands of other people have been to this place, it feels like you are the only one who has ever been here. It’s unspoiled and untouched by people. I took a video that tried to capture it - probably not super well but here it is.

We left our anchorage at Blue Mouse at around 12:30p and made our way across the channel to Beartrack Cove - our anchorage for the evening. It was foggy and rainy when we left, but about an hour into the trip the clouds broke and the sun came out - the first time we had seen it in 3 days… It was glorious! Everyone came out and shed their layers to soak it in. There was even some boat yoga and naps on the bow.

It was a gorgeous day with the sun out - the scenery looked so much different in the sun, less wild but more alive. I am extremely grateful for calm seas over the last 4 days - despite the clouds and the rain. But for the sun, this was a treasure.

Around 2p, we passed through South Marble Island - which is one of the park’s hotspots for wildlife. We were looking for puffins and sea lions and we found both. We saw the puffins up on a small cliff face - the first time we have seen them out of the water - as well as seeing them swimming in the water nearby the coast.

Around the south side of the island, we found the colony of resting sea lions. It was quite the sight - hundreds of them lounging out in the sun on the marble colored rocks. We slowed down to watch them for a minute - and quicky discovered what hundreds of Stellar Sea Lions smell like… Even from 500 feet away. We also got to experience the sounds of these sea lions - the barking, slapping, fighting, and playing. It was quite the multi-sensory experience. These are the things you can’t (and the smell you probably wouldn’t want to) capture in pictures.

Overall, these islands were picturesque in the sunny weather. Unfortunately, the sun was not to last but we really soaked it in for those couple of hours and the Marble Islands really glowed as we passed by in this short window.

When we continued from South Marble Island, we were about an hour and a half from our anchorage. We saw the clouds coming back in and we could see the rain coming down over our anchorage in front of us. As a send off from the sun, we were blessed with an amazing double rainbow - the clearest and crispest that any of us had ever seen.

We pulled into our anchorage as the rain really started coming down. We had some aspirations of exploring the cove via dinghy/kayak but the increasing intensity of the rain drove us to the cozy boat instead. With a name like Beartrack Cove, we had hoped to see some bears but I guess they will be waiting for us next time.

The cove we anchored in was a narrow inlet between Beartrack Island and the side of Beartrack Cove. The inlet was probably 300 ft wide and a stern tie was recommended. We dropped anchor in a small basin and took the dinghy ashore to tie up a line. It was tight and cozy, but we felt secure. I set the anchor watch and tightened up the radius to make sure we would be alerted by any dragging. I spent the rest of the evening watching us and we stayed put - shifting back and forth about 60 feet inbetween the anchor and the stern tie.

Dawn taught us a new board game and we turned in early - with a 4a wake-up tomorrow and we needed our beauty sleep.

8/12/2023

We woke at 3:40a - not woken by our alarm but by the anchor drag alert. The alert has gone off numerous times before when we weren’t dragging (just based on my setting things up incorrectly), so my instinct was that it was a false alarm - the definition of crying wolf. This time though, it was real. The wind had built overnight and we had a strong current coming into the inlet - the combination of which hitting us squarely from the port on the widest part of the boat had caused our anchor to unseat itself and drag about 50 feet before setting again. All of us were up on deck in about 3 minutes - verifying that we were still in deep water and not drifting further. Once we were satisfied, we decided we might as well just make way - it was about 30 min earlier than planned and it was still dark but the current and wind were still there and it seemed like another drag was immenent. Thankfully, the current and wind were pushing us out of the inlet so it was a relatively simple process to pull stern tie and let the current drag us so we were inline with the inlet at the deepest part. Then we pulled the anchor and let the current carry us out while we oriented the boat and got some speed/maneuverability. A stressful morning to be sure, but we were on our way.

The trip back into Bartlett Cove took a bit longer than expected - we were about 3/4 of the way through Sitakaday Narrows when the current flipped and started pushing 2 knots against us. We went from going 6.5 knots to 3 knots - what a bummer. The last 2 nm took us around an hour, but we made it back to Bartlett cove at 8:15a - just in time for breakfast!

We were all soaked to the bone, but the lodge fire warmed us up and dried us out. Angela was especially elated by the fire…

We were back at Glacier NP lodge - it had been an amazing 6 days in the park and an amazing high note for the end of our northward journey. My next post will be from somewhere further south as we head back to Juneau to drop off Dawn and pick up Oakley before we continue on our way down to Petersburg and Wrangell.