Blogs from Glacier Bay, Alaska, United States, North America - page 4

We spent the day on the waters of Glacier Bay and saw magnificent glaciers, ancient snow-capped mountains, whales, sea lions, mountain goats, cormorants, puffins and eagles. This tour is the only scheduled day tour permitted inside Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve. The boat carries about 200 people, so the ride was not as intimate as the boat ride we took into LeConte Glacier near Wrangell. However, it was a comfortable, heated, high- speed catamaran ride; and gave us great view of marine and coastal wildlife, alongside massive glaciers, and towering mountains. There was a National Park Service Ranger on board, who narrated things of interest and was available to answer all our questions. It was an experience of a lifetime to see such beauty. Photographs provide only a small fraction of the panorama. There are ... read more

Lots of really old ice. Global warming, however, may melt these suckers in 3 billion years, so WATCH OUT!... read more

Adam's Blog - Norwegian Pearl Alaskan Cruise: IF EVER YOU WERE THINKING OF DOING AN ALASKAN CRUISE.........DO IT Ok so we are a bit excited. Yes it is eveything they say it is and to top it off the NCL Norwegian Pearl was a great ship to take us there for a family. Sunday morning and we were well organised onto the ship and into our cabin...on deck 8. The ship was built in 2008 and the flagship of NCL so everything was polished up.As we had just spent 11 weeks as a family together our holiday was meant to be for all so a little bit of space outside the cabin if you know what I mean was the GO....so first things first the kids were booked into kids club and the adults into the ... read more

We camped in the woods behind the beach. While it seems appealing to camp in the upper intertidal meadows next to the ocean they are often frequented by brown bears, so we go inland a bit and sleep a little better. In the morning we started uphill, through the rainforest. It was wet with fog, dew and light rain so we hiked in our raingear through huge spruce and hemlock, then through open muskeg, then more rainforest. Eventually we reached the ponds that signaled the end of the uphill. On the outer coast the fog often stops just a little ways inland, but you never know. Hot and sweaty in our rain gear we looked out over the pond to blue skies. At the far end of the last pond we stopped and pulled out our ... read more

"He says Lituya Bay is full of ice and we won't be able to land." I sat in the copilot's seat in shock. The float plane was over Lake Crillon and we would reach Lituya Bay in minutes, expecting to land and begin a week of wilderness adventure. Seems the adventure was already in full swing. "I'm on the radio with another pilot and he says it was clear yesterday but today it is full of ice." I mumbled into the headset microphone, "He's pulling your leg Cable." Where could that much ice come from? We'd walked the faces of both glaciers at the head of Lituya Bay the year before. Many years ago they were significantly tidewater, but in 2008 Lituya Glacier was back a quarter mile or more from the ocean and just a ... read more