We got up early and at 6:00 am Glen called Glacier Bay reservations, in an attempt to get an extra day or two in the Bay. No luck, their last minute openings had already been taken by others who got their calls in faster. They start answering the phone at 6:00 am. We were told to call back at 10 am to see if there were any cancelations.
We were tied to the Bartlett Cove Dock at 8:05am and headed up to check into Glacier Bay with the Rangers and get our GB Orientation. We had just missed the 8:00am orientation, and it looked like we would have to wait until 11 am. But I guess we looked like an eager group or a frightening mob, because the nice ranger decided she would give us the orientation right then. It is a video presentation on where you can and can’t go in the Park; by motorized boat, on foot, and human powered boat (aka kayak). After the video she answered questions and gave us some tips on where to go for animal, and glacier viewing. Turned out she was also the woman that Glen had been talking to on the phone regarding the request to extend our reservations. Still no cancellations. We walked up to the Lodge to check it out and looked at their displays.
In the lodge gift shop we saw the man we had met on the bus in Juneau and said hello. He and his wife are working in the lodge here this summer and will be working in a lodge in Jackson Hole, WY this winter. They are from Maine and have been enjoying their retirement doing this kind of seasonal work for the last couple years.
At 10am Glen called his new friend the ranger. No extra days openings known of yet, but she will keep watching and let us know.
There are humpback whales along the shoreline doing their thing, nothing special but we can see quite a few in the group.
11:00 am - I (Liz) was sitting in the Salon looking backwards and all of a sudden I saw a head in the water immediately to the side and behind our boat. I called out for Glen to cut the engine. By the time the boat was stopped and Nicole got the camera to the back door we almost missed the photo. It was a deer swimming across the channel. When it was first noticed it looked to be treading water waiting for us to pass so that it could cross behind us.
This place is amazing. It’s hard to believe that only 250 years ago this entire place was covered with ice.
Today we explored the west side glaciers including: The Rendu, Grand Pacific, Margerie, Johns Hopkins (from a distance as it’s bay was closed), Lamplugh, and Reid glaciers. There were quite a few more glaciers , ice fields, and avalanche prone slopes in the mountains around us. Very beautiful.
The Grand Pacific is the largest but is covered with rock and dirt so much of it really only looks like a big dirt road. Margerie which is just to the left of Grand, is white and blue. It looks like it wasn’t too long ago that these two glaciers touched at the bottom as they were not too far apart, about 300 feet now.
In front of Margarie, we put the dinghy and kayaks into the water; leaving Magic to drift. Maryann, Shawn, Nicole, and Sophie were in the kayaks and Glen and Liz in the Dinghy. The glacier was making all kinds of cracking noises and calving car sized chunks. We haven’t looked yet but we believe we have some good photos, and if we are lucky maybe even a video clip or two. The surge waves and swells caused by the ice entering the water were large.
The Johns Hopkins inlet is closed to boat traffic so that the seals and their new pups have a protected and quiet place. You can go into the inlet to a designated point at which you can see the glacier and the seals resting on the sea of ice. This glacier and inlet area is amazingly beautiful with 6,000 – 12,000 foot mountain peaks all around it and coming clear down to the water in this narrow inlet.
While we were viewing Lamplugh glacier, another boat (Cowboy) called us on the radio. They wanted to know how we had gotten the glacier to calve a huge chuck right in front of us. Glen just replied laughing … ‘How big is your horn?’ They had seen us up close to the glacier and the ice fall right in front of us. Too bad we didn’t get that photo.
One of the things that we noticed is the seemingly lack of large icebergs in the waters around these glaciers. What does get to the water seems to be broken up into much smaller pieces than those we saw in either Tracy Arm or Endicott Inlet.
We anchored in the bay at the base of the Reid glacier for the night. There were a total of four boats anchored there.
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