Glacier Bay National Park
That which we barely dared to wish for greeted us this morning on a cloudless day in Glacier Bay National Park. The superlatives required to describe this raw landscape of rock sculpted by ice leave a careful poet at a loss for words that ring true. At the day's end we have cruised sixty miles up Glacier Bay and back again, stopping to absorb the details.
Before breakfast there was a pod of twenty-some killer whales, surfacing on a calm sea. Later we picked out a black bear foraging on tidal flats. Leaving Sandy Cove a bald eagle struggling in the water was swimming to shore in a stroke that resembled butterfly. It surprised us all by jumping up on shore empty-footed.
As we sailed along the dolomite cliffs of Gloomy Knob a bright-eyed guest picked out mountain goats: a nanny and kid, and another adult working its way across the near-vertical glacial-polished rock. We picked out Kittlitz murrelets from the waters as we moved closer to the glaciers into the habitat of this threatened seabird. The northbound journey terminated at the rugged blue-white face of Marjorie Glacier. Here we had a sunny deck lunch, then turned our attention to the landscape in layers of ice.
Brash ice washed against the ship in the current of the river that emptied under the glacier. Huge towers of tortured glacial ice leaned and seemed to groan, occasionally spilling blocks into the sea at the rate of painfully slow geologic time. Drawing the eye all day, over every landscape we examined, was the massif known as the Fairweather Range. The grand scale of raw Alaska was overwhelming. Our return trip to Bartlett Cove was T-shirt warm, with many of us unable to take ourselves below decks throughout the unforgettable day.
That which we barely dared to wish for greeted us this morning on a cloudless day in Glacier Bay National Park. The superlatives required to describe this raw landscape of rock sculpted by ice leave a careful poet at a loss for words that ring true. At the day's end we have cruised sixty miles up Glacier Bay and back again, stopping to absorb the details.
Before breakfast there was a pod of twenty-some killer whales, surfacing on a calm sea. Later we picked out a black bear foraging on tidal flats. Leaving Sandy Cove a bald eagle struggling in the water was swimming to shore in a stroke that resembled butterfly. It surprised us all by jumping up on shore empty-footed.
As we sailed along the dolomite cliffs of Gloomy Knob a bright-eyed guest picked out mountain goats: a nanny and kid, and another adult working its way across the near-vertical glacial-polished rock. We picked out Kittlitz murrelets from the waters as we moved closer to the glaciers into the habitat of this threatened seabird. The northbound journey terminated at the rugged blue-white face of Marjorie Glacier. Here we had a sunny deck lunch, then turned our attention to the landscape in layers of ice.
Brash ice washed against the ship in the current of the river that emptied under the glacier. Huge towers of tortured glacial ice leaned and seemed to groan, occasionally spilling blocks into the sea at the rate of painfully slow geologic time. Drawing the eye all day, over every landscape we examined, was the massif known as the Fairweather Range. The grand scale of raw Alaska was overwhelming. Our return trip to Bartlett Cove was T-shirt warm, with many of us unable to take ourselves below decks throughout the unforgettable day.
