Glacier Bay - Part One

It’s not about the destination, it’s about the journey. But every great journey needs a destination and Glacier Bay is our destination. Unfortunately for us, the forecast calls for rain during most of our stay at Glacier Bay. Fortunately, this place is beautiful even in the rain/fog and we are all in great spirits and ready to enjoy!

8/7/2023

While waiting for Dawn to arrive, we toured the longhouse - a traditionally constructed tribal house off the Hoonah Tlingit people. It was beautiful to see, but the best part was the artist that was showing the place off - Sara had so many questions for him about how to make drums, pendants, totem poles, etc. She asked so many good questions - many were things I didn’t think to ask but resulted in very interesting answers. For example, the green color in Tlingit artifacts is made from oxidized copper mixed with Salmon eggs…

Sara got her Junior Ranger badge from Glacier Bay NP and took the oath. She loves the activity books and that seems to be enough for her to get super excited about becoming a jr ranger - I’ll take it!

Just after 5p, Dawn arrived! Just in time too - the rain had begun… We quickly grabbed her bags and helped her onto the dinghy and out to the boat. Everyone was excited to see Dawn - but nothing can compare to Sara’s excitement. Sara showed her all around the boat - all of the parts of the boat she is responsible for (Dinghy charger, dinghy key, panel switches) and all of the areas where she plays. Then she whisked Dawn off to her room for playtime - for almost 20 min… Sara was excited to see Dawn!

We made a delicious salmon dinner and used about half of the fish we kept from the our fishing expedition. Then it was off to bed for an early start tomorrow morning!

8/8/2023

We started off early (4:30a - first light) to catch the morning tide through Sitkakaday Narrows. It was a beautiful morning and it was fun to have a new crew member along for the ride - seeing everything with a fresh pair of eyes. Dawn was excited to see the Sea Otters and jumping Salmon that we have very much taken for granted at this point. The tide was in our favor for the first 2 hours and so we pulled into a temporary anchorage at South Fingers Bay to hang out for the next 5ish hours (from 7:30a til 1p). We made breakfast, inflated the kayak, and dropped the dinghy to head to shore. Fingers Bay was beautiful and the rain even let up intermittently while we were there - enough to warm up and dry out some gear. We went on a walk along the beach, a kayak trip along the beach, and a walk into the woods - to the extent we could break through the thick underbrush of the old growth forest to go ashore. This was our first trip out in the kayak on this whole trip - we were worried about moisture and deflating the kayak after we used it. We decided we were going to keep it up on the deck for the rest of this trip - so problem solved!

No more than 30 min after we stopped for lunch - whales! The first whale - of 3 we saw at the anchorage - swam right up to the shore, no further than 30 feet from the shore. He/she was feeding and very active - we saw feeding, diving, and breaching. He was a bit on the smaller side, which is probably why he was able to go so close to shore. Amazing and unexpected in a shallow lunch anchorage!

Right before we left the anchorage, the sun came out for real. Dawn wanted to do a cold plunge and with the sun out, it was hard for me to say no. We both climbed down into the water and the knives stabbed for about a minute before we had enough. We have a freshwater rinse on the stern of the boat and we used it for the first time - thankfully it has access to hot water and we warmed back up quickly. I don’t think this will be our last cold plunge, so I’ll get a picture next time.

We departed our anchorage at around 1p to catch the favorable current. We had a decent push but it became weaker and weaker as we continued north (expected since there’s less water to flow out). Angela got a suggestion from the park rangers that Gloomy Knob was not to be missed. It was on the other side of the bay and a bit out of the way, but we thought it might be fun to put up the sails and have the wind carry us over there. Very good decision - the first thing we found was a small group of mountain goats up on the cliff face. Credit to Angela for seeing them. I circled them in the image below - I almost didn’t believe it until I saw them moving - Go Angela!

Just as we were coming off the high of seeing the mountain goats, there was a huge brown bear probably 100 feet up the hill side - chowing down on something in the grass. I’ve heard they eat big colonies of moth larvae from under the rocks, so that may have been what this one was up to. How cool!

We turned West after we passed by Gloomy Knob and made our way towards Reid Inlet. We were originally targeting Blue Mouse Cove tonight, but with good winds and tide we went for our stretch goal. About a mile after our turn into West Bay, we saw icebergs. Little tiny ones at first, then huge ones, then dirty ones, then snowy ones, then castle looking ones, then crystal clear ones. We kept looking for seals hauled out on the ice, but the only thing we found resting on the ice was birds - mostly gulls. The terrain also changed - we went from dense old growth forest to newer alders and young spruce trees of recently deglaciated land. We are deep in Glacier Day now…

We continue to see lots of Sea Otters - the park museum indicated that their are ~5000 of them in the park, so not surprising that we see them everywhere. They are very curious and swim alongside the boat to check us out. This one gave us a little wave!

We did an audible at about an hour from our anchorage and made for Russell Island cove. There was already a boat in Reid inlet and the anchorage was small so a little privacy sounded nicer. The distance was actually a little shorter and intel suggested that we would have a higher chance of seeing whales by Russell island. We pulled into our anchorage 7:45p - a long but very successful day!

We had dinner - the remainder of our salmon with roasted veggies and rice. Angela killing it on the provisioning again… We had an amazing first day in Glacier Bay. It seems like a week ago when we left Bartlett Cove and it was only this morning! All the wildlife has been amazing, but the scenery alone has far exceeded my expectations.

After dinner, Dawn, Angela, and Sara went off in search of a small berg that they could chizel ice off of for cocktails and returned successfully an hour later. Everyone got a piece, cocktails for Dawn and I, Mocktail for Angela, and a piece of ice to eat for Sara.

8/9/2023

We all slept gloriously - asleep by 9p and awake no earlier than 7a, fully refreshed. Angela wanted to go on a hike before we headed out for the day - so off we went in search of a big enough beach to do a hike on. We found one on the mainland across from Russell Island where there is several large streams running into the ocean over a wide rocky estuary. It was a long dinghy ride to get there, but well worth it. It just felt so wild, hiking along these raging streams with signs (scat, tracks) of Bears/Moose everywhere. We stayed in the open areas with wide vis to avoid unwanted confrontations. It’s hard to explain the feeling and pictures don’t capture it - but we felt like we were observing the most wild place where no human had every trodden. After a 2ish mile loop, we headed back to the dinghy and back to the boat.

(placeholder for map of hike)

We got back to the boat around noon and I got us underway while the rest of the crew made a little lunch. We had a 2ish hour trip up Tar Inlet to get to the head of the inlet and Margerie Glacier - our furthest north point on the whole trip. The gravitas of this was not lost on us - This is a huge moment for the team. About 1nm from the head of the glacier, there is a constriction that seems to group the bergs together into a bit of a wall. This required the use of all able-bodied crew and both boat hooks.

Our original plan was to anchor in the southern cove of Tar Inlet, but the area was packed with ice and it didn’t seem possible. Instead, we motored up to about 3/4 nm off of Margerie Glacier and put the engine in idle. The NP service recommends you not get closer than 1/4 nm to the glacier face - but that seemed way too close to us - there were a lot of dense bergs close to the ice wall and it seemed pretty forbidding.

As we got out into the open bay past the wall of ice, we finally saw Angela’s puffins. Angela has been looking forward to seeing these guys for the last week and it was a delight. Five in total, swimming around in between the chunks of ice.

Seeing the ice wall of the tidal glacier up close was incredible. It all looked like it was just precariously placed up there - ready to collapse at any moment.

And sure enough, not 2 minutes after we arrived part of the wall collapsed and a huge chunk of ice fell off. It sounded like a gunshot or maybe artillery fire - super loud. Very lucky on our part to see something like this - Margerie Glacier does not calve regularly so we showed up just in time.

There are actually two glaciers in Tar inlet - but only one is tidal. The other glacier (Grand Pacific Basin) has receeded back beyond the tidal range and is now covered in dirt/mud. It is huge however. At first glance, it just looks like a mountain but if you look closely you can see the ice underneath the dirt/mud.

Next came the moment of truth - our glacial cold plunge. We had all been talking ourselves up on the way up Tar Inlet - this, we decided, would be the best way to commemorate the furthest point north on our trip. We were hoping to do it on anchor so we could all go in, but instead we went two at a time. It was cold…

This was the second time in as many days when the hot stern shower was glorious.

We made it - furthest north point on the trip and such a great way to celebrate. We got hot soup/drinks, got showered/warm again, and bundled back up for the trip out of the inlet.

Sara wanted nothing to do with our plunges or carrying on and was satisfied to stay warm down below and pop her head up out of the v-berth windows to see the glaciers. She might have been the smartest one on the trip, truth be told.

We turned back south and headed down/through the ice wall again. We were keeping a close eye on the bergs and we got to see some incredible wildlife in the process. First we saw some eagles perched on the ice - probably using the bergs as a vantage point for spotting fish.

In just about the same spot, we saw more whales. Something about seeing them pop up right in the middle of all the icebergs made them seem all the more incredible vs all the other whales we have seen on this trip. The ranges of temperature that these whale can tolerate is really something - from the tropic all the way to floating amongst the ice.

I got a bunch of great scenery pictures today while we were underway as well. This was my inner photographer poking through…

As we left Tar Inlet, the bergs let up and we made fast progress back down to Reid Inlet - which was the anchorage we had planned for the night before. There was one boat there, but it was a small boat and we were able to fit without too much trouble.

We jumped in the dinghy as soon as we got ashore and made the hike up to the glacial terminus of Reid Glacier. This glacier was no longer tidal, but it was reasonably close - within 1/4 miles of the head of the bay. As such, there was still some ice that was being flushed out of the bay (although much less than some of the others. This also meant we could walk up to the glacier head a lot closer than you can with some of the other tidal glaciers. The hike from our dinghy landing site to the glacial head was about a mile, but it felt a lot longer with several stream crossings and rock walls to negotiate.

When we got there, we found this beautiful blue cave. We didn’t approach too closely to avoid it colapsing on us, but we got close enough to get some good photos and take it in a bit. Sara stepped in some deep water on the way but fortunately Angela was able to spare one of her two pairs of socks to keep her going. We collected some ice for cocktails in the evening and shared a cigar to celebrate our making it to the furthest north point. None of us had had a cigar in over a decade, but amazingly we all remembered how….

Our hike back was uneventful, although it was getting dark by the time we made it back to the boat. We had dinner - delicious pizzas made by Angela - and debated our route for tomorrow. We were all in bed late (around 10p) with a very full day behind us. Thankfully, we could all sleep in until 8a tomorrow so hopefully we can catch up a little. Sara went to bed very happy - she carried her own piece of ice back from the glacier and she enjoyed it richly before bed.

Sara has also become much more of an ocean lady over the last few weeks - and I find it rather endearing. She no longer plays “the floor is lava” - it has evolved into “floating icebergs”. She has also started commenting on the tides/currents and started incorporating them into her games. She absorbs so much from what Angela and I talk about - it’s really kinda fun to see the evolution.

We threw out our halibut lines with some fish heads on them before we went to bed and rigged them so we could monitor from inside - we don’t really know what we are doing so we didn’t expect to catch anything, but it’s entertaining to try. We brought all of our wet gear inside to dry, so most spaces were full of something. It was warm, cozy, and we were all very full and tired by the time we went to bed - a sign of a good day!