Williams Cove & Tracy Arm
Early this morning, we entered Holkham Bay by crossing a shallow bar composed of a terminal moraine left over from an ancient tremendous glacier. The National Geographic Sea Lion was soon anchored in Williams Cove, where we had fun on the foredeck watching numerous species of water birds, including a huge raft of white-winged scoters. This is a great place to observe both terrestrial and marine wildlife, so we offered both hiking and kayaking to take advantage of the area’s richness.
The hike took us on a beautiful forest trail that parallels the shoreline and presented us with an opportunity to get to know the Pacific temperate rain forest, dominated here by western hemlock and Sitka spruce. There was much evidence of brown bears to be seen here and we observed their tracks and scat all over the place…which proved the old adage about bears and the woods. With our keen powers of observation, we were able to determine the bears had been eating grasses mostly, as well as barnacles.
Walking along the intertidal zone this morning was especially interesting, because it was low tide and much marine life was exposed for us to examine, e.g. bladderwrack seaweed, common barnacles, blue mussels, and various sea shells. A few people opted for a much longer, more energetic walk in the forest that managed to take in an amazing muskeg habitat. Most of us also went kayaking and the calm, protected waters of the cove provided a wonderful way to enjoy some solitude within a beautiful habitat.
Holkham Bay gave us access to one of the greatest of the fjord systems of mainland Southeast Alaska. There are two fjord branches here that were long ago carved out of the heart of the coastal mountains, and we spent the afternoon exploring the northern branch known as Tracy Arm. It is a magnificent narrow fjord that extends more than 20 miles into spectacular geologic formations and we managed to work our way through lots of floating ice almost all the way to South Sawyer Glacier at the head of the fjord. This is a very important breeding site for harbor seals, and we saw many mothers with pups lying on the growlers and bergy bits in front of the glacial tongue.
This is an especially active tidewater glacier, as evidenced by the tremendous amount of ice in the nearby waters. It was very interesting to compare the present day appearance of the glacier (Figure A) with a photo I took here in July 2003 (Figure B), just seven years ago. The two photos clearly demonstrate the face of this glacier has definitely retreated, but more importantly, it has thinned tremendously (note the trim line left behind exposing bare rock that was covered with ice until very recently). You are welcome to make your own conclusions.
