Onward to Glacier Bay

I apologize for the delayed trip posting. At the end of the trip I caught a very nasty bug, and only now feel that I can do such a beautiful place justice.

Our Alaska trip really only had one must see sight—Glacier Bay National Park, which limits access to two cruise ships per day. Thus we chose this itinerary that included a morning in the park and visits to three of its most famous glaciers

The morning began very gloomy, steady drizzle and thick fog that at times obscured all land
So thick was the fog that several passengers and I were surprised to spot this small boat and people out in the early morning far from any civilization. It was only when I took a 10X telephoto image that we could see it was actually floating ice with a crew of seagulls 😛
Glacier Bay has a very long and unique tradition. All cruise ships that enter are boarded by a crew of NPS rangers who open a National Park store on board, set up ranger stations for passengers, and enter the captains bridge to narrate the park activities as the ship cruises to several stops. The on board store sales are a large fundraising source for the park.

This is the NPS schedule within the park, which highlights the two primary glacier viewing times and locations at Margerie Glacier and at Jaw Point where Lamplugh and Johns Hopkins Glaciers are visible. After the glacier viewing, rangers lead detailed historical and naturalist programs about the park, which we watched in our in cabin TV as we enjoyed the view from our room.

We were lucky to even see Margerie Glacier (the most famous view) given the thick fog. This image is clearer than we actually saw through the magic of photo filters. But for a sense of perspective, that little glacier is about 1 mile wide and 21 miles total length. It’s clean white/blue appearance results from its high elevation ice that passes over solid stone valleys without loose sediment to dirty the ice
Here’s an untouched photo showing the visibility of Grand Pacific Glacier, which is larger than Margerie, but originates at lower elevation, has more rock debris, and is thus much darker in appearance. When we tried to view it with binoculars, they only served to magnify the misty fog, and appeared worse than naked eye.
Later in the morning, our second big view was by Jaw Point where the weather was much better and gorgeous colors of the park showed. In the background is Johns Hopkins Glacier.
The ice-covered fog-shrouded mountains were very dramatic, and made me want 🍦
A bald eagle flew between the ship and the distant mountains
But seagulls were everywhere in the bay
The scale is hard to comprehend, but these “tiny” gulls show the massive size of Tug Point’s geology shaped by a tectonic plate, glacial action and coastal erosion
This huge mountain had at least seven waterfalls I found with my binoculars
This largest falls was easily audible from our ship out in the fjord
A noisy seagull in front of a whorl of rock and ice in the complex geologic formation
One of the interesting ice formations, probably larger than a house, though sense of scale is difficult to estimate. The water in the fjord was beautifully smooth.
A close up of the foot of Lamplugh Glacier
On the way out of Glacier Bay we passed by some mountains dotted with numerous mountain goats. This is about a 40X magnification, these animals were well over a mile away and high up on the mountainside. In binoculars they were little white dots, to the naked eye they were a just a hint of something there.
Looking northward behind us was another ship that had spent the day in Glacier Bay. These dramatic mountains dotted the landscape all around.
In the late afternoon our park rangers debarked our moving ship and boarded an NPS vessel, before heading off to the cruise ship behind us to pick up other rangers aboard that ship. This is their daily ritual as the vast majority of Glacier Bay visitors are the cruise ship passengers.