Glacier Bay Nationwide Park—An enormous, hole breath, deep as a crevasse, breaks the predawn quiet.
Simply off the lip of the shallow, rocky seashore the place my tent is pitched, a 40-ton behemoth is feeding at 4 a.m. The flat brightness, a civil twilight, seems like the identical mild I fell asleep to the night time earlier than.
The subsequent exhalation sounds prefer it’s 10 toes away. I unzip my rainfly simply in time to see the dissipating spume because the humpback strikes on, leaving a squabble of seabirds in its wake.
Lower than 12 hours earlier than, my coworker Lewis Leung, his companion, Ruby Tam, and I had pulled right into a tiny cove after a grueling, 3-mile paddle up the coast right into a stiff headwind and towards a strong ebb tide. We pitched our tents in a mattress of egg-sized rocks, ate dinner within the intertidal zone and fell into an exhausted sleep by 8 p.m.
We had spent months getting ready for this journey: studying maps, finding out tide charts, working towards “moist exits” from our kayaks on Lake Nokomis in Minneapolis.
However the first hours of our journey revealed a fact about Alaska: It’s a panorama wilder and extra unpredictable than I had anticipated it to be.
A Shrinking Window
Distant and rugged, filled with snow-capped mountains and calving glaciers, prolific marine life, mountain goats and grizzly bears, Glacier Bay is the quintessential Alaska panorama to many guests.
As a seasoned Alaska traveler, I used to be used to the supersized panorama—just like the mountainous U.S. West on steroids—and the informal wildlife encounters that mark life in our second-to-last state. However I hadn’t thought-about a visit to the Inside Passage till a collection of heat winters, and the reappearance of the marine warmth wave often known as “the Blob,” made me understand my window for an in depth encounter with the state’s glaciers could be shrinking.
Glacier Bay Nationwide Park and Protect is a part of a 25-million-acre World Heritage Website, and like a lot of southeast Alaska, accessible solely by boat or aircraft. Two cruise ships a day are allowed into the bay itself—together with a tour boat run by the Nationwide Park Service that picks up and drops off kayakers and backpackers at designated factors.
The earlier summer time, Ruby and Lewis had taken the Alaska state ferry from Juneau to Gustavus, then spent an evening at Bartlett Cove earlier than taking the Park Service day boat across the bay. The climate was stormy, common in a area that yearly will get greater than 70 inches of rain. However when two teams of kayakers got here aboard the Park Service boat within the rain, they had been “glowing,” Ruby mentioned.
By Air or by Sea
My first glimpse of the area comes on my Alaska Seaplanes flight from Anchorage to Gustavus. The tiny Cessna soars via lush boreal valleys and skirts so near mountaintop snowfields, I can nearly brush them with my hand.
From Gustavus, it’s a half-hour shuttle trip to Bartlett Cove, via a settlement with one classic fuel station and no stoplights. The city is much less a platted grid than a scattering of buildings throughout a number of crossroads.
Ruby, Lewis and I meet up at Glacier Bay Lodge that afternoon and run via a collection of last-minute preparations. We attend a Park Service orientation and take a look at our obligatory bear canisters; at a separate assembly with a neighborhood clothing store, we declare our sea kayaks. We additionally want bear spray, however a taxi again to city is $30 per particular person, so we determine I’ll run that errand solo.
En path to the overall retailer, my driver, Crystal, describes watching a sow grizzly educate her cubs to hunt spawning salmon within the small stream we cross. She tells me about stitching seasonal jobs collectively and checking on family members as she navigates her braided white and Native heritage on this Huna Tlingit homeland.
Tall hemlocks and Sitka spruce line the two-lane roads, creating deep, inexperienced tunnels with snow-capped mountains at each finish. On this uncommon sunny day, it’s a hovering sight however I can think about in an extended winter how the dripping forest would press in.
Into the Wild
Early the following morning, we trundle our gear and kayaks to the ferry dock. Stuffed into my wetsuit and rain gear, I’m a ball of nerves, considering of every little thing that would go mistaken.
As we journey up the east arm of Glacier Bay, we see colonies of Steller sea lions sunning on rocky ledges; flocks of puffins skimming the water; sea otters rafting in the course of the bay. Humpbacks breach and spout subsequent to the boat. Brown bears, solo and in pairs, lope alongside large seashores, on the lookout for a post-hibernation snack.
Our fellow passengers ooh and ahh, then swing their gaze to us. Are we positive we need to spend 4 days alone on this wilderness?
Sixty-five miles into the bay, our boat sidles as much as Margerie Glacier, a mass of folds and buttresses flowing straight into saltwater. The boat idles subsequent to the ice wall as a column collapses at one finish in a bathe of snow.
Farther down, at Lamplugh Glacier, we see mild on immense ribbons of eerie blue, valleys of black particles and a discipline of ice “floaters” blocking a better strategy. As we make our approach alongside the steeper, snowier west arm of Glacier Bay, I’m relieved to rely just one brown bear a number of miles from our dropoff at Scidmore Minimize.
By 2 p.m., the day boat has pulled away, leaving us and our gear in a heap on the seashore.
Humpback whales feed the place krill and small fish are ample. They flap their tails to push the fish towards their heads, then go underneath and stand up for an enormous scoop of meals.
A Parade of Whales
The primary humpback spouts 50 toes behind Lewis’ kayak as we’re making our approach up the coast.
We’re preventing waves and wind, inching previous sheer cliffs of vegetation that plunge into waters 200 to 600 toes deep simply toes from the water’s edge. Three hours later, we collapse on the subsequent seashore, a rocky cove bordered by chattering mountain streams.
All night, humpbacks cruise via our cove.
We hear an exhalation as Ruby heats water in our tiny camp range for dinner. An impatient whoosh as we swallow our freeze-dried meal. The rubbery tingle as a large set of lungs fills with air. Alone and in twos and threes, humpbacks drive small fish towards the dropoff, open their large, ventral pleats like an accordion and scoop up a meal.
The whales transfer on, however the cove stays our dwelling for the following three nights. Lewis follows the every day drama of a nesting oystercatcher pair. A large-eyed harbor seal checks on us a number of instances a day. I spot the darkish, triangular fin of a harbor porpoise. Every night time, we hear the fluting name of hermit thrushes within the thick alder tangle above our tiny seashore.
A Close to Bear Encounter
Our objective had been to kayak north to Reid Glacier, an 11-mile paddle up the coast. Ruby hoped to swing previous the seal nursery on the icebergs close to Johns Hopkins Glacier.
Twice we try and advance up the coast; each instances wind and waves beat us again.
On Day 3, I throw within the towel. The ocean has humbled me; my kayak expertise are not any match for the chop, the place a single rogue wave in 45-degree water might spell catastrophe. We determine to return to Scidmore Minimize, the place Lewis and Ruby will camp a ultimate night time with out me.
The subsequent morning, we wake to a light-weight drizzle. The wind has lastly died down and clouds of black flies pepper any inch of uncovered pores and skin. Paddling south is so clean, we overshoot our drop-off by greater than a mile. Fortunately, Ruby checks her GPS. The shoreline is sort of featureless within the gloom.
I’ve by no means been happier to see a ship than the Park Service ferry materializing within the rain.
Ruby and Lewis return to Bartlett Cove the following day, after a ultimate shut name of their very own: They’d spent a quiet night time close to Scidmore Minimize, tenting within the rain. Within the morning, two backpackers passing via talked about a bear sighting a half-mile away.
They packed camp and hauled a few of their gear over a rocky stretch of seashore to the drop-off. Realizing they had been operating out of time, they swiftly loaded the remainder of their gear within the double kayak and paddled up the coast, simply because the day boat got here into view.
“Once we acquired there, everyone jumped down from the boat,” Ruby mentioned. “Often one man comes down the ladder. However 4 to 5 guys got here down. All people mentioned, ‘Shortly, let’s go, let’s go.’”
Everybody was quiet on the boat, till a deckhand supervisor clued them in: Whereas Lewis and Ruby had been racing to satisfy the boat, passengers noticed a bear roaming the seashore.
“Folks thought we had been making an attempt to paddle away from the bear,” Ruby mentioned. “However truly, we’re simply making an attempt to catch the boat!”
Months later, Lewis, Ruby and I can chuckle about our mishaps—they usually’re even discussing one other journey.
However part of me stays on the water: eye-level with whales, sliding previous snow-capped mountains, realizing a tiny fiberglass craft is all that retains me from the ice-cold depths of Glacier Bay.
If You Go
Getting there: Glacier Bay Nationwide Park and Protect is accessible by cruise ship, the Alaska Marine Freeway System and flights to Gustavus from Anchorage and Juneau by Alaska Seaplanes and Alaska Airways.
Lodging: The Glacier Bay Lodge at Bartlett Cove operates from late Might to September. Rooms begin at $270 an evening. The Nationwide Park Service additionally gives a free campground subsequent door to the lodge.
Outfitters: Glacier Bay Sea Kayaks gives leases ($60-$75 per day) and day journeys in Bartlett Cove. In addition they hire boots and rain gear. Alaska Mountain Guides and Spirit Walker Expeditions run guided multiday kayak journeys.
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