Last Leg to Glacier Bay
The air drips thick with moisture as we leave Juneau. We dodge a massive cruise ship entering the harbour as we retrace our steps back to Stephen's Passage. By noon the sky brightens and a soft wind catches our sail on a following sea. We glide silently northward to Admiralty Cove, a pretty spot with grassy meadows. Perfect for grizzly bears (Alaskans call them brown bears).
Lighthouse at Retreat Point, Chatham Sound
The bears are a no-show but eagles are everywhere. We watch as one strikes the water to grab a surfacing fish. The eagle, however, does not take off again, but lies in the water, floundering. We have heard of this – the fish too heavy and the bird unable to release its talons. It either drowns or flaps its way to shore.
“Save it, Larry!” Pam calls out, not yet realizing that the other crew member lacks the courage to row over and grasp on to a thrashing eagle. But after disappearing momentarily in the water, the eagle flies off to a nearby tree, without the fish, where it sheepishly shakes the water from its sodden feathers.
Lazily, we pass the afternoon, reading and listening to whales blowing at the mouth of the bay. The sun slowly sinks behind the snowy mountains and we realize, with the long northern days, that the sky never truly darkens, even in the middle of night.
The next day's journey is thick with whales ..... and tour boats. We linger only briefly, not wanting to be part of the gawking crowd. As we round Retreat Point, the tour boats vanish in the distance. Melody, following behind, becomes surrounded by a pod of Orca, our first sighting in Alaska.
Feeding in Stephen's Passage
We arrive in Funter Bay for lunch .... lunch for the famous Alaska deer flies. They are everywhere, eager for flesh. Yikes! We zip ourselves in behind the cockpit enclosure and install the window screens.
It's showtime! The next morning, nine large humpbacks greet us at the bay's entrance and use the two boats as a centerpiece for their breakfast table. They roll out of the water, blowing jet streams high in the air, before lazily flipping their huge flukes and starting another deep dive. Sometimes, several heads emerge simultaneously from the water, like synchronized swimmers, before sinking back into their own turbulence. Salmon leap from the water, even though they are not the intended prey. We shut off the engine and drift among them, so thankful for this experience.
After making our way into rock-infested but beautiful Couverdon Bay for the night, we go ashore to pick sea asparagus for dinner. Meals on DreamWeaver are not too shabby. Pam bakes bread, muffins, cookies and gourmet meals. Having the freezer aboard helps. Often we share baked goods with Melody. That night, we have sesame/honey braised duck breast with stir fried garlic sea asparagus. Exquisite!
Icy Strait towards Glacier Bay
Hoonah is home of the Huna Ttlingit (pronounced klink-it) people and the largest native settlement in Alaska. The name means “a place sheltered from wind”. It has a scruffy northern look and a lot of fish boats. Somebody told us that Hoonah had the best Halibut pizza in the world. Our search for this legendary pizza leads us to Capt. Dan and his wife, Hope, at the Misty Bay Lodge. .
Huna Klingit Fishboat
“Just closed”, he says. “Electricity's too expensive to stay open if there's no customers”. We obviously looked devastated because he offers to drive up up the road to the competition. “Barb can cook anything”, he explains. Capt. Dan tells a story a minute on the short drive there. A true Alaskan. We don't see Halibut pizza on the menu there, but are introduced to Barb, the chef.
“Sure, I can make a Halibut pizza”, she exclaims. “What do you want on it?” We complete a negotiation on the ingredients and order up some Alaskan White Ale. If this was the “back-up” pizza, we'll have to come back for the real one. It was that good. An hour later we learn that Capt. Dan is waiting in the bar to drive us back to the dock. We are overwhelmed by the hospitality.
Back at the dock, our neighbour boat from Seattle has just caught a large halibut. With insufficient room to keep it, they give each of us large bags of fresh halibut. What a great end to the day.
After leaving Hoonah and overnighting off a shallow spit at Pleasant Island, we radio to Park Headquarters in Bartlett Cove to receive clearance to enter the park. After verifying our permit, they issue instructions.
“Stay one mile offshore, otherwise in mid-channel. Do not exceed 15 knots. Alter course if whales appear and maintain a distance of ¼ mile. Report for your orientation at 1100 hours.” We look at each other, feeling like army recruits in a boot camp.
But the orientation is warm and fuzzy, the pamphlets and video great and the long list of regulations reasonable. As it turns out, shoreline rules only applied to the “Blue Zone”, the first section of the park with a high concentration of feeding whales.
Mt. Fairweather in Glacier Bay
We're here!
Glacier Bay Wonders
Glacier Park is a 25 million-acre World Heritage Site and one of the world's largest protected natural areas. Less than 300 years ago it was completely covered by ice, a remnant of the last ice age. Because of this, it is a living journey back through time. As the glaciers retreat, leaving a landscape scraped clear to bare rock, one witnesses nature reclaim itself with different kinds of vegetation. The first growth to appear is lichen which looks like velvet covering the huge glacier rocks.
On our first morning in the park, the sun breaks through the cloud cover, illuminating the snow-capped mountains. They look like crystal lanterns strung in a row. After a 2-hour trip to the head of Giekie Inlet, we go north to John Hopkins Inlet, through ice floes to within 7 miles of the glacier of the same name. It is the only advancing glacier in the bay and is full of birthing seals. For this reason, it is closed to all traffic, although we don't think the thick ice would allow us further transit. The view, even from 6 miles away, takes our breath away.
John Hopkins Glacier
Two more glaciers to go for the day – Reid and Lamplough, then we snug in for the night behind Russell Island next to large shoal of gravel deposited by a now-departed glacier. The sound of cascading distance water falls lull us to sleep.
DreamWeaver at Lamplough Glacier
The next morning gets even better. We head into Tarr Inlet, smothered in crystal air and brilliant sunshine. Margarie and Grand Pacific Glaciers lay ahead. But first we must again navigate 6 miles of floating ice, slalom-like, sometimes coasting in neutral to avoid hitting ice with a spinning prop.
Close up to Margarie Glacier
Margarie is a 250 feet high and one mile wide, a stable glacier that flows into the sea at the rate of 8 feet per day, continually calving off its daily ice into the inlet. It shimmers shades of white and blue. We are careful not to advance too close because calving ice can create a tidal wave big enough to capsize a small boat. We shut off the engine and drift in silence, that being broken every few minutes with thunder-like cracks and explosions within the ice as the stress of glacial movement gives way. We realize now that the thunder we thought we heard last night was actually the glacier, 6 miles away.
Adjacent is the Grand Pacific Glacier, which recedes 35 miles back into Canada. Its face is black and sinister looking because of the silt and rock it leaves behind as it recedes. Its beauty is in the swirling ice currents that flow around the encompassed mountains, making it appear extra-terrestrial.
Looking into Canada past Grand Pacific Glacier
Back in our earthly reality, we note from our instruments that our global position is latitude north 59 degrees 62 minutes, our most northerly route in our journey. We have traveled 1350 nautical miles since home port.
We anchor in late afternoon in Blue Mouse Cove, looking across at the soaring peak of July Fourth Mountain. A large grizzly bear ambles along the rocky shore, a lone humpback feeds off our port side and two harbour porpoises cruise by. Like a nature show. That night, clouds roll in and a soft rain begins to fall. Mountains recede into the mist grey predominates. We decide that the next day is one of non-travel. No sensory stimulation, just lolling in the cockpit resting.
However, the whales have other plans. A mother and calf enter the cove to feed for the day, cruising a pattern that often brings them close to DreamWeaver. Each time we scramble, camera in hand, looking for the National Geographic photo. But the whales always take us by surprise, going deep, then shooting out of the water close by, mouths open or giant flippers waving. The shutter clicks on empty water. A calf breaks away and heads for the boat, We see his body just below the surface alongside DreamWeaver, he pauses and moves to the stern. Pam yells, “Oh my god! Oh, my god!”, as his 35 feet brushes by, inches from our hull.
"Look at the baby", she calls out.
"That's the baby?" Larry answered. "There's a bigger one?
Part fear and part exhilaration as we watch in awe as the baby reunites with his mother. We believe he was as startled as much as we were.
Close Encounters of the Whale Kind
As if that is not enough two more whales come in, another mother and calf. The show extends into evening, nearly 4 hours of feeding and watching these magnificent mammals eat their fill. Terns squawk and hover over the whales as they stir up food for them. We settle down in the aft cabin, nestled in with our books, and hear one last spout of a whale perhaps saying 'good night', then all is quiet.
By the 4th day in the park, the weather continues to worsen, so we head back to Bartlett Cove in preparation to head south. We feel that we have seen everything, in the best of conditions. But the park has one more presentation. Marble Island has a large colony of Steller Sea Lions, as well as hundreds of Pelagic Cormorants and Arctic Terns. We hear the sea lions before we see them – roaring, snorting and grunting. They look like large brown sausages lolling on the rocks, the huge 2000 pound males in the centre, bellowing loudly with heads held high. Kings of the rock. The younger ones frolic in the deep water, leaping and twirling, like ballerinas. A young male – a sentry? - swims to the boat, looks us straight in the eye and snorts loudly. “Piss off!”, he seems to say.
Marble Island - Glacier Bay
We pry ourselves away, and pass back through the Blue Zone, dodging countless whales, who don't seem to respect the “boat zone”. It's Helen's birthday, so we walk the nature trail and enjoy a meal at the Glacier Bay Lodge.
The next day, the winds have reached 20 knots, with tidal conditions that prevent our planned trip west out to Cross Sound and the open ocean side of Chichagof Island. We stay in port to wait it out.
Glacier Bay has more than met our expectations. It was worth the many long days and miles of travel to reach this destination. Pictures and words cannot fully convey the wonder and awe we have experienced within Glacier Bay. It is a memory deeply embedded to bring out at future times when we reminisce about this magical place where evolution is occurring before our eyes.
