Glacier Bay

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Thursday July 6^th, 2012 Hoonah to Flynn Cove and Kira’s birthday

We spent the morning lounging. Keith and I picked up the shrimp traps and returned with one very large prawn and as with yesterday the bait box was full of shrimp larvae.

BJ and Ruth took the dinghy over to the store and we met them out by the wharves and hoisted Bullfrog onto the Little Liza. We worked our way towards our destination up the coast by mooching for halibut; looking for the right underwater structure to drift over.

Flynn Cove is a little nook along the coastline of Icy Strait. We worked our way up to the head and anchored there. It still looks exposed and I can see right up Icy Strait. We are well hooked though and unless it really comes on to a blow we’ll be OK. It seems to be the closest anchorage before Glacier Bay except Gustavus which is also very exposed.

Friday July 7^th, 2012 Flynn Cove to Reid Inlet (Glacier Bay)

I felt the wind shift in the night but it just rocked me back to sleep. By 5:00 AM when we left it was still raining and the clouds were low. Icy Strait was only lightly chopped. We ran 2.5 hours to Bartlett Cove and with the current we were plenty early for our required Glacier Bay orientation. I asked lots of questions and bought a chart of Glacier Bay Since I didn’t know what to expect our plans were (and still are) tentative. We could get permits for only two days and it’s 65 miles to the end of Tarr Inlet and the Grand Pacific Glacier so we have not a moment to lose.

In the whale feeding area at Glacier Bay’s entrance boats must stay mid-channel or one mile offshore or not go too fast and fishing must be done in a certain way. We saw a few humpbacks coming in to Glacier Bay and as we left the protection area we cruised closer to the shoreline and watched for bears. Rain and foggy windows limit our visibility although the tops of the nearest peaks are visible. The snow level keeps dropping and in the ravines it falls to the tideline. In one spot a large group of sea otters floated on their backs sometimes eating, sometimes providing a raft for their young.

Most of the glaciers are receding, some are stable and a few are advancing. In 1795 Captain Vancouver described a massive ice wall plugging the whole entrance to Glacier Bay The Huna Indians were driven out of their village near Bartlett Cove by quickly advancing glaciers 200 years ago during what is described as a mini ice age. They were hunting seals back up in Glacier Bay when John Muir arrived in 1879.

When the bergie-bits began appearing we chose the inside track and slowly worked our way into Reid Inlet, past the shallow moraine at the entrance which we anchored around the corner and behind.

A tidewater glacier extends underwater down to the bottom and can calve from below as well as from above the waterline. These are the ones that make all the bergs in the water. Reid Glacier, which is about a mile away from our anchorage comes down to the waterline and deposits its load of rock essentially making the beach it sits on. Keith, Cole, Gwen, and I took the dinghy right up to the face of the glacier and our depth finder said were in less than six feet of water (at high tide). The water is so milky that there is no way to tell what is down beneath us. It was a little disconcerting sitting right under those cracked towers of blue ice. Streams poured out of the ice wall and rivers flowed from each side. Back down by our anchorage we clambered ashore, looked at the myriad colors and striations of granite and wondered how the green bushes took hold so fast on this newly created shore.

Indeed we are in a world new-born from monolithic granite, carved, chipped, and polished by giant fingers of ice chiseling out stone valleys. When they pull back to view their handiwork they are quickly dressed with small plants and bushes like soft under garments using sand, gravel, dust, water and light to cover the nakedness of the rock. I walked on these clingy plants, which felt spongy underfoot and right above them were scraggly bushes which spend much of their year covered with deep snow. Looking away from the glacier to where it began its pullback, scrubby trees, copses, of deciduous trees and then a lone spruce find a place to sink roots deep enough to withstand the elements. Forests now grow where John Muir saw only ice, a rapid covering in geologic time, like quickly throwing on one’s clothes when someone knocks at the door. All of this can be seen from where we are anchored in Reid Harbor.

Kira and I needed to do our own exploration so we went out into the main channel (Johns Hopkins Inlet) to see how much farther we could get through the bergie-bits in the dinghy. Kira saw a bit of beach and she went ashore, collected “samples” of granite and climbed a “mountain.” All the kids needed to get off the boat and run and stretch and climb or they start beating on each other. We pushed on a little more but it started to rain and it was dinner time so we turned back.

After Swiss chicken in white wine sauce Keith and I went up Johns Hopkins Inlet again, through the ice which being always on the move seemed to open some paths for the maneuverable little Bullfrog to pass through. At times we would nose our way through a sea of chunks and in other places we would find clear runways where we could plane at 20 knots.

Suddenly around a point Lamplagh Glacier grew until it filled the whole side of the Inlet. We worked our way through the bergs and up to a cavern where the water dripped off the roof of its luminescent blue walls. We could hear groaning and creaking and thus moving although too slow to see. The passage on to John Hopkins glacier was chocked with ice and we turned back We also decided that Reid Inlet was as far as the Little Liza would be going and she would remain as a base camp for further exploration.

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Photos

Hoonah, AK
Hoonah Prresbyterian Church on Mainstreet, Hoonah.

Hoonah
Carving a doorpost for a longhouse in Bartlett Cove, Glacier Bay.

low tide in Hoonah
This a ramp not a ladder. Tides were 25'.

Glacier Bay
Reid Glacier at the other end of our anchorage in Reid Inlet

Reid Glacier, Glacier Bay
Face of Reid Glacier

Reid Glacier
Glacier popsickles

Johns Hopkins Inlet, Glacier Bay
Kira on the rock.

Comments

[Sue & Ken]

Love it...
Sure wish you could see the full SUN show!