Glacier Bay
On Monday, June 20, 2022, We got up early, and after breakfast took a taxi to the dock in Gustavus (and got lots of info from the taxi driver as mentioned previously). From there, we took a three and a half hour cruise on a small boat to look for humpback whales. It was still mostly to partly cloudy but it did not rain during the trip. In addition to whales, we also saw sea otters and sea lions.
We saw this mama bear and her three cubs on the way back to the lodge.
We returned to the lodge and after a quick lunch, took a hike on a forest trail that was partly on a boardwalk and took us to a nice pond. Still didn’t see a moose. We returned to the lodge via a coastal trail where we saw an enormous skeleton of a whale killed by a cruise ship about ten years ago.
Around 4 p.m. we went to the Huna Tribal House (Xunaa Shuká Hít) to watch a great film showing how local, native tribes were able to return to Glacier Bay with help from the National Park Service. We learned for the first time, that the local people had occupied land (a nice abundant valley) in the area of what is now the bay “from time immemorial” and that they were forced from the land by an advancing glacier about 350 years ago. The glaciers that made the bay are very young! Once the glaciers started to retreat (1794), the bay formed. Tomorrow we will see the remains of the glacier that forced the people from their home; it is much reduced in size. The US declared the area a park in 1925, and there have been struggles between the local people and the park service since then. Thankfully, an accord was reached around 2006 which resulted in a homecoming of sorts and the building of this beautiful Tribal House.
After dinner, we attended a talk/slideshow by a ranger about the Park also held in the Tribal House.
We saw this guy outside the lodge on our way to the ranger talk.
June 21, 2022
We left the Lodge at 7 am to take the day boat tour of Glacier Bay National Park run by the lodge. The tour was eight hours in duration. The boat was spacious and had two viewing decks. We saw lots of animals, including otters, seals, Stellar sea lions, humpback whales, black and brown bears and mountain goats. We saw quite a few birds, including horned puffins. Never got a good otter or bear photo.
We viewed the Lamplugh, Reid, Grand Pacific (the one that carved the bay) and Margerie Glaciers. Most of the Grand Pacific Glacier is located in Canada. The face of the Margerie Glacier is over 200 feet high, and there was quite a bit of blue ice. Our boat stayed there for a while watching for calving (there was only a small bit). It was beautiful, and we had a great day on Glacier Bay. This trip and the train ride were probably the highlights of the two weeks in Alaska.
Margerie Glacier above and below.
The boat returned to the lodge, and it started to rain again about 30 minutes before we docked. We were lucky to have had dry weather and a bit of sun while at the glaciers. This is the last glacier we saw today, but we are not sure what it was called.
The park service map excerpt below shows the location of our lodge in the lower right and the Margerie Glacier in the upper left.
After disembarking, we took the bus from the lodge to the airport and flew back to Juneau, returning to the same central hotel where we will stay for three nights.
