Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve, the National Park Service’s largest marine park and part of the world’s largest world heritage site.
Grand Pacific Glacier is the primary glacier that carved Glacier Bay. Named by John Muir in 1879, Grand Pacific was much longer and more active then. Now covered almost entirely by rock, Grand Pacific looks more like land than ice. Yet small waterfalls and glimpses of glistening ice are clues that it is still a glacier. (Source: NPS Website)
Established: December 2, 1980
Size: 3,223,283 acres
Rank: 6
#Visitors in 2018: 597,915
As part of my quest to visit all 60 U.S. National Parks, I have been researching ways to visit all 8 of Alaska’s National Parks. Each have unique challenges, especially when my criteria for visiting a park includes hiking. So after many months of spinning my wheels, I suggested to my fiance that we jump in and get our feet wet (literally, it turns out) by visiting Glacier Bay National Park via a small ship cruise. I definitely did not want to go on one of those large cruise ships that focus more on what is going on inside the ship than outside. I wanted to do more than float past the glaciers and inlets. The answer was UnCruise Adventures with their 60 passenger ships. We chose an Inside Passage itinerary that included 2 full days in Glacier Bay National Park with the promise of kayaking and hiking. It was the perfect way to visit this amazing park!!
After spending our first 5 nights cruising south of Juneau and all around Admiralty Island (with adventures in Fords Terror, Endicott Arm, Dawes Glacier, Robert and Crows Islands, Chatham Strait, Red Bluff Bay on Baranof Island and Neka Bay on Chichagof Island, we woke up at 5:30 am on the 6th day and scrambled up to the deck to see both Margerie and Grand Pacific Glacier in the north end of Glacier Bay, our first sight within Glacier Bay National Park. We had sailed throughout the night. Margerie was the more picturesque of the two glaciers, although Grand Pacific (dark with rocks and debris) was amazing in that in only 250 years, it formed the entire Glacier Bay. We spent quite a bit of time slowly advancing towards Margerie Glacier, but we could only get within a mile and 1/2 or so (although it felt closer), due to ice and calving hazards. We did see a chunk of ice calve, but did not capture it on camera.
After viewing Margerie and Grand Pacific Glaciers, we sailed around the corner to Lamplugh Glacier where we anchored for our morning adventure. We had a hard time choosing between kayaking within a 1/4 mile or so of the glacier face or hiking along side it. I ultimately decided on the hike because I need to hike in national parks in order to get the full experience and earn my passport stamp :). I am SO glad I chose the hike. It was one of the most amazing hikes I have ever been on. The views were spectacular. When our skiff landed us on the beach, it was low tide. This allowed us to walk up fairly close to the glacier face and to pose next to some huge, blue icebergs. We also were able to capture some great reflections of icebergs in the pools of water left from the tide. After our hike, the tide was much higher, covering much of the beach we previously walked on. We saw beautiful views of Mt. Cooper (6780 ft.), the Fairweather Mountains, and Glacier Bay. We could see our UnCruise ship in the distance, dwarfed by the much larger cruise ships that came into the bay, although even the cruise ships looked small. Even though Mt. Cooper was only 6780 ft., it rises from sea level, making it s as impressive as those in the Rocky Mountains. The Fairweather Mountains range from about 10,000 ft. to over 15,000 ft. so these truly dwarf all that surrounds them. In fact, this was a theme for our entire trip…. it was hard to truly capture the scale of things; it was all so immense!
After pulling anchor and sailing south through Glacier Bay, we saw lots of wildlife on Gloomy Knob and South Marble Island. We saw brown bears on the shore, mountain goats, Steller sea lions, puffins, cormorants, muirs, pigeon guillemots, humpback whales, and sea otters. Unfortunately, I lost most of my photos for reasons I’m not sure- either a bad SD card or some fault of my own. Anyway, I only lost a hour or so of photos as I’ve been uploading to my computer often (another great reminder to do this!!). I did capture a few just to prove I saw some wildlife….. no gallery shots here!! Just great memories!
We arrived in Bartlett Cove, the National Park headquarters in late afternoon. Along the way, we picked up Ranger Erica from Gustavus. Ranger Erica stayed with us for the next day and a half. She was an energetic and knowledgeable ranger, especially about birds. After dinner, we disembarked and did a forest walk near the park lodge. It was the first time we hiked on a maintained trail in the park. The forest was beautiful, with lots of sphagnum moss, nurse logs, trees and bogs. It was definitely a different experience from cruising around all the glaciers.
Our final experience in Glacier Bay National Park was bushwhacking in Dundas Bay. Except for the hike in Bartlett Cove, all our hiking in Alaska has been bushwhacking (no trails). Our guide leads the way, but we have to push our way through tree branches and brush. I loved the feeling of walking on sphagnum moss which most of the forest floors were covered with. I also loved the feeling of being dropped on the shore by our skiff driver and later being “extracted” from another part of the bay. The eco-system on this hike was different from the others we were on. We encountered muskegs (marshland with small pools of water), many different types of conifers and lots of open, meadow-like areas. Again….. this was an experience we would never have gotten on a big cruise ship trip.
We arrived back in Juneau after sailing through the night and with mixed emotions (mostly sad). We said goodbye to our crew and the friends we made on board and disembarked. Alaska definitely got into my heart and I can’t wait to plan my return to visit the other 7 national parks in Alaska. I have a basic plan in my mind and hope to set aside the majority of the summer of 2020 to complete all 7….. my way!! Stay tuned……