Holiday on Ice # 4: Glacial Glory

Glacier Bay is pure magic.

Glacier Bay National Park is the northernmost point we reach on our cruise.  This is the second time I’ve been here, and the place still exudes that unique aura.

This is real wilderness, nothing less.  It’s a remote area, inaccessible by road.  There are no highways, no restaurants, no scenic view points.  The bay itself, although spacious, is largely deserted because the National Park Service strictly rations cruise ships, and permits only two to enter the park each day. 

Today, apart from the other ship following far behind us in the early morning, nothing.  Just us, the pearly sky turning later to shining blue, the shimmering water, and the towering masses of ice. 

These glaciers are fed by huge icefields high atop the mountains, which in turn are fed by the steady precipitation of the northwestern Pacific Ocean.  Think of the icefield as a giant toothpaste tube with multiple holes.  The tidewater glaciers are the streams of toothpaste squeezing out through those holes (the narrow gaps in the surrounding mountain ranges).  The force that squeezes the ice out and down is the constant, inexorable pull of gravity.

During the day, we got up close and personal with several glaciers.  On two occasions, the captain stopped the ship for a prolonged period.  When he did this, we had no trouble hearing the cracking of the ice sheet.  It’s an extraordinary noise.  A crack like an artillery gun is followed by anything up to a minute of echoes rebounding from mountains in every direction.  A more prolonged roar of thunder signals a sizable section breaking apart or collapsing, and with any luck it may be on the face.  In that case you’ll hear a further deep-throated roar as the detached fragments plunge into the water.  This process is called “calving.”

This map of the park shows some pretty extraordinary dates and ice limits.  Captain George Vancouver’s expedition in 1794 recorded an estimated ice height at the entrance to the bay of some 4000 feet (over 1000 metres).  Where did it all go? 

Before leaping to conclusions pro or contra global warming, it’s also wise to consult the oral traditions of the Tlingit (pronounced “Klingkit”), the First Nation whose traditional homeland is here.  Their oral records speak of a time when the large glacier dominating their lowland homes suddenly and dramatically grew and advanced, forcing them to load all their possessions on canoes and flee into exile.

This advance was a product of the “Little Ice Age,” a dramatic growth of glaciers in the far north which took place across a couple of centuries spanning the 1600s to the 1800s.  The tongue of the giant glacier extended out into the Icy Strait.  When the gouging ice retreated, it had scooped out the bay and fjords we see today.  The largest remnant of that primordial glacier is the Grand Pacific Glacier (Map # 1), a huge valley glacier originating in a number of ice streams pouring down from the St. Elias Mountains. 

The other glaciers we visited are the Margerie (Map # 2), which sits at right angles to the Grand Pacific and is the fastest and most active in the park, and the Lamplugh (Map # 4).  The Johns Hopkins Glacier (Map # 3) in its spectacular mountain amphitheatre is often closed to marine access due to ice cover on the inlet which provides a natural habitat for breeding seals, and I think this is the reason why we went no farther into the inlet after viewing the Lamplugh Glacier.

Where we got lucky was with the spectacular sunshine.  I saw many mountaintops today that were obscured in cloud the last time I came to Glacier Bay.  At any rate, here are some selected photos from nearly 100 which I took today. 

The mountains along both sides of Glacier Bay as we sailed in.

Note the brilliant jade-green of the still waters.  The only wind we felt all day was what we generated ourselves with the ship’s motion.

The Grand Pacific Glacier.  Only the face lies in Alaska.  The Canada-U.S.A. border cuts directly across the glacier just behind the face.  The rocks, dirt, and gravel on top of the glacier are all either scraped off the mountains by the ice or washed down onto it by the many rivers that pour onto the glacier.

The Margerie Glacier, panoramas and close-ups.  We spent an hour sitting stopped in front of this very active ice sheet.  During that time we saw many small pieces, and one decent-sized chunk, drop into the ocean. 

A typical bergy bit drifting in the water.

The Lamplugh Glacier.  Although it’s steep, it doesn’t move as fast as the Margerie, so no major activity happened while we circled slowly in front of this one.

And just for the record, a photo from the internet of the Johns Hopkins Glacier, the one which we didn’t get to see today.  Pity.