Blue skies and sunshine on Fairweather—the sacred mountain of the Huna Tlingit people graced our unforgettable day in this protected wilderness place. Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve was in her greenest summer finery today and as the fog lifted her skirts we basked in sun glinting off glacial ice and distant snowy peaks.
Our first stop at South Marble Island was a cacophony of black-legged kittiwakes, glaucous-winged gulls, black oystercatchers, Steller sea lions, tufted puffins, and a few bobbing sea otters. As we traveled up bay, we sighted a few tiny mountain goats high up in the lush alpine meadows. Near Gloomy Knob (a gray outcrop of dolomite), we enjoyed one of the most treasured sightings of Southeast Alaska—a wolf working the intertidal! Soon after that special sight, we began to leave behind the dense green coastal Sitka spruce and western hemlock forests and the path of recently receded glaciers became apparent. Scraped and striated bare rock and deep sediments told a story of a land that was overtopped by ice and carved into a new form.
Our cultural interpreter Faith Grant shared some stories of her culture, the Tlingit people that lived right here in the bay for thousands of years. Some three hundred years ago, the Grand Pacific glacier suddenly surged forward—as fast as a dog could run and the ice overran the native villages. The surviving people had to take what they could carry into their canoes and move across Icy Strait to the present day town of Hoonah. When the ice began to recede, they tried to return to their homeland, but it was gone. It lies beneath the water where the glacier had been.
The calving at Margerie Glacier, our first tidewater glacier of the trip, was spectacular—large pieces of ice dropped off the face several times while we waited joyfully and the National Geographic Sea Bird rolled gently in the swells produced by the calving events. Above the blue ice face were 10,000-foot peaks in the Fairweather Range—the high elevation source of snow and ice for this stable river of ice. What a day to remember.
