Our Drive from New Hampshire to Vancouver BC with cruise to Alaska Trip – Michael and Pamella 2024 cruise and cross country trip

One of these little rocks is named 'Zip Rock'. The origins of the name are uncertain but whenever I'm here I always wonder if 'Zip' refers to the potential effect of these rocks on my boat hull. It helps to keep me on my toes. You see, this is the outer coast on a rare flat calm day. This is Cape Spencer, where the Pacific Ocean coastline takes a hard turn into Cross Sound. Vessels headed south skirt these rocks as they seek the relatively calm waters of the inside passage. There is a contorted passageway through these rocks that captains with small boats and local knowledge sometimes use in calm weather. There are few marginal places to anchor. These rocks have claimed a few vessels, and the lighthouse visible on one of the bigger islands still operates as a clear warning to mariners: 'Beware!'

This cove is a good anchorage on the outer coast, but it is very difficult to thread the elongated entrance into the cove. And every year the glacially fed river that empties nearby fills the entrance with more and more silt. Winter storm waves move the silt and change the shallow channel. 40 years ago fishing boats regularly used this cove as safe harbor, but today the entrance is so shallow and shifting it is only used by adventurous captains with small, shallow draft boats at high tide.

"Bill, about half the photo, there's not much there... " Yes, exactly. This is an enormous black sand beach, and it just goes on and on and on. It's located on the park's outer coast and is a bit difficult to reach. Sink your toes in and take a stroll. Perhaps you'll find a glass ball, or bear tracks. It's sort of a blank page with all kinds of possibilities. Print it big and post it on your wall and know that it is out there, waiting for you. Anytime.

This is Cross Sound on a flat calm day. There's usually a few days like this every summer. It's a chance to kayak close to shore and get out and explorer. There are very few sandy beaches around Cross Sound. You have to find a pocket beach with smaller boulders to make a clean landing. On super calm days you can get out directly on the rocks. A durable inflatable kayak is a perfect way to explore these shores.

Not quite a 360 panorama but close. On the far right is Cross Sound, the entrance to Lisianski Inlet and a portion of Yakobi Island. The closer bits of water center and center right are Dundas Bay, and the white capped mountains in the distance to the center left are in the Fairweather Range. On the far left is Taylor Bay and beyond is Cape Spencer. A grand view on a grand day.

We call these 'pocket beaches' - small sand beaches flanked by rock and cliffs. In many areas they provide a critical landing where kayakers can get off the water. They are all different, unique, almost mystical places. Often there's no human footprints, only the tracks from bears, wolves and river otters. For many first-time kayakers the water journey becomes a secondary experience to the excitement of discovery and mystery at each new pocket beach.

We go to these places. It's not easy but it's always worth the effort. Spectacular places available to anyone on the planet. It's an enormous National Park, with a mandate to be preserved, intact. Writing this caption, 10 year after I took this panorama I muse, "It's still there. Almost no difference from when we visited." National parks preserve the 'homelands' of humans on planet earth--and that's a good thing.

We look forward to the blue lupines. They signal that summer is here and winter can be forgotten, for a while. They are common along the upper intertidal zones in the lower bay. The blooming of the elongated cluster of flowers progresses slowly, lasting a month or more. As the last flowers wither away and the pea-like seed pods get bigger and bigger we know that summer is progressing, and fall is coming.

Muddy sloughs are beautiful but can pose unique hiking challenges. They are full of what we call "boot sucking mud" that can turn a peaceful walk into a wet, filthy trauma. I have friends who used inflatable mattresses to rescue a co-hiker stuck and unable to free themselves from stinky, thigh deep intertidal mud. We usually take the route closer to the trees, longer but less likely to be eventful.

We had no idea what we'd find just beyond the trees. We stepped through the woods and met this view wide-eyed and open-mouthed. Writing this caption and looking at the panorama brought it all back and I thought, "Sometimes superlatives just don't cut it: 'An enormous field of cotton grass.'" Hahaha, how lame! Here's a case where the photo tells a story I can't begin to capture with words. Walking through this field was like a fairytale. Full stop.

The low hills in the foreground are the southern terminus of the Brady Glacier. Behind them the ice stretches for many miles. Although the surface of these hills are covered with small boulders and cobbles, there's ice just below. This is the temporary equilibrium point, where the glacier's advances are more or less equal to the loss from melting. The Brady is getting thinner, and will not be able to hold this position for long. The glacier is over 2 miles wide at the terminus and there are many streams emerging from beneath the ice, draining the enormous basin that holds the ice-sheet. Even on the brightest blue-sky days the water is icy cold, very close to freezing.

Late November in Reid Inlet. The snow cover is not yet complete and the ravines stand out. A closer look at the details will show that the hillside remains plastered with glaicial sediments that have yet to erode away. A bit of blue sky near the inlet entrance brightens the day.

There are perhaps a disproportionate number of 'blue sky day' photos in this collection. But this panorama captures a typical Glacier Bay day in April: cloudy and cold with muted colors and snow down to the waterline. In these conditions a colorful hiking jacket becomes an important point of reference. Intertidal areas in the early spring are perhaps a low point in the 'color' factor at Glacier Bay. Later the muted patches of green and orange-colored algae will perk up and expand. The snow will melt and the upper intertidal grasses will flush out, and the bordering alder shrubs will become a line of light green that matures to a dark green before turning brown and falling off. Along the way there will be some blue-sky days and hopefully we'll be lucky enough to capture a few.

Here's an enigmatic area with a complex glacial history. To the far left is the Carrol Glacier. On the far right are the waters of Wachusett Inlet. Up the valley in center are the remnants of the Burroughs Glacier. Ice covered this area not long ago and the streams that drain the valleys continue to meander and sculpt the landscape.

Many Glacier Bay days are cloudy and rainy. We adapt, always ready with backpacks full of rain gear, warm clothing and hot drinks. We are always ready with a cover for the camera or a dry wipe to remove the droplets from the front of the lens. We are always looking, because at Glacier Bay the perfect moment, the perfect shot, is usually there. You just turn your head a little and open your eyes.

The vegetation in upper Muri Inlet is still in the early stages of succession. Distant parts of the area in this scene were covered with glacier ice less than a century ago, while the foreground is only decades old. The early colonizers, mosses and dryas plants are being replaced by willows and alders and trees. In a few more years this view will not be possible - the entire area will be covered with thick shrubs. The iron rich reddish rocks are not a common sight in Glacier Bay and in a few years these will also be covered and obscured.

Cross Sound is the critical northern entrance to the Pacific Northwest's Inside Passage. The foreground in this photo is the 'mainland' and the all the land beyond are islands, big and small, in the 'Alexander Archipelago'. To the right is the open Pacific Ocean, to the left through the narrow strait pass cruise ships, barges, freighters, tankers and the millions of fish commuting from the Gulf of Alaska to the“Inside Waters”. The foreground is Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve. Most of the land on the islands is part of the Tongass National Forest.

Johns Hopkins is one of the very few glaciers in the park that has managed to hold its position and even advance a bit at times. This is likely due to its source very high in the Fairweather Mountains. At present (2019) it is no longer connected with the adjacent Gilman glacier.

A maze of seracs graces the terminus of Margerie Glacier. At the terminus pressures change, cracks and crevasses widen, the ice shifts, and moves. Eventually gravity wins and ice tumbles and calves. The face of Margerie changes almost every day, but it's always breathtaking.

We were anchored overnight and awoke to what we like to call, 'flat calm'. I quietly asked my companion in the adjoining bunk to not move. Experience had taught me the slightest movement of the small boat would ripple out and destroy the perfect mirror. Still partially wrapped in my sleeping bag I slowly positioned the camera out the window next to my bunk and captured these shots. White Thunder Ridge's name is another testament to change at Glacier Bay. At one time the sound of crashing ice from McBride Glacier echoed off these cliffs filling upper Muir inlet. But this morning we awoke to only the distant sound of cawing kittiwakes.

Both Glacier Bay National Park and West Norwegian Fjords World Heritage Site protected areas feature scenic fjords that are popular destinations on cruise ship itineraries. Site representatives have shared management plans, research and monitoring protocols, and met several times to discuss challenges related to cruise tourism, environmental protocols, and interpretation and education programs. With the signing of the agreement managers anticipate those conversations will continue in the spirit of preserving the outstanding features and values of both places into the future.

Amidst ice blocks and with a backdrop of the Lamplugh Glacier, representatives from Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve and West Norwegian Fjords World Heritage Site sign a sister park agreement. The agreement acknowledges the similarities between the two protected areas and promotes the sharing of ideas and best practices between site managers.

Representatives from Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve and West Norwegian Fjords World Heritage Site step ashore at Lamplugh Glacier for the signing of their sister park agreement.

As a photographer, it is a treat to watch and photograph the aurora, but eventually an artist needs to find additional subjects to add interest to the image. On this evening in Bartlett Cove, my daughter was a willing model but the shoot was complicated by numerous factors. For one, a bright full moon was out which made the sky too bright to clearly see the aurora. I mitigated this by placing the moon behind the totem pole. If you look closely, you can see the glow of white moonlight just above the horizon and behind the pole. Then I had my daughter pose very still for about six seconds as I carefully “painted” the pole and her with a flashlight to illuminate those details.

It takes a very powerful auroral display to get this shot, because it is looking southeast rather than north. Luckily, I was out on a night when the northern lights were strong enough for about a minute to grab a couple of shots with the new Eagle totem pole in the foreground. Overall, it was one of the most intense northern lights displays that I’ve ever seen. I was flattered when the wife of this pole's carver chose this print as a gift for her husband.

When warmer, moist air blows in off of the ocean and lands on a cold cedar totem pole, it quickly condenses and forms large ice crystals. My personal attention often falls directly towards the eyes in Tlingit art. It is in our nature to do so—it is how we connect and communicate so much. One of the main design elements of Tlingit formline art is an “ovoid”, which is usually how eyes are depicted.

On a cool clear winter’s day, the Raven pole collects frost. Majestic and tall Sitka spruce trees stand sentinel around the perimeter of the Huna Tribal House and the totem poles.

The Raven pole stands in the foreground of the Huna Tribal House. The Raven, along with the Eagle, denote the two moieties of the Tlingit culture. A moiety is defined as one of “two social or ritual groups into which a people is divided”. So, if you are Tlingit, you are either Raven or Eagle. The culture is matrilineal, so if your mother is a Raven, so are you. The differences in the formline artwork representing Raven and Eagle are subtle initially, but once you begin to look a little more closely the differences begin to appear. Generally, the first thing to look for is the curve of the beak, which is much shorter on the Eagle than the Raven.

Totem poles tell a story, but so does this picture. These men are placing the Raven pole on its mount. They are not, however, mere laborers making the final placement, but rather they are the artists that conceived, designed, and carved this intricate and beautiful pole. On the far left of the frame you can see a Huna Tlingit elder who has the privilege of holding a line to help guide them.

Before the totem poles were raised, there was a brief window of time when the poles rested on blocks on the ground in Bartlett Cove. This gave me a opportunity to take a few minutes to look closely at the details of the carvings, the colors, and the grain of the wood. I marveled at how the carver was able to make these knuckles shine through the grain. I suspect that it wasn’t by accident. If it was, I suspect that the artist might credit his hand being led by his ancestors.

The Raven and Eagle totem poles were ceremoniously carried in by a crew of Huna Tlingit and National Park Service staff surrounded by song. Hats made from woven cedar bark, ermine fur and sea lion whiskers can be seen here. The beadwork and regalia of the clothing matches the symbols and icons of the poles and the house screen.

After the Raven and Eagle poles were erected in 2017, the Healing pole was raised next. Before it was in place there was a time when I was able photograph sections of it from close range. The pole has checked (cracked) as the wood had dried out. This is expected to happen. The carvers simply work around these checks, some of which are there during the carving process, while others develop over time. Here the colors of the pole are at their brightest before any weathering has occurred.

$The Healing pole rests alongside the display of the articulated humpback whale skeleton. A few hours after this shot was taken, four people held onto each of the beams to lift the pole up and walk it the last few yards to its final destination between the Visitor Information Station and the top of the dock. It is now one of the first things visitors arriving by boat see as they arrive on land in Bartlett Cove. The Healing pole tells the story of how the National Park Service and Tlingit people are healing their relationship that was once fractured. The carver remarked at the dedication that this healing is not complete, but ongoing.$

Many people gathered in May 2017 to watch the raising of the Eagle and Raven poles in front of the Huna Tribal House “Xunaa Shuká Hít”. Residents of Hoonah, Gustavus, and even Juneau joined National Park Service staff in celebrating this event in the traditional homeland of the Huna Tlingit -- Glacier Bay. Using a fork lift was not, of course, the traditional method of raising a totem pole. However, embracing available technology is common in Tlingit culture. A Tlingit friend once said, “Don’t you think my grandfather would have used a chainsaw if someone gave him one?” Indeed!

It has been a privilege to witness all of the events that have helped to strengthen the relationship between the Tlingit people and the National Park Service. They are always joyous occasions that bring people together. They are times of song, dance, story, hugs, and deep love for Glacier Bay.

A straight-on view of the house screen and two of the four house posts.

The house screen within the Huna Tribal House is functional artwork that serves multiple purposes. Its primary duty is to tell stories. These stories are owned by the Tlingit people and can only be told by them. I can generally share with you that this screen tells the story of Glacier Bay as the traditional homeland of the Huna Tlingit. There are many stories within the larger one telling of the various struggles and successes over many centuries. These stories are based on oral histories that have been passed down through the generations.

The new Huna Tribal House “Xunaa Shuká Hít” sees lots of visitors in the summer time, but not too many in the winter. As I reflect back on this shot that I took only two years ago, it is striking how the pigments have faded and the building has weathered. My kids, shown here sledding, will not remember a time when this building wasn’t here. They are growing up understanding the symbols and stories of the rich Tlingit culture. While the colors may be fading, the stories that the Tlingit people recount, as depicted on this panel, continue to speak.

The carving of the Huna Tribal House, the totem poles that now stand in Bartlett Cove, the ceremonial canoes, and these paddles are the results of the artistic energy, creativity and hard work of many individuals. Each of these paddles, carved from cedar, are made by an individual to suit their physical size, their family crests, and their creative desires.

At this stage in the raising of the Raven and Eagle poles, people were taking a brief break between speeches. A lone woman stands in a traditional robe of black, red and abalone. She looks over the site that is backdropped by the Huna Tribal House and will soon support the poles. Since this shot was taken, lush native vegetation has quickly grown back to beautify these surroundings.

This Tlingit canoe is being paddled by some of the most revered and respected members of both the Tlingit and National Park Service communities. Pay special attention to the regalia and specifically the hats of the Tlingit paddlers. These are precious items that only come out on special occasions. In this case, the momentous occasion the raising of the Healing Totem Pole.

On May 20th, 2017, scores of Tlingit people from Hoonah came to their traditional homeland of Glacier Bay to participate in the raising of two totem poles. The large canoes here had been crafted the previous year for the dedication of the Huna Tribal House. Now, they are only used for special, ceremonial purposes such as the totem pole raising ceremony. Here they can be seen paddling to shore in Bartlett Cove to be welcomed by fellow tribe members on the beach.

It was a cool spring day in Bartlett Cove--April 12th, 2014. This was the day of the first groundbreaking for the construction of the Huna Tribal House. I distinctly remember the ceremony starting with an earth-shattering yell and drum beat. It was an arresting yell that commanded not only attention, but respect. It was a solemn moment that I won’t forget. Many speeches were made. Regalia was put on display. And a promise was kept as the first shovelful of dirt was turned over by a tribal leader and the park superintendent.

One of the most important recent developments at the park headquarters in Bartlett Cove is the installation of an articulated humpback whale skeleton. These whale bones are an educational opportunity for thousands of visitors each year, and in this case, students from the Gustavus Preschool. Kids and adults alike are able to come here to get a real sense for the immense size of these animals and to learn about their remarkable anatomy as well as their role in the ecosystem of Glacier Bay.

We find river otters and their trails in remote wilderness areas, but they also seem tolerent of human presence and structures. We sometimes find them using docks. And woe to the home owner who finds they have taken shelter under their boathouse, garage or home. Families, even generations of families can taint structure with their strong musky smell.

This is the seldom seen cabin of Buck Harbeson in Glacier Bay National Park. The fact that this cabin is still standing after more than five decades of complete neglect is a testament to his skill as a builder. Buck was a trapper and a miner and apparently one heck of a woodsman. He lived alone, the life of a hermit, in this cabin until he died there in 1964.

If you have been on a cruise to Glacier Bay over the past 40 plus years, you very well may have watched the National Park Service rangers on their “commute” to work. In this case it involves what is referred to as “the transfer”. This is the perspective of the ranger looking down the rail of the small transfer vessel to the doorway on the side of the cruise ship. A deckhand secures the rope ladder while the ranger climbs up. Both vessels are underway, making about 8 knots (9 mph or 15 kph), allowing the ships to form a secure, yet dynamic connection. How does this compare to your daily commute?

The transfer of the rangers off of the cruise ship at the end of the day is a popular spectacle. In this shot you can see dozens of passengers lined up on their balconies and on the top observation deck to witness the event. Transfers are typically quite routine and only last a minute or two. Occasionally the transfer vessel will need to pull away from the ship if a plug of kelp gets in the way of the intake of the vessel’s jet propulsion system. If the weather is marginal, it can get a little exciting too. If the weather is deemed too rough, the transfer is cancelled and the rangers usually end up flying home the next day from the ship’s next port of call.

This is the vessel “Serac”, which served as the ranger transfer vessel for over twenty years, making daily trips to deliver rangers and other personnel to and from the cruise ships. The large blue fenders on the bow and stern corners provide a cushion to dampen vibrations while the two vessels are in contact with each other. Generally, the captain operates the boat from inside the main cabin coming and going from park headquarters in Bartlett Cove, but then heads up to the flying bridge for the actual transfer. This allows the Serac captain to have a clear view of the entire operation. 2019 was the final year of service for the vessel shown here. The park is planning on replacing the Serac with a new vessel beginning in summer 2020.

Views of small ice bergs or 'bergy bits' as we call them, were once common in the upper fjords of Glacier Bay. Long term residents of Gustavus fondly recall similar views from glaciers that are now grounded - Muir Glacier, Riggs Glacier and Reid Glacier. As of 2019 Lamplugh glacier appears to be grounded. How long will Margarie and John Hopkins glaciers continue to shed ice directly into the ocean? Scientists predict perhaps only 5 or 10 years more.

This rare event from 2008 demonstrates how Glacier Bay is a place of very dramatic change. At the time, the official chart showed over 60 feet of water at the position where this small tour boat went aground. Which was accurate when the area was charted. But in the 30-40 years between, the main outlet stream from Grand Pacific Glacier filled this area with mud and rocks. Since this grounding the chart has been updated and this area is now mapped as inter-tidal, which is what you see here. The new chart also contains this warning: "Shoaling may also exist in these areas due to high rates of sediment deposition." The 70+ persons on-board were safely evacuated, the vessel was re-floated and towed to safe harbor.

This is a view that has become a bittersweet one for me over the past several years. These flowering lupine appear to be in the high alpine, but in reality they are only about 400 feet (122 m) above sea level. Since this spot is adjacent to a tidewater glacier that is rapidly retreating, the environment right next to the ice closely resembles an alpine ecosystem—it’s just that the trees haven’t had time to take hold yet. This makes these types of areas easily accessible to anyone who can paddle to or get dropped off by a vessel on a nearby beach. The bitter part for me is witnessing the rapid and dramatic loss of the glacial ice from these areas.

Marbled murrelets (Brachyramphus marmoratus) are small, but mighty. They swim underwater as well as above it. They nest in the old growth forests of the Pacific Northwest from California to Alaska. Very little was known about this seabird’s nesting behavior until 1974 when a nest was discovered deep in the forest, high up in a moss-laden tree.

In December, when the days are short, the moon sets over the Fairweather Range. On a few occasions over the past decade the full moon has set without the usual blanket of thick cloud cover. On these rare cool, clear mornings I head out with a camera, a tripod, a vision, and hope. On this morning it all worked out. To capture some detail of the moon I use a long telephoto lens with a focal length of about 400mm, or 8x magnification.

A winter storm like this one would send most of us inside rather quickly. That isn’t an option for the moose of course, but they are much better equipped for it than we are. Long legs enable them to pass through deep snow. A thick hide and highly insulative fur help the moose to retain heat. Still, it isn’t easy as they must not only endure snow and cold, but diminished food availability and the constant threat of predators—which in this area during winter would primarily be wolves.

Mink (Neovison vison) are commonly seen around the beach fringe of the mouths of streams. Their rich fur provides warmth from the rain and waters in which they hunt and swim. Several minutes before I got this shot, I watched an eagle swoop down and grab it. They struggled for a few intense seconds, but in the end, the wounded mink got away—at least that time!

Each spring near the end of May, moose (Alces alces) in and around lower Glacier Bay and Gustavus give birth to their calves. In some cases, the cows will linger in semi-residential areas because predators like bears and wolves generally choose to avoid these developed areas. Here a calf only a week or two old trails closely behind her mom’s hooves.

Sometimes a photo just needs to be black and white. Here is one of the many unnamed peaks in Glacier Bay that escaped glaciation. The sharp, jagged edges tell us that this mountain was not carved by ice. Most areas at lower elevations, say below 4000 ft (1220 m), were glaciated. These areas are characterized by smoothed over, rounder profiles. Also seen here in the lower half of the photo is a distinct snow cornice which shows that the dominant wind direction on this ridge blows from right to left.

This something that you don’t see every day. This is the waxy plug that rests inside the ear canal of a humpback whale. It is about 8 inches (20cm) long. When a dead whale is examined in a process called a necropsy, this is one of the important parts that the biologists seek. By finding the earplug and counting the lines (“growth layers”) under a microscope, the whale’s age can be determined. There are only a few people in the world with the experience necessary to do this accurately. For decades, biologists were not certain whether humpback whales add a new line of growth every year or every other year. However, when the earplug from a whale that died in Glacier Bay in 2001 (and had been seen since the 1970s) was examined, this question was resolved once and for all. Humpback whales add a growth layer EVERY year, which means that we now know that most humpback whales live into their 60s. It also underscores the importance of long-term study of these animals whose environment is constantly changing.

This humpback whale sculpture graces a coastal walkway in Juneau. The artist captures the detail so well first impression is a live breaching whale, but no, you can see the small fountains at the base.

The double breach! Breaching behavior is not all that common in Alaska. It is more common in the humpback whale’s wintering grounds off Hawaii and Mexico. Why whales breach isn’t known but potential reasons include, communication, feeding, dislodging parasites, or even play. In this scene we see the splash of one whale (on the right) while the second whale is still coming out of the water. Certainly, a rare and incredible sight!

Killer whale (Orcinus orca) research has been conducted by the same biologist in Glacier Bay for over three decades. This research vessel operates under special permits that allow her to approach whales closely in order to do several things. First, a photograph of each whale’s unique dorsal fin and gray ‘saddle patch’ (just behind the fin) allows for the identification of individuals. Second, she records the whales’ behavior and if she’s lucky, observes predation events to document what the whales are eating.

One of the first berries to ripen each summer is the salmonberry (Rubus spectabilis). It comes in three colors—red as depicted here, as well as yellow and orange. These plentiful berries are often made into jams and jellies. I love how this feather, presumably from an owl or other raptor, landed among the lush green and red of this salmonberry bush.

One challenge of camping in Desolation Valley is finding safe, flat places to pitch a tent. The valley slopes are steep and small rock falls are common. There were many pebble sized rocks sitting on top of this snow field which made for a rather restless nights sleep.

I’ve passed by Rendu Glacier hundreds of times, but each time is different, and I have yet to grow weary of it. To even the most casual of observers, differences both subtle and obvious can be seen. On this day I was struck by the dramatic contrasts of lower grey clouds against the higher white ones, all set upon a blue-sky backdrop. The turquoise waters of the bay underscore it all.

Muir Inlet, or as we often call it “The East Arm of Glacier Bay “ does not see much vessel traffic. There is only one tidewater glacier in this part of the bay and it is rapidly retreating. It does, however, produce a large amount of ice that ends up stranded on the beaches at low tide. On this occasion, I was lucky to witness a brown bear meandering past one of the beached icebergs. Very few things dwarf a brown bear, but an iceberg is definitely one of them!

Skunk cabbage (Lysichiton americanus) can be found in and around the marshy edges of wetlands or up in the muskegs. It is called skunk cabbage because of the smell it emits when it is blooming. While the smell may not be attractive to us, it certainly is to many pollinators. Insects are attracted by the smell and do the work of pollination for the plant. Skunk cabbage in bloom adds a beautiful splash of yellow to a world otherwise dominated by shades of brown and green.

Humpback whales compete with brown bears as being the most popular, 'must-see' mammal in Glacier Bay. This particular humpback whale is a calf, and it is doing what we photographers always like to see: breaching, where the whale jumps straight out of the water. No one really knows why whales breach…it may serve as a signal to other whales, it may help them shed dead skin and parasites, and in some cases it may indicate disturbance. Others believe that the whales find some enjoyment in breaching, and do it for fun.

We were out kayaking on Mendenhall Lake when this eagle swooped down from a tree and scooped out a fresh sockeye salmon. Only two gulps and the large orange -red egg sac, shown here, was gone. I was impressed by this eagle’s fishing and eating skills – both far superior to mine.

Perhaps the best way to get up close and personal with the Mendenhall Glacier is via kayak. Not so long ago, the face of the Mendenhall was only a short walk away. To reach the face of the glacier today is a much longer hike. The glacier has retreated nearly two miles in the last 50 years and is not slowing down.

Downtown Juneau can be a very colorful place, and I am not talking about the flowers. Just step into any of the bars downtown and you will see colorful characters on every stool – some of whom might even be fellow shipmates.

The docks in downtown Juneau can accommodate multiple large cruise ships at one time. Here, two large ships are tied up under a beautiful Juneau sunset.

One of the most popular things to do in Juneau is to “ride the tram”. According to Wikipedia, the tram “makes a six-minute ascent of 3,819-foot (1,164 m) Mount Roberts from the cruise ship docks to a height of about 1,800 feet (550 m), making it one of the most vertical tramways in the world. A restaurant, theater, nature center and retail shops are located at the top of the tramway, as well as connections to trails leading from sea level to the summit.” Riding the tram is especially popular on sunny summer days.

Conditions for this shot were not ideal, as I was looking almost directly into the sun. Yet somehow, this shot is powerful. Perhaps it is the glare of the sun, the looming, snowy mountains in the background, or more probably, it is the powerful twisting arc of the breaching whale itself.

One of the most well-known forms of Tlingit art is the totem pole. This is a close up shot of a pole in Saxman Totem Park in Ketchikan. Tlingit artwork typically used common shapes like U forms, S forms and ovoids to form uncommon and complex designs. Totem poles were usually made of red cedar.

This is the Clan House at Saxman Totem Park. Structures like this are central to the Tlingit culture of Southeast Alaska. The stories behind these artistic structures are the closely guarded property of the Tlingit. To learn more about them, respectfully ask a Tlingit – they are usually happy to share their unique and interesting culture.

Lamplugh Glacier, Mt. Cooper and Jaw Point

Lituya Mountain, Mt. Crillon, Mt. Bertha and Mt. Fairweather

Gloomy Knob, Glacier Bay and the Gilbert Peninsula

Sunset from Bartlett Cove with the Fairweather Mountains in the background... a delight to Glacier Bay Lodge visitors and guests.

Gold split the sky as we photographers huddled together outside braving the bitter winds of the sea, breathless for a moment, painting our thoughts with a digital brush.

The sunrise in Glacier Bay on winter solstice occurs around nine o'clock. As a photographer, getting to sleep in and still catch the warm, morning light is a nice consolation for dealing with sub-zero temperatures. In this sunrise we see a warm pink sunrise on the Fairweather Mountains reflected in Bartlett Cove near the park headquarters.

What was it John Muir said, paraphrased something like, “I found that going out was really going in”? Glacier Bay National Park offers millions of acres of opportunities for us to go out, and go in. We return from our adventures with spirits renewed, hope alive.

A little dot of a person dwarfed by a spectacular landscape....She captures the imagination and beckons us to get out there and partake. No trails, no guide books here, it is all about what we call 'discovery'. You pick some random hill, figure out a route, try it, turn back when you have to, struggle through the tangles in the lowlands and feast on the vistas in the uplands.

After a long hot day of uphill we collapsed on this island, each of us to his own little idyllic corner. Suddenly I heard a shout, “Bear! Comin’ at you!” We scrambled to our feet and sure enough a black bear topped a little hummock, running from the direction of the shout. It was looking a little stressed as it found itself in the center of a triangle of shouting humans. But we quieted down and quickly got the bear spray ready. It sauntered past me with a good 15 feet to spare, went into the shrubs on the hillside and started eating blueberries. Sean came down and said, “I was asleep, dreaming, and woke up with the bear’s face a foot above me!” Yikes! “What'd you do?” “Jumped up and started yelling!” When we tell this story to our Alaskan friends they inevitably bring up the story about their friend’s friend who woke up with a bear licking their face. They jumped up, too, and survived. Seems to be the standard, involuntary reaction...

The evening sun would soon fall beneath the horizon out to sea, but first it dipped below the mountains in the foreground, casting dramatic contrasting shadows. This effect only lasted for a few precious minutes. I took this shot while camped high up in the alpine at a secluded lake near the Brady Glacier.

I don't like heights much. And mostly we don't have to deal with them. The mountains here are so huge we rarely get to the exposed steep stuff. But here we found ourselves out on a limb, so to speak. The tent is in the low spot on the other side of the lake, a tiny dot of lime green. The route around the lake looked doable. “But there is that one steep looking area...” Yup, it is steep.... Go slow I told myself...

Most of the year this alpine lake is frozen over and covered with snow. But it was summer and we had sweated our way up, bushwhacking through thick shrubs on steep slopes. Then, surprise! Out in the open and what a welcome sight…time for a swim!

If you are able to find your way above 1,000 feet or more in Glacier Bay, you will find a different world from the one down at sea level. It is not an easy walk, with no trails. You have to scramble up rock and through dense brush to make it here, but once you are there, you are aptly rewarded. Up here a different world of wildflowers, shrubs and trees persists. Here, a sub-alpine meadow nestles a tarn the color of tea. Well protected on a calm day, the water is as still as the stones partially submerged in it.

Early June in Geikie Inlet. The previous winter saw a lot of snow and it was slow to melt. Despite the snow, these cottonwood trees have leafed out, for the summer season is short and precious. This was a great way to hike - the lower 'foot tangling' alder branches are hidden beneath a flat layer of consolidated snow.

In the trackless wilds of Glacier Bay, every serious hiker eventually tangles with an equally serious alder thicket. Cyanobacteria inhabit nodules they create in the roots of Sitka alder. They remove nitrogen from the air and “fix” it in a form usable by plants, a great advantage where topsoil has been scraped away by glaciers. Dense stands of the tangled shrub often spring up within 25 years after the glaciers retreat and now dominate large parts of upper Glacier Bay. Eventually Sitka spruces take root in alder-fertilized soil and shade out their short deciduous benefactors, replacing that hiker’s bane with other vegetative obstacles such as devil’s club.

We sat having breakfast on the beach early one morning in Reid Inlet (in Glacier Bay) when we spotted a movement further along the shore. A wolf was coming our way. We sat still, our eyes fixed on her (or him), admiring her graceful easy lope. She paused to look in our direction for a moment, then was on her way searching out her own breakfast, perhaps small fish, invertebrates, bird eggs or something larger. Our paths only crossed for a moment, but we’ll remember it forever.

We were counting salmon heading upstream to spawn one day when a female brown bear appeared on the opposite bank. “Does she mind us being here?” we asked ourselves. We kept our distance and watched while she scooped out a fish and took it to the bank to eat, then returned for another and another. She kept a watchful eye on us, but otherwise kept feeding. The salmon did their best to scoot out of her way, but were gathered up at the base of a small waterfall withnowhere to hide. We stopped counting after she had eaten 25 fish and left her to feed in peace.

I have a dry suit on, but the water is still numbing my face. I’m in a beaver pond looking to see what fish might be here. I don’t see them at first as they blend in well with the bottom and I don’t want to disturb them. I glide overhead trying to blend in – perhaps to them I am driftwood. These Dolly varden look at home in their watery world, their subtle, flicking body movements keeping them in place against the current. Dolly varden char are common in Southeast Alaska streams, even above waterfalls where there is no longer access to the sea.

It’s a different world underwater – a snorkel, mask and dry suit let you take a peek into the salmon’s spawning world. It all looks like rushing water from above, but down here there are quiet spots of shelter in pools, behind boulders…places to rest before the next push upstream. This male pink salmon’s hump was so pronounced that it stuck out of the water like a shark’s fin.

When the bugs are really bad it seems as if they could eat you alive. Every location has its own collection of biting insect species: horse flies, deer flies, white-socks, black flies, no-seeums, sand flies, biting midges and mosquitoes. Along the beach, hot summer days with no wind are the worse. It’s amazing that just a very short way out onto the Brady Glacier, which is in the distance behind this bear, there are few or no biting insects.

Among the folks with whom I go camping, we often spend more time and effort preventing issues with biting insects, especially mosquitoes, than with bears. These bears do not see humans as a desirable food item; you could stand 50 yards down the beach from this bear and it would most likely just walk past you, into the woods and be gone. But the biting insects here can drive you wild in minutes. I have friends who carry no bear spray or gun, yet spend years searching for and paying top dollar for the ultimate lightweight, breathable, waterproof tent that will also keep the bugs out. Our gear checklist inevitably includes insect repellent, head-nets and thin multiple-layer clothing to help keep the bites to a minimum.

There are days, and places, where the bugs get bad. Head-nets help. But mostly you have to just grin and bear it. Or get in the boat and go somewhere a breeze is blowing. This is the upper intertidal zone where salt tolerant sedges, grasses and herbs become inundated by tidewater. It makes for easy hiking when the tide’s out, except for the bugs...

I never understood why this wildflower was called a shooting star until I happened upon a meadow filled with a meteor shower of pink and yellow blazing in the afternoon winds. I was comforted by this reminder of the night sky, for it was something that I missed during the peak of a light-drenched Alaskan summer.

Nagoonberry – the berries are delicious. Period. But they are not too big and the plants are not usually found in thick patches, so it is hard work gathering enough for a pie. Nagoonberries typically grow in wet meadows but these plants were growing in thick moss on top of a big boulder at the head of a damp narrow fjord. OK, enough clues – go find them! You see, the berries are so good that folks around here don't discuss precise locations...you've got to find them on your own.

Cotton grass fruits are grain-like seeds with tufts of attached 'cotton' that catch the wind and disperse the fruit. This was a good day for fruit dispersal with strong winds and dry weather. Everything around the cotton grass, including the buckbean and marsh five-finger plants shown here, was smothered in 'cotton'.

This is just a small portion of an enormous meadow of cotton grass. I'd walked through this area once before, in September, and had no idea what it would be like in early summer. We wandered here for several hours stunned by a landscape that barely resembled planet Earth.

This is a big tidal flat at low water. A spectacular sight from the air but a nightmare for an uninitiated hiker short on time and wanting to take 'the direct route'. At low tide sloughs like this are mud…thick 'boot sucking' mud. “How hard could it be?” we sometimes josh, rolling our eyes, knowing 'it' – the mountain hike, the glacier walk or the slough crossing – could be very, very hard. Having attempted to cross this slough once, we now routinely take the pleasant, but much longer route along the grassy intertidal next to the woods.

As I reached central Dundas Bay the fog thickened and I noticed something odd along the shoreline, something white. As I brought the boat closer I thought, “It looks like ice! It is ice! An iceberg in Dundas Bay! In the summer!” And then I noticed the floating sticks and leaves, bits of fern leaves and fresh spruce needles, and I started to suspect what had happened. I switched on the depthfinder thermometer and as I cruised further into the bay the water temperature dropped steadily and the floating debris thickened. At the far end of Dundas Bay the river which drains from the Brady Icefield was in flood. It was a jökulhlaup! This is the Icelandic word for an 'outburst flooding event'. Abyss Lake was draining, and I got to see glacier ice in Dundas Bay!

Two days of backpacking reward these hikers with a dramatic view of an iceberg-studded lake fringing the massive Brady Glacier. Lakes like this are created when a glacier dams a drainage channel. Water rises until it finds a way under or around the glacier or takes another outlet. When the water in this lake reached the visible 'bathtub ring' it flowed over a lip and out a valley in the left foreground of the photo. Since then, glacial movement opened a channel under the ice, partially draining the lake and releasing a torrent of water downstream along the glacial margin.

See the hiker at the base of the tree? Yes, this was a big tree. The 'bath tub ring' look to this lake gives it the appearance of a 'reservoir' – a body of water behind a man-made dam. But it is not a reservoir; it is a glacier dammed lake and the lake level fluctuates naturally. Many of the lakes along the edge of the Brady Glacier have a 'bath tub ring' around the edge from repeated filling and draining, but I know of no other that has standing dead trees of this size.

We visited this glacier dammed lake soon after a partial draining when the lake edges were thick with fresh mud. The Brady Glacier has dammed this lake for almost 200 years and periodically releases catastrophic outburst floods to the terminus of the glacier. When the lake is drained it forms two small lakes separated by a moraine. This photo was taken facing the Brady Glacier ice dam from the moraine that divides the two lakes at low water.

Ptarmigan are mostly white in the winter and a combination of mottled black, red-brown, gray and white in the summer. We find them in the open alpine areas where they blend into the rocks so well we often don't seem them until they suddenly flush.

$'Chatter marks' are crescent shaped fractures and gouges occasionally found on de-glaciated bedrock. Under a thick glacier, hundreds of feet of ice press boulders down onto bedrock, creating tremendous pressures where they make contact. Scientists attribute chatter mark formation to the irregular movement of boulders against bedrock under a glacier. I usually think of glacier motion as regular and gradual, almost 'fluid', but even in my few years exploring I have witnessed events such as glacier outburst floods and rock avalanches onto glaciers that might cause sudden glacier surges. I wonder if these sorts of events could cause the irregular glacial movements that produce chatter marks. Regardless, simply witnessing these events reminds me that glacier change is not always predictable and gradual.$

I am sitting at about 2000 feet elevation (610 meters), the tarn is about 500 feet (150 meters) below me and the Brady Icefield is about 500 feet (150 meters) below the tarn. The “getting there” portion of these trips is always very rewarding... but there is nothing quite like achieving the dream on a sunny, blue-sky day...

Cirques are amphitheater-shaped valleys generally formed by alpine glacier action. Lakes and ponds in the scooped out depressions of some cirques are called tarns. I search for tarns on maps and on aerial photos. They don't always show up on older maps... many were covered in ice until the mid-1900s. The lip or sill, the low area at the opening of a cirque, is sometimes a good picnic site with 360 degree views. Visiting most tarns in the park is a significant logistical and exertion challenge.

The blue lupine and purple mountain paintbrush stand out, but when walking in the alpine, it is generally the less showy plants that cover the ground. The shiny kidney-shaped leaves of 'deer-cabbage' are brilliant green in summer and yellow in fall. Alaska bellheather and partridgefoot, present in this photo in the lower right, are also common plants in Glacier Bay's alpine.

An icefield is an extensive area of interconnected valley glaciers. The Brady Icefield 'flows' in two directions: south to Taylor Bay and north to Reid Inlet and Lamplugh Glacier. The high central portion of the Brady Icefield, visible in this photo, is nearly flat and is usually snow-covered year round.

We crossed the ice in this photo before climbing to the campsite in the lower right. Choosing a route across such complicated terrain can be tricky. An icefield is like an enormous river – where the 'glacier bed' (think river bed) is flat the glacier surface is flat and 'smooth'. Where the ice passes over sub-glacier hills, the ice surface is rough and 'crevassey' like a river's rapids. Along the edge of a glacier the glacier surface can be rough or smooth depending on both the underlying bedrock and the shape of containing valley.

A pond on ice... This water, I drink. Straight up. Fresh, cold, clean. Delicious!

When you find a moose’s bones out on the Brady Glacier, you've got to wonder. After all, there isn’t exactly a lot to eat out there. Was it chased by wolves? Was it escaping the hordes of biting insects that don't venture out onto glacier ice? Was it injured in a crevasse? Was it just plain old age? We'll never know...

Ice, land. The transition. On a glacier hike there is this moment when your normal world changes. All your life you live on land, maybe sometimes in a boat. But most of us spend our lives with our feet on terra firma. When you step on glacier ice you know right away it is different. No tree roots here. And every sunny day the icy surface you walk on sublimates, evaporates and simply slips away beneath your feet.

A simple walk along the beach becomes an adventure. This river starts about a ½ mile upstream from this point at the face of the Brady Glacier. The water is bone chilling cold and swift. We carry lightweight 'pack rafts' just to cross streams, rivers and bays in the park. They are just big enough to sit in with your backpack across the tubes in the front.

We camped next to this beach the night before. In the early morning we sat eating our breakfast next to a clump of bushes when this wolf strolled down the beach. It passed us by and walked down to the water’s edge, turning its head and looking at a duck just offshore. When it reached the river at the end of the beach it turned and walked back, passing us a second time. Farther down the beach it went to the surf line and then into the water, but it was too far away to see what it was after.

Before the days of plastic fishing floats, glass balls were sometimes used to suspend large fishing nets. Most glass floats found in Alaska are apparently from Japanese fishing vessels. This one is pictured exactly where it was found on the outer coast with the Fairweather Range in the background. The surface looks almost sand-blasted and the bottom is covered with the remnants of barnacles. It seems something of a miracle it survived years, perhaps decades adrift in the North Pacific before weaving a gauntlet of rocks and breakers to end up on this isolated sandy beach.

Calypso orchids are as fragile as they are beautiful. The conditions required for them to bloom are quite specific and the windows of time when they are in bloom are brief. I was lucky to find this one amongst a few others along the outer coast.

The Townsend warbler’s short rising song is the defining sound of summer for me. While other birds often stop singing by late morning, the Townsend keeps going, filling long summer days with its music.

There are not many stands of yellow cedar in Glacier Bay. The stands that do persist are remnants of forest that were not overtaken by ice during the ‘little ice age’ which ended a few hundred years ago. This yellow cedar branch seemed to be reaching out to the flowering dwarf dogwood in the top of the frame. I can almost smell the sweet and pungent smell of muskeg when I look at this image.

Toe-jammin’ with bear spray. There's not a lot of good rock climbing in Glacier Bay. We are at the boundary of two tectonic plates and our metamorphic rocks are considered by most climbers to be too crumbly for good climbing. Plus we get so much rain it’s usually too wet to get good grips. When we stumbled upon this granite rock outcrop my hiking partner sprang into action, bear spray, intertidal wading boots and all.

Exploring the rocky coast, it got too steep to continue and we were forced to go inland...so much for an easy beach walk!

Sea caves and sea arches – it's all about the rock. Hard granitic rock weathers uniformly, making sea arches and sea caves rare. But layered metamorphic rocks, now there's potential for arches and caves. The layers have different degrees of hardness and shear. Sea water pounds and eats away the softer areas. Occasionally the rock type, the coastline configuration and persistent sea conditions combine to produce a fantastic cave or arch. But sea arches don't usually last long – the same erosion processes that creates them also tears them down.

On rainy days I like hunkering down in the boat, reading a book and waiting for the wildlife to pay a visit. You never know what will come by - this common loon was one in a group of four. These gorgeous birds circled the boat, meandered away, then returned several times over the course of an hour.

These outer coast headlands of hard granite-like rock are infrequently visited by kayakers. They are normally pounded by big Pacific swells and even on this rare calm day we were particularly vigilant to keep a careful watch on the seas.

The park has all kinds of beaches – from sand to gravel to bedrock. This cobble and boulder beach stretches for almost two miles on the outer coast of the park. Here a river descends from the mountains on the left and takes one last meander before merging with the Pacific.

A river otter scampered across this beach shortly after I took this photo. Or rather, it slinked – at least that's what I'd call it – across the open sand, down to the water’s edge and into the ocean. The name river otter is not exactly accurate, for we commonly see river otters in the ocean. But the converse is not true – I've never seen a sea otter in a river.

Savvy Southeast Alaska campers tote a tarp. Even ounce-counting backpackers find them worth their weight in this soggy climate; some even substitute them for a tent. Other essentials for this weather include rubber boots, dependable rain gear, and a leak-free tent. A rain hat is a major bonus.

Natural obstacles abound in Glacier Bay’s wilderness. Those on foot encounter swift streams, glaciers, steep terrain and dense vegetation. Without trails, Glacier Bay’s adventurers must be prepared to surmount or circumvent these obstacles on their own. They must also be prepared to turn back when the risk becomes too great.

The outer coast of Glacier Bay National Park is a coastal wilderness of epic beauty. No roads, no buildings. Out there you are at home with the ocean and the sky. And most likely no one else for many, many miles.

Tidewater glacier? Nope. Well, it depends on who you ask. In most definitions a 'tidewater glacier' has two critical components, a glacier, and an ocean. The water in this photo is a lake, and while all bodies of water are effected by the pull of the moon and sun, and are therefore “tidal”, lake water doesn't cut it. So what do we call it? A “lakewater glacier” doesn't ring true but I use it with friends so I can watch their reaction. A “glacier that calves into a lake” is a little cumbersome but works. This is South Crillon Glacier where it pours into Crillon Lake. You know it is different – no seals, no kittiwakes, no murrelets, no big waves and no cruise ships. Just lots and lots of quiet and, oh yeah, no saltwater. Interesting that there are many more lakewater glaciers in Glacier Bay National Park than there are tidewater glaciers, but nobody talks about them much.

A river ran through it. All over it. This is a tiny section of the Lituya Glacier outwash plain with the edge of the glacier in the background. Seven days before we stood here a glacier dammed lake drained catastrophically and flooded the outwash plain. The rounded black object in this photograph is a stranded iceberg from the edge of the glacier. As the river fanned out and became shallower the berg grounded out. The river, flowing from left to right, piled big rocks against the upstream side of the berg. The pit around the berg indicates the approximate size of the original berg as the water dropped. All that's left in a few more days will be the pit. We'd seen similar pits the year before. This must happen regularly... New campsite criteria: Ice pits present? Camp somewhere else!

I call these 'water tubes' because they resemble lava tubes. Once upon a time this ice, and this tube, was farther up the glacier valley buried deeper beneath glacial ice. Water ran through this tube, under the thick ice above it. I now look at glaciers and see a mass of ice that most likely contains an unseen network of tunnels draining water from the melting surface downward and down-glacier.

What can I say? Glaciers are sculptors, but this was something worthy of a fine art museum. We are on Lituya Glacier with North Crillon Glacier in the background. The river flows out from beneath Lituya Glacier into Lituya Bay.

We'd hauled our pack rafts across the glacier hoping to paddle in the glacier dammed lake on the other side. As we'd passed this pond we joked that it might be the only water we'd actually get to... which turned out to be right. The glacier at the big lake was way too steep to descend. So on the return hike we just couldn't pass the pond by.

The rock you see is a relatively thin layer on top of dozens, if not hundreds, of feet of ice. The shoreline around the pond was a slick layer of clear ice. My other hiking companion, not visible in this photo, is changing out of cold, wet clothing after not quite managing to make the transition from the edge of the pond into the raft...

Most of the ice that makes up a glacier is rock-free because it forms in open snowfields and slopes high in the mountains. But as the ice moves down-valley, rocks avalanche onto the glacier surface where ice and land meet. Rock is also picked up beneath the surface of the glacier wherever the ice is in contact with the land.

Most of the surface of Lituya Glacier is covered with a layer of rock. Here the layer is thin, but in other areas you can't see the ice at all. The small crevasse in the foreground is full of water.

A turbulent river emerges from beneath a glacier. The water is silty with 'glacial flour' – pulverized rock ground fine beneath the weight of tons of moving ice.

Glacier vs. Forest...North Crillon Glacier wins! Many glaciers in the world are receding but North Crillon is advancing, at least it was in 2008 when I took this photo. These trees are being pushed over by ice and rocks near the terminus of the glacier. Lituya Bay is visible in the background and the scar from the 1958 giant wave is just visible on the distant slope on the left.

North Crillon Glacier is covered with rocks, and some are huge. We'd climbed along the edge of the glacier and then up onto its surface. No crampons needed, there was so much rock that we only saw bare ice on the steep sections of the glacier. My friend, Kim, said, “I've had enough of all those yoga magazine photos on the beach in Hawaii! It's our turn!” In the distance on the left is the wave-scarred hillside where a giant wave in 1958 cleaned the vegetation down to bare rock.

Red fox on the shore in Lituya Bay, a rare sighting!

Most of the land in Glacier Bay National Park is designated wilderness without motorized access. Outside of Glacier Bay proper float planes can land in the protected ocean bays adjacent to wilderness. Float planes usually come to the beach to drop-off and pick-up folks but a pack raft enables a quick 'water pick-up' on a calm day.

Desolation Valley – this is the active seam between North America and the Pacific crustal tectonic plates. Earthquakes are frequent and when you camp there you may well be woken in the night to the sound of falling rock. Below us is North Crillon Glacier covered in red and gray rock. The ice that carried the rock from the high mountains is barely visible. The view northwest along Desolation Valley crosses the head of Lituya Bay (at sea level) and the striped terminus of Lituya Glacier. Mt. Fairweather is the highest point on the right at 15,320 feet above sea level. From Lituya Bay to the summit of Mt. Fairweather is 16 miles as the raven flies.

Lituya Bay is mythical in reputation and deservedly so. The name comes from the Tlingit Ltu.aa, or “lake inside the point”. In the foreground is Cenotaph Island. In 1786 LaPerouse and his men stayed in Lituya Bay for three weeks and called it Port des Francois.

In the background on the left is the slope where an earthquake caused a massive landslide in 1958. When the landslide hit the water it generated a giant wave (~1,720 ft high) that washed over the ridge, scoured the vegetation above the shore, washed over parts of Cenotaph Island and swept two boats out to sea.

These impressive car-sized erratics were bare just weeks before but long, sunny Alaskan summer days induce incredibly productive algae blooms, the staff of life in marine waters.

The beach is often the path of least resistance for all large mammals and they leave the tale of their passage in the sand. Daily transits by brown bears and a complete absence of human tracks measure the wildness of this coast one step at a time.

Fallen trees are scattered in the delta in front of Mt. Fairweather. We were lucky to catch a glimpse of this 15,000+ foot peak, visible only in the rare patches of fair weather that grace the outer coast. For more information n our journey visit http://www.GroundTruthTrekking.org

Huge waves tumble the cobbles of this beach, rounding and smoothing them. In the background of this picture is Cape Fairweather, a great moraine of boulders pushed into the ocean by a now diminished glacier. Already the crashing waves of the exposed coast are working to wear away that moraine, dislodging sand, gravel, and even these large cobbles. It's a slow process, but the sea is patient. For more information on our journey visit: http://www.GroundTruthTrekking.org

Surf crashes on the cobbles and sand near Cape Fairweather. Dark clouds on the horizon assured us that another storm was due at any time. Walking here in Glacier Bay National Park and beyond into Wrangell St. Elias National Park we were exposed to every storm that came along, and by the end fourteen had battered us with howling wind and driving rain. But between the storms there was sun, and as we grew accustomed to them, the storms themselves became interesting, amazing, and even fun. For more information on our journey visit: http://www.GroundTruthTrekking.org

Gray is certainly the most frequently chosen color on Southeast Alaska’s pallet. I was awestruck on this day in Dry Bay by the vicissitudes of sunlit gray passing from sand to sea to sky.

A rainbow glows against the dark grey sky, in a brief interlude between squalls and hailstorms. We held tight to our packrafts to keep them from blowing away in the stiff wind, as we walked towards the crossing of Alsek River at Dry Bay. Dry Bay marks the northern edge of Glacier Bay National Preserve, but is still deep in the wilderness. It would be another 50 miles before we reached the nearest town of Yakutat. And that was just halfway on our 4000-mile journey - by foot, ski, and packraft. For more information on our journey visit: http://www.GroundTruthTrekking.org

By the time I notice this coyote (Canis latrans) it was clear that it had already spotted me. I was slowly cruising in a boat in December during the annual Christmas Bird Count. During that time of the year, boat traffic is almost non-existent, and animals are given a break from the noise and disruption that humans can sometime cause, even in a place as wild and remote as Glacier Bay. I suspect the sound and sight of a boat at that time of year captured the curiosity of this animal as it perched upon this rock to get a better look at me.

High on the west ridge of Mt. Fairweather on the descent from the summit, late afternoon. The saddle at 13,200 feet was below and so were the storm clouds which rose up and engulfed us. Soon after this photo we were in gale force winds, extreme wind chill, and complete white out.

Traversing under a cornice on the way to the high saddle on the west ridge of Mount Fairweather. The summit of Mt. Fairweather was straight ahead, and we weaved our way through crevasses in the most direct line to the top.

Camp at the top of the icefall, Grand Plateau Glacier, 6700 feet elevation, on the northwest slopes of Mt. Fairweather. The clouds dissipated and revealed an amazing scene of mountains and glaciers. We had arrived! This was a great moment of serenity and beauty.

Skiing up Grand Plateau Glacier on the climb of Mt. Fairweather. At this point we were about 50 miles from where we started skiing at the head of Tarr Inlet in Glacier Bay. We'd skied the entire distance, pulling sleds that haul most of the weight.

Breaking trail up the middle of the broad Grand Pacific Glacier on our approach to climb Mt. Fairweather. This is day 6 of a 35 day expedition. Storms were frequent, so when the weather was good, we made as many miles as our strength and endurance allowed. It was brute work to pack and pull 200 pounds apiece of gear and supplies through fresh, heavy snow.

Arêtes are sharp mountain ridges, said to be “knife-edged,” formed by glacial erosion in two separate valleys eating into the rock that divides them. Snow that falls on the near side of this arête ultimately contributes to Margerie Glacier, the most visited glacier in the park, while on the far side it joins Johns Hopkins Glacier, which is, arguably, even more spectacular. As no doubt you can imagine, snow has a very difficult time clinging to mountain slopes so steep, and thus it frequently cascades down as avalanches, carving the corrugations that are so prominent in the lower right. This process is in no way limited to the wintertime as at these altitudes, snow is possible anytime of the year.

The brown 'flow' just left of center in this photo is a massive landslide that occurred high up in the Fairweather Mountain Range. Scientists from the US Geological Survey are calling this event one of the biggest landslides in the world in recent history, and perhaps the largest one ever recorded in Alaska. The slide was so large that it was detected by seismic monitoring equipment. I was able to fly over it several weeks later when the slide was still raw and exposed. This particular slide generated a signal equivalent to a 2.5 magnitude earthquake.

People climb these mountains, but not very often. The mountains' proximity to the ocean makes for wet, cloudy, snowy conditions that change rapidly. Climbers talk of intense beauty, frostbite and hunger. Me, I'm happy with the photo and a warm cup of tea after a delightful overflight.

It's not like anything else you'll ever experience, these big ice calvings. There is a power and a 'volume' that is not part of your everyday living. The face of Margerie Glacier rises over 200 feet high and the splash is nearly 100 feet high.

We had risen early to arrive at Margerie Glacier as the sun was coming up, lighting the face from the side. Then we waited. Which is what just about everyone does. It is a Glacier Bay tradition, to sit on a boat in front of a tidewater glacier and wait for it to calve. Not all waits pay off with 'the big one', but many do and regardless it is always time well spent, waiting with the mountains, the sea, the glacier. We got lucky and had just enough warning of small ice bits starting to fall that I was able to catch the moment in motion. The next photo shows the spectacular splash.

The glaciers in Glacier Bay are often shrouded in mist, if not completely occluded from view. When rain falls at sea level, snow falls at the upper elevations. The snow compresses into ice and eventually, that ice begins to flow to the sea. On this evening, Margerie Glacier was mostly covered beneath a blanket of fog. For a few minutes, the fog lifted and the glacier was revealed, only to be covered up again a few minutes later.

This is Margerie Glacier where it reaches the ocean, viewed above from a small airplane. Looking down from a bald eagle’s view, reveals the jagged and uneven surface of the glacier. I still recall hearing that park rangers and visitors on a cruise ship had once watched a brown bear crossing the Margerie Glacier... how that bear found its way across is a wonder!

Margerie Glacier on a “Fairweather Day”. Once in a great while, the snowiest spot on Earth clears, affording us a view from the edge of the sea to the crown of Mt. Fairweather. On these hallowed “Fairweather Days”, visitors can see the paths of the glaciers in their entirety as they wind down 15,000 feet of elevation over a distance of over 20 miles to the sea. Mount Fairweather is the rounded, snow-coverd peak in the far distance just right of center.

The plan was to arrive at the glacier at 6am, a marvelous way to wake up. However, I had forgotten it was September and the days were getting shorter. We arrived in darkness. I was beginning to worry that I had planned the trip all wrong. No one would see the glacier. As we got closer we could see the stars in the clear sky begin to disappear with morning light and the white ice glowing in the reflection of the still waters. We watched the sunrise in silence as the surrounding mountains turned radical shades of pink.

It's a park with few English names. One of the early park superintendents basically decreed – “No more new names” – more or less. This helps keep the place wild, as names are one of the first steps in civilizing a landscape. When we go exploring we make up our own names for our favorite places because...well, you've got to be able to talk about it, but they are just for us. You can make up your own names too. Go ahead, give it a whirl... hum... Whirl Mountain... sounds good. Mine. Don't be bashful, try it out... hum... I like that one too... Try It Out Mountain... nice ring... Thank goodness that superintendent left us some room to name play.

Black-legged kittiwakes are a fairly common sight near the faces of Glacier Bay’s tidewater glaciers. They nest on cliffs adjacent to the glaciers where they can avoid predators such as bears and mink. However, these steep cliffs can’t prevent attacks from avian predators like crows, ravens, eagles and peregrine falcons. This bird was stretching its wings while it rested on a small piece of brash ice near Margerie Glacier.

You might not expect to find an eagle on an iceberg, but in Glacier Bay it is not all that uncommon. From this higher vantage point the eagle is better able to spot potential prey, and is provided with an elevated platform from which to take flight.

Epic! Cataclysmic! Apocalyptic! Park rangers seek out these superlatives when glaciers calve with this magnitude. While everyone wants to know when and where the glacier will calve next, no one can predict it. While there do seem to be overall periods of greater or lesser activity, calving appears to occur somewhat randomly.

The U.S. Coast Guard recommends that all vessels remain one quarter mile off the face of tidewater glaciers. Even for kayaks, this photo shows why such a recommendation is wise. As ice calves from the 250 foot high face of Johns Hopkins Glacier it lands with a splash, creating turbulent swells that are best avoided until they dampen out a bit. In addition to the swells, rock-hard chunks of ice as small as baseballs or as large as small homes are hurled at you. At these moments, one quarter mile seems just about right!

Harbor seals haul out on icebergs in great numbers in Glacier Bay. However, in recent years the harbor seal population in Glacier Bay has declined precipitously. Researchers studying the decline are investigating possible reasons such as changes in habitat, human disturbance, disease, emigration and increased predation from killer whales, Steller sea lions or perhaps sharks. This seal looked up briefly from its resting position and I took the shot. The water was so calm that the seal and the iceberg were reflected below.

This is it, the end of Glacier Bay – as far as you can go and still sit in a kayak and find ice calving into the ocean. On my first trip in Johns Hopkins Inlet we camped on a tiny flat spot near the mouth of the inlet. Throughout the restless night I couldn't figure out how we could be in a thunderstorm and not have any lightning or rain. The inlet is three miles long, and by the time the booming of the ice calving reverberated down the fjord walls to where I lay in my tent, the 'booms' sounded just like distant thunder. The next day reality dawned with the morning.

Camping next to a glacier is very cool – quite literally, very cool! When strong winds blow down off the ice, you need a couple of extra layers of clothes and plenty of lines to secure your tent. I was camped here at the face of Lamplugh Glacier where we occasionally awakened during the night to the sound of ice crashing into the water.

The view across Johns Hopkins Inlet to Kashoto Glacier on July 14, 1967. Over a period of more than 60 years beginning in 1925, Dr. Bill Field kept faithful track of glacier activity throughout Glacier Bay from a series of photo stations at key vantage points. More than any other person, Dr. Field is responsible for our precise knowledge of ice behavior in the park. His patient record forms the foundation for all other studies of glaciology and biology that have subsequently made Glacier Bay famous. The rock pile marks Photo Station Number 9.

Even from a respectful quarter mile, the 150 foot high face of Lamplugh Glacier looms impressively above sea level. Ice in this glacier flows seaward at two to three feet per day, all of which calves into the ocean, leaving the terminus more or less stable, for now.

Johns Hopkins Glacier is one of the few glaciers, not just in Glacier Bay, but in the world, that is advancing. This begs the question, “How can this glacier advance, when neighboring glaciers are retreating?” The answer is microclimates. It is likely that the Johns Hopkins Glacier accumulation area is high enough in elevation that warming conditions are actually providing more snow than previously; this overbalances the ice loss as the glacier flows to the lowlands, allowing the glacier to advance. The adjacent areas are not receiving as much snow, and therefore the glaciers issuing from them continue to melt and withdraw.

This aerial shot of Johns Hopkins Inlet was taken while winter still grasped a firm hold on Glacier Bay. Here, the ice that you see flowing down the fjord is mostly ‘pan ice’ rather than glacial icebergs. As you can see from the long shadows, the winter sun tracks low across the horizon in the winter, which means that relatively little sunlight reaches the surface of the water. Here, a layer of freshwater rests on top of a much deeper body of denser saltwater. This layer of freshwater, constantly in the shadows, freezes solid. However, as the tides ebb and flow, the level of the sea can shift by as much as twenty feet or more in only six hours. This breaks up the ‘pan’ of ice on the surface, and the ice flows in the only direction it can, out of the inlet.

For one summer season this ‘waterfall’ gushed out from the face of Lamplugh Glacier. Kayakers would be capsized if they were foolish enough to get too close. I took this photo from a nearby beach and it was as close as I could get to the glacier on foot. After enjoying the view for a moment, I had to quickly make a dash across the intertidal zone back towards our camp, as the tide was coming in and I was about to have nothing left to run on.

Pigeon Guillemots, in non-breeding plumage are very different from the adults in breeding plumage!

After two summers in Glacier Bay I developed a great interest in birds. From the decks of massive cruise ships I kept my eyes peeled for interesting and rare species. There are the usual birds you see every day, like the black and white Pigeon Guillemots, but I always wanted to see something new and different. This changed on my first long kayak trip in the bay when I paddled past a cliff of nesting Pigeon Guillemots. I had to stop in fascinated amazement. The dull little birds I’d shrugged off as incredibly mundane from my perspective on cruise ships came alive in a flurry of charismatic charm. Playful, energetic, and noisy the Guillemots chased one another for fish, paddled in circles with bright scarlet legs, and screamed with brilliant red mouths agape. Birding became more than just finding new species. It became a search for understanding, appreciation, and joy in the world of birds.

Who carved those scratches into the bedrock? Was it THAT rock, carried by the glacier? You may be forgiven for thinking so; after all, that was the photographer’s initial opinion and he has a master’s degree in glacial geology! Glaciers carry rock fragments in two locations: at the bottom of the glacier and on top of the glacier. Rocks at the bottom scratch the bedrock and in turn are scratched by it; thus they have their sides sanded down to quite smooth surfaces. Rocks on top of the glacier are broken into sharp-edged fragments by water alternately freezing and thawing within their cracks. This boulder has many sharp-edged sides and no smooth surfaces; hence it was carried upon the glacier and rocks carried that way cannot scratch the underlying bedrock. Despite initial appearances, this rock is innocent!

I’m told that I take a few too many risks (from my mother, mostly), especially if it means a good photograph. This may be one of those incidents. In this shot, I have crawled inside an ice cave at Reid Glacier to try and capture the beautiful shades of blue that you can find inside these caves. The danger in this activity lies in the fact that glaciers are not particularly stable, they do a lot of calving, and I’d be a fool to not be fully aware that the ice cave that I was standing inside in this photograph is likely not there today. That being said, I try not to take my time when exploring these caves…go in, get my shot, and then get out before I overstay my welcome…

A close shot of Reid Glacier showing the beautiful shades of blue resulting from the compacted ice. Aside from colors, I am always fascinated by the smooth, carved texture of glacial ice.

In my first summer in Glacier Bay, I wanted to kayak to Reid Glacier, as it was the most accessible tidewater glacier given the day boat’s drop-off points. However, it still required kayakers to cross the bay, which was something that I was not comfortable attempting in my first summer. My second summer I managed to get there, twice, but I will never forget the first time, realizing just how massive the glacier was. I had brought along an inexperienced friend on this kayaking trip, so I let him go and explore the glacier while I dealt with making sure the kayak was secured on shore. I’ll never forget watching him walk towards it as his figure got smaller and smaller in comparison to the glacier, until he was so small that I had a difficult time even seeing him.

Getting there is half the adventure? More like 99% of the adventure. Boats, kayaks, float planes.... then toss in a little rain, snow, fog, big waves, mud, mountains, glaciers. Whales maybe, brown bears on the beach or black bears, or both... Adventure here starts when you open your eyes in the morning and it continues on all day long.

When one dryas plant is able to take root in the nutrient-poor “soils” left behind by the retreating Reid Glacier, a wondrous process begins. That one single plant begins to propagate outwards making a bigger and bigger circle in an otherwise desolate landscape. Eventually, other similar circles of dryas grow and meet and the entire area becomes covered in dryas. The dryas plants help enrich the soil so that eventually it will be able to sustain different types of plants, a process known as “plant succession”.

Reid Inlet during the winter of 1967-1968. How wonderful winter patrols were in those days! We’d go up-bay in the park vessel Nunatak (anchored in the background) and make snowshoe forays into the hinterlands, making note of the state of nature at this critical time of year. In this photo, the Ibach cabins still stand, marking a bygone era when Joe and Muz Ibach worked their gold claims here. Nearby, the tent frame used by field rangers as a summer base camp is half buried in the snow, while Reid Glacier looms out of the mist in the background.

Hundreds of thousands of people visit Glacier Bay each year and pass along the strip of water through which this cruise ship transits. I'd guess that 20 people or fewer stand within a hundred yards of where I took this photo each year – and I wouldn't be surprised if only a handful of boundary surveyors and geologists are the only people to have ever stood atop the 8,214 foot summit of Mt. Barnard, the high peak above the ship. This rugged mountainous landscape is a difficult place to visit...green in this early September photo, but for half the year cloaked in deep snow and bone-chilling cold.

While aboard the day tour boat, we happened to see a brown bear with her cubs as they approached a stream which appeared to have been claimed by a group of wolves. Watching the bears hold their ground while the wolves circled them was a tense sight. The wolves advanced on the bears and retreated, like a well-played game of chess. Eventually the bears chose to retreat into the forest and the wolves had their victory.

While it might appear that there is nothing to eat in this rocky landscape, this brown bear mother and her two cubs are near both the rich intertidal zone as well as a meadow perched upon a ledge. I took this shot from my kayak as the bears crossed a relatively barren section of bedrock between the two feeding areas in Queen Inlet.

This photo shows run-off from the Carroll Glacier. A heavy load of glacial silt colors the water so that it looks like an enormous mudslide.

My younger brother and I had been kayaking all day. By the time we found a camp site, it was too dark to see around the immediate area, but we could hear running water in the distance. In the morning when we awoke, we saw the source, a small ice cave. We decided to take a short walk through it, admiring the sculpted walls on the inside. When we reached the end, we found a waterfall. Our hair was stiff from not being washed in days, and the ocean salt water wasn’t helping that situation, so we both stuck our heads under the waterfall. It was pretty cold as expected, and it only helped our hair situation a little bit. But it was definitely worth it.

Wow! An all natural water slide on a sunny summer day! Why not just jump in and slide along??? Thing is, streams on glaciers don't last long. A short ways behind me the water plunged into a big hole that disappeared into the glacier. Bye bye water...

“Aren't you afraid you will fall through the ice???” “Crevasses happen,” I reply. But we are careful. Most glacial ice is solid, rock solid, and I feel very safe on flat ice surfaces. It is moraines that scare me most. On active glaciers medial moraines are a mix of ice and rock. Usually a lot more ice than rock. Rocks on steep sloped medial moraines, like the one shown in this photo, are loose. Loose loose loose. And many are big and loose, which means the moraine rocks you are climbing up are often sitting on wet, slippery ice, and they tumble with ease.

This little crevasse is full of water. In the bottom of the crevasse are little pockets where bits of gravel and sand accumulate. Crevasses near moraines can become completely filled with sand, gravel and rocks. With time the glacier surface melts until accumulated pockets of gravel rest on the newly exposed surface of the glacier.

The cone shaped mounds are called glacier cones or debris cones. They are mostly ice with a thin veneer of gravel and sand over a cone of ice. How do they form? Imagine putting a shovelful of gravel and sand on a flat glacier surface. Over time as the glacier surface melts, the sand and gravel insulate the ice just a little compared to the gravel-less ice around it. The center of the pile insulates just a little bit more than along the edges of the pile. As the entire surface of the glacier melts, the ice beneath the gravel melts slower and a cone gradually forms with the original pile spread across it. OK, but how does the pile of gravel get there in the first place? Well, check out the next photo...

Late one afternoon we watched a Snow Bunting hop around a patch of snow on the Carroll Glacier, stopping and pecking. After it flew off I went over and looked, there were lots of ice worms crawling around the granulated snow. They sure stand out. This one is on solid ice.

The black line in the photo is a partially buried glacier ice worm (about ¼ inch long). Glacier ice worms live in glacier ice and in snow on glaciers. They don't live in the hard blue glacier ice, but rather in the granular ice that develops on a glacier surface. They are so adapted to the cold they die in temperatures much greater than freezing. They avoid bright daylight and are most often seen in the evening or dawn. They live on microscopic organisms, including the pink snow algae that grow on granular ice and snow. How cool is that!

This photo shows a small portion of a huge, huge glacier.

Carroll Glacier's many medial moraines squiggle towards the sea. If you follow a medial moraine up-glacier you eventually find the two valley glaciers that came together to form it. There must be a lot of valleys up there somewhere. Time to strap on the crampons and go for a hike...

The white crescent shapes in the rock are fossils. Millions of years ago these organisms lived and died in the sediments of an ancient ocean, their story preserved in limestone along what is now our intertidal zone.

A mountain goat in the early spring is one of Glacier Bay's most majestic animals. It still has most of its thick winter fur, and it has managed to make it through another winter. This one stood about 100 ft above me on top of a cliff, as I craned my camera up from my kayak. I found that, much like the face of a glacier, it is unwise to approach too closely, as a cascade of rocks tumbled off the cliff in the wake of the goat's path. Many visitors spy goats on Gloomy Knob near the middle of the bay.

Two nanny mountain goats and their kids navigate the steep slopes of Gloomy Knob. Goats are frequently seen by cruise ship passengers as the ships head up the bay. The white goats are relatively easy to spot against the dark rock or green vegetation, even from long distances. The goats can be seen at lower elevations early in the summer, and then higher up as the season progresses.

The "Glacier Bear" as we locally call them are black bears with an unusual, whitish blue fur. We see them occasionally on the western shores of Glacier Bay.

This brown bear and her cub must have been quite successful at this stream in Tidal Inlet, as I saw them fishing there several days in a row. In addition to this pair, I saw five or six other brown bears fishing in the same stream. When there is a surplus of food, such as during a salmon run, bears can be quite tolerant of other nearby bears. With so much food to go around, there is no need to waste precious energy fighting over it.

I spent the last morning of my last kayaking trip in Glacier Bay on Gloomy Knob. I had always wanted to go there but on previous trips I had other destinations in mind that led me in the opposite direction. Gloomy Knob is a mountain, and although I don’t know the actual reason behind its charming name, I would venture to guess that it is because there is relatively little vegetation on the mountain compared to other mountains in the area. At sunrise I climbed Gloomy Knob and snapped this shot; a nice surveillance of the bay.

Glacier Bay is a land of superlatives and extremes. The Arctic Tern fits in well here. Perhaps no bird migrates further. These graceful and efficient fliers migrate all the way from Antarctica to their Arctic breeding grounds, a 24,000 mile roundtrip. They nest here and are often seen flying about with fish in their bills as they return to nests or seek mates. This one is working the tide line and is reflected in the calm and protected waters of Queen Inlet.

Harlequin Ducks are arguably the most striking of the many species of waterfowl that are found in Glacier Bay. These are three males that happened to line up away from the more drab females that they were accompanying. Harlequins are often found along rocky beaches or near where freshwater flows into the sea where they feed on the biota carried by the stream.

Long-tailed Ducks, formerly called Oldsquaws, congregate into groups of many hundreds of birds during the spring. They have a unique ‘a ah-ah-adala’ call which, when in chorus with hundreds of others, makes for a truly wild sound. These bird are flying just above the water to take advantage of a phenomenon of flight know as “ground effect”. Any bird (or aircraft for that matter) will enjoy greater lift when flying less than half of its wingspan, above the water or ground. For example, if these birds have a two foot wingspan, they can conserve energy by flying one foot off the water.

In 1928 the U.S. Navy flew a survey plane throughout Southeast Alaska taking aerial photos. Those photos show that most of the bay shown in the middle of this image didn't exist back then – it was beneath the ice terminus of the Hugh Miller Glacier, which has now retreated back around the corner to the left.

An aerial shot of one of many unnamed peaks in Glacier Bay. Early morning in March shows Glacier Bay covered under a blanket of snow. Many of these peaks have never felt the footfalls of humans.

This aerial view shows the heart of what is locally referred to as the 'west arm' of Glacier Bay – that is, the portion of the Bay north of an imaginary line drawn between Geikie Inlet entrance and Tlingit Point (neither of which is visible in this photo). The west arm includes the labyrinth of the Hugh Miller archipelago in the foreground and the steep-walled fjords of Queen, Rendu and Tarr Inlets (right to left) in the distance. All of the areas where ocean is visible in this photo were under ice just 150 years ago.

No two ice caves alike. Which makes me think... maybe that is one of the reasons I like exploring glaciers so much. They are all so different, and dynamic – it's ice, at the glacier terminus it's melting. What you don't see today is gone in a couple months or years at most.

One of the most common questions from visitors to Glacier Bay is, “What makes the ice blue?” The ice is blue because that is its true color. This color is expressed because the ice is pure, which allows the light to penetrate sufficiently far that the reds, yellows and violets are differentially absorbed from the light spectrum, leaving the blues and greens to be transmitted back to one’s eye. Ice looks white when it contains too many air bubbles that scatter the light back before it can be differentially absorbed by the ice. This example came from the bottom of Lamplugh Glacier. I was camped near the base of the glacier and while exploring its edge, I was able to safely maneuver to a crevasse (a large crack). I liked the abstract pattern created by the sand contrasted against the blue ice, as well as the ambiguity of the scale. This photo frames only about five square feet of ice.

It seems to me that humans, like ravens, have an almost uncontrollable attraction to 'bright shiny things'. We buy shiny packages and cover everything from our buildings to our bodies with bright, reflective materials. Well let me tell you, a good ice cave is irresistible. You stand on the outside and think, “What am I doing?! It's melting! Water is dripping from the roof! It's a glacier! The ice is moving! Only a crazy person would go in there!” But you go in. You have to. It is the ultimate bright and shiny thing, and you are inside it...

The rock was solid, as it should be, yet with each small side-step, my left foot would stamp down a bit, reassuring my stability as I cautiously approached the cataract. I have a photo of this slope from six years prior and the place where I am standing is under ice. At that time the stream flowed under the ice and probably followed the same route it does now through what was then a continuous ice tunnel. Most of that ice tunnel has now melted away, leaving only the ice bridge in the distance.

Change is Glacier Bay’s middle name, and the upper parts of the bay are places where the landscape has changed dramatically during our own lifetimes. When my friend, Rusty, kayaked these waters in the 1970s they were thick with icebergs and seals. Muir Glacier is now 'grounded', meaning it no longer extends into the ocean. The land that was recently covered with ice now grows the early pioneer plants shown at my feet – dryas and alder. Once established, alder grows fast, putting on 2 - 3 feet per year. In another ten or fifteen years the view from my resting place will be a very short one and getting there will be a slog through a dense thicket of intertwining shrubs.

The green hills of earth...OK, they're brown, red brown. It's fall and blue skies have emerged after another wet day. These hills are covered with a low growing pioneer plant called dryas, and when dryas fruits are wet their white feathery part becomes translucent and the overall color of the fruit head becomes brown, red brown. When it dries out on those rare fall days (hours) after the sun comes out, these hills in Muir Inlet go gray.

Muir Glacier in 2007 is no longer a tidewater glacier; it has retreated. You see the term ‘retreated’ used often when speaking of vanishing glaciers. I don't like it much because I don't think it captures the gestalt of the process. Big valley glaciers don't move uphill, they can't go backwards as 'retreat' implies. What they do is melt. And they almost always melt faster at the lowest elevations. If they melt faster than they slide downhill, a series of photos or observations over time make it appear as if they have gone backward or retreated.

(Muir Glacier, 1976) In 1976 the terminus of Muir Glacier was at a far different place than today. Back then, Muir and nearby Riggs Glacier were active tidewater glaciers. Between them their icebergs provided an early summer pupping location for hundreds of harbor seals. It was a rare day, usually late in the summer, when one could get this close to the face because the water was usually packed thick with floating ice.

This is an aerial view from over Muir Glacier on April 11, 1968. In the distance is Riggs Glacier on the left and a portion of McBride Glacier on the right. In this early spring view, winter pan ice locks the prodigious output of ice from Muir and Riggs Glaciers into a single sheet. A great event in those days was the ice breakup, which resulted in a flush of ice down the bay, stopping most boating until things thinned out. By the middle of May, over a thousand seals massed in upper Muir Inlet, many of which were pregnant females using the ice as a refuge on which to bear their pups. Now the glaciers have grounded and this grand spectacle of ice and life is no more.

“You'd look good in there.” Her eyes lit up, her backpack came off and up she went without a hint of hesitation. I try to take new friends out when I go exploring – I feel it is a privilege to be able to go to these incredible places and so I try to share it with others. But not everyone has the gumption for all my adventures...Way to go, Amanda!

Clear blue ice and big crevasses! Wow! I handed my little pocket camera to Amanda and said, “I'm going over there to take a few stunners. You stay here and rescue me if I fall.” Little did we realize that Amanda would be one to take the stunner!

I like to walk on ice... it's not that hard, the walking part – the glacier ice, now that's hard. With a set of crampons on my boots I feel more secure than on some steep slopes in forests. Crampon points dig right in and before you know it you are walking up steep ice slopes and across icy ridges. Amanda – and this was her first time on crampons – is standing at the edge of a 'moulin' – a hole in the ice where water running across the glacier plunges down into the interior of the glacier, eventually draining beneath the glacier to Muir Inlet.

It’s easy to look at glaciers and mountains and beaches and beautiful wilderness from the safety and security of a ship. But try getting into a kayak, paddling up to those beaches, and standing in the shadow of those glaciers and mountains. I pulled my kayak onto this beach under the watchful eye of a gold-flecked black wolf, followed the tracks of a giant brown bear whose paws were bigger than my head, swam in the icy waters of a glacial pool, and shivered in a biting wind as I watched sunset fall. Robert Service had it right when he wrote,

Let us probe the silent places, let us seek what luck betide us;

Let us journey to a lonely land I know.

There’s a whisper on the night-wind, there’s a star agleam to guide us,

And the Wild is calling, calling . . . let us go.

This is Riggs Glacier on July 19, 2007. Riggs Glacier is cool, really cool. It's steep where it nearly meets the ocean. The surface is a maze of huge crevasses. The ice is white, with very little rock on the surface. The mountains around it are rugged with Black Mountain in the distance streaked in shades of red.

We walked over the sandy ridge and our eyes were filled with ice glittering in all its forms. McBride Glacier snaked its way down from the mountains and in the process spawned a thousand huge pieces of ice that tossed and turned on the tide. A crash of thunder announced another imminent arrival and the spaces between the bergs shifted, becoming a mesmerizing kaleidoscope of intense blues and blacks. We had arrived in a different world.

A grand view of the ice complex at the “dogleg” of Muir inlet. Riggs Glacier’s tidewater front separated from Muir’s in 1961 and was still calving into the sea in 1967. At that time, McBride Glacier ice was being contributed to Riggs from the right, but that soon would end as McBride retreated in its inlet and its ice level quickly dropped. Notice, however, that in the McBride tongue, older ice was being overrun by a pulse of newer ice (demarcated by a black moraine) suggesting that McBride had just made a small pulse forward in its general retreat.

As glaciers retreat they leave behind a ribbon of rock of all sizes. Here, water pours down through the rocks and cascades in countless terraces. To get this shot I set up the tripod and let the flowing water paint the picture. I decided to make it black and white, as the true beauty of the image is not in its color, but in the flowing water against the contrast of the rock.

Enormous glacier icefields have advanced and retreated from the Glacier Bay fjord many times in the last 20,000 years. These trees were alive and growing in the McBride Inlet area perhaps 2000 years ago. While still alive, they were covered by gravel and buried beneath advancing ice. In the last 100 years, the retreating glacier and erosion have exposed them to air and weathering which causes them to slowly decay. Scientists specially authorized to collect the wood of these ancient 'interglacial trees' use tree ring analysis and radio carbon dating to help reconstruct the sequences of glacier advance and retreat in Glacier Bay.

Every August, there are places in Glacier Bay that are aflame with the bright pink color of giant fireweed. The plants grow several feet high, stretching up to better disperse their seeds, which are carried great distances on the wind. Giant fireweed is typical of uplift meadows, subalpine meadows, and meadows on limestone (shown here). As the glaciers retreat, plants like giant fireweed move in as part of the ‘plant succession’ process.

Magic moments abound in Glacier Bay – ten years old and skipping rocks with icebergs in the background. Who needs video games?

Whether experienced on the ground or from the air, McBride Inlet is a thriller, another planet. Ice chokes the narrow entrance to the inlet and a festival of bergs gathers and mingles along the shoreline pushed by the wind and tide. About halfway down the inlet a shallow underwater shelf stops the really big bergs where they gather like titans. Kayaking here when the ice is thick is a dangerous challenge, for the water is icy cold and the big bergs can roll at any time. More than one paddler has found themselves a reluctant swimmer in McBride Inlet.

I used to get irritated with Glacier Bay when the weather wasn’t exactly sunny. I had always thought blue sky was required for good photography. Only now do I look back and realize that some of my very best shots were taken in foggy or rainy, usually a combination of both. This view from Garforth Island is very moody as we contemplated a cloudy sky and a low fog that would engulf us in about a half an hour. Sometimes thats what Glacier Bay is like – the coolest places aren’t easy to get to, and you’re not necessarily going to have perfect weather along the way. There is a subtle ‘hardcore-ness’ to it all…something that would keep me coming back.

Kayakers being dropped off by the day tour boat in the West Arm of Glacier Bay. Passengers on the boat tend to crowd the upper deck to see the brave adventurers – or more realistically, the reckless and foolhardy individuals – who decide to explore the park in a fiberglass kayak, a flimsy tent and hopefully enough dry clothes to last through days of rain. But at least we got that waterproof map.

The vibrant blue color of the Steller’s Jay is not so different from the color of glacial ice. These birds stand out brilliantly against any background. Steller's Jays are in the Corvidae bird family that also contains magpies, crows and ravens. They are highly intelligent birds, able to mimic other birds and make many of their own unique vocalizations.

I have had to dig the tiny spines of devil’s club from my hands too many times, but still find it beautiful – on a summer’s day its giant leaves can light up the forest like green lanterns.

Perhaps the most important plant to the native Alaskans of SE Alaska, the Tlingit, is the devil’s club. This spiny, thorny member of the Ginseng (Araliaceae) family has been used for medicinal purposes for centuries. Here, we see the early spring growth, before the plant has leafed-out. Eventually the plant will have large, broad leaves bigger than your head. Even the undersides of these large leaves are covered with spines. It usually grows on slopes and can be a serious impediment to hiking up a hill. But as my friend Bill likes to say, “I always hike with leather gloves. With a pair of good leather gloves, devil's club is your friend.”

When John Muir visited Glacier Bay in the latter part of the 19th century, he discovered one of these orchids and fell to his knees and wept, overcome by the sheer beauty of the plant. There is some doubt about the taxonomy of this plant, but it is commonly referred to as mountain lady slipper. Unlike the calypso orchid, it seems to be found only in the Glacier Bay drainage, and it is especially abundant on the limestones of the middle-west side.

All of the climbing in backcountry Glacier Bay is trail-less, which often means thrashing through alder shrubs, then low thorny salmonberry shrubs and finally out into the open. On this day, it was such a relief to get onto the snow. Lower down we'd been covered with mosquitoes and sweating hard. I was jubilant to be here on a sunny day looking down at Geikie Inlet with the sediments of the Geikie River settling into their new ocean home. This scene is looking northeast down Geikie Inlet, across distant Tlingit Point to Mt. Wright in the clouds. The highest peak on the right is Tlingit Peak.

It was an incredibly calm day so I stopped the engines and let the boat drift. We stood on the bow and after a while several harbor porpoises came and swam around the boat. In this photo the porpoise is still beneath the surface but it is already starting to exhale, releasing the air from its lungs in a torrent of subsurface bubbles. As the porpoise's head breaks the surface it will be ready to inhale.

Puffins! There is something about these creatures that causes the exclamation point to be almost mandatory. Once common in Glacier Bay when the landscape was newly exposed, we don't see them too often any more. They always cause a stir when spotted whizzing by in flight, a blur of black and orange. Up close the clownish beak is a wonder... just imagine if your lips started on your forehead and ended below your chin... OK, that's not anatomically correct, but you get the idea!

There are two types of puffins found in Glacier Bay: tufted and horned. Pictured here is the rarer horned puffin, recognizable for its white belly, black wings, colorful bill, and most notably, a “horn” near the eye which is actually a feather. These birds are sometimes seen in mixed groups with their more common cousins, the tufted puffins. Horned puffins are known to nest on South Marble Island and in Tarr Inlet. Puffins are members of the Alcid family of birds which are stout, compact birds that dive deep to feed upon small schooling fish. Their dense bones and heavy bodies make them excellent swimmers, but not the most graceful of flyers.

My kayaking partner, Dan, was able to laugh about the sea lion rush after they began to move away.

As far as I know, there has never been a case of a Steller sea lion attacking a kayaker, but that fact did not instill any confidence in me when this group of approximately 200 animals charged our kayaks. We had seen this group earlier about a mile off in the distance, splashing and cavorting, as we paddled in the East Arm of the bay. Within a matter of minutes, they had formed a wall of fur, flesh and teeth less than one kayak length from our tiny, plastic bows. They roared with an intensity that conveyed to me nothing positive. While I avoid anthropomorphization, it was hard not to infer that they were anything but pleased with our presence. They were so close that a putrid stench of partially digested fish was thrust at us, adding additional insult. They made their point for a few gripping minutes, and then departed as quickly as they had arrived.

Steller sea lions look so different in the water. Hauled out on land their heavy, wrinkled bodies look out of place and awkward but in the water they are streamlined, sleek and fast. This one circled the boat for about five minutes before moving on.

Steller sea lions gather on South Marble Island. But wait, which way is the wind blowing? From the north or north west it passes over the haul-out and the scent of sea lion envelopes you. You won't find “Essence of Sea Lion” in your favorite perfumery – over ripe fish with faint undertones of sulfur – not much appeal. But you grow use to it, well, you grow tolerant at least – the activity on the haul-out is captivating. It's like watching a party of sorts, sea lions nosing each other, nipping, cavorting, growling and moaning. All words to describe human activities, which really don't apply but, what is going on?

The South Marble Island Steller sea lion haulout is situated far enough away from the mainland that bears, wolves, coyotes and other terrestrial predators rarely reach the island. But killer whales pass by and a Steller sea lion, with its thick layer of blubber, is a high calorie meal for a killer whale.

South Marble Island is one of the park’s premier spots for viewing wildlife. Black-legged kittiwakes, glaucous-winged gulls and tufted puffins nest here under the watchful gaze of hungry bald eagles. Cormorants congregate between dives and Steller sea lions haul out on the rocky shoreline.

Sea otters ride the waves, always watching. In open water they will spot you in a kayak a long ways off, and dive. You'll only get a close view by chance, stumbling on them when you round a headland or a small island.

Sea otters are thriving and their population is growing at a rate faster than any other marine mammal in the park. This species was nearly extirpated from Southeast Alaska by the Russian fur trade but is now on the rebound. Sea otter sightings in Glacier Bay were rare before 2000; now they number in the thousands! Biologists acknowledge that the population explosion we are witnessing is not sustainable. It is unknown whether the population will continue to grow, level off, or crash.

When you think of Glacier Bay wildlife, toads probably don't top your list. But toads are important. Scientists refer to amphibians as ‘indicator’ species. Amphibians, like this boreal toad, are extremely sensitive to small changes in their environment. Twenty years ago, in the park headquarters at Bartlett Cove, it was difficult to go for a walk without stepping on one. Now, they are so rare that if you see one, the park asks that you report it. I have explored all over Glacier Bay and it was four years until I saw my first one. I stumbled upon this toad when I was moving some firewood. Fortunately, I had a camera at my side and I was able to take a few shots before carefully replacing the toad’s wooden roof.

The staff and visitors who walked the trails of Bartlett Cove were delighted to watch this little baby porcupine make his own way in the world over the latter months of the summer. When I came upon him in September, he turned his back and gave me the obligatory bristling of spines, all grown up now!

The Fairweather Range stands out in this sunset view from Bartlett Cove.

Glacier Bay in the fall. This spider web is supported by a highbush cranberry plant. I find this composition to be poetic in that there are countless metaphorical webs within the Glacier Bay ecosystem. If one tiny part of the web is damaged, many other parts are affected. This spider is seeking food in its web, and I seek food in the form of those berries as they ripen. Typically, these webs are invisible, but a dewy morning brought this beautiful pattern to light.

This young moose calf was browsing tender shoots amongst the colorful lupine flowers. Calves are usually born in early May, but are not often seen until their mothers feel confident that the young are big enough to have a chance to outrun predators.

A young moose calf, only about five weeks old, nuzzles up to its mother to nurse. Moose in Glacier Bay have their calves in the last part of May. Typically they have just one, but when conditions are right, and food is abundant, twinning will occur. Occasionally, triplets are even possible – but getting all three to full maturity is a difficult proposition for even the healthiest mother.

33 degrees Fahrenheit and raining. This is a typical day in Glacier Bay. When I think of all of the layers of clothing and technology that I require to survive in conditions like these for only a few hours, it makes me really appreciate the biology of a moose. They withstand nearly constant wind and rain for half of the year and deeps snows for the other half. I chose this shot because it shows a moose in the rain. You can see the pattern of wet hair on her head and ears, and the raindrops falling around her. What could she be thinking?

Moose are relatively new residents in Glacier Bay, arriving in the 1960s. Two hundred years ago, most of Glacier Bay was under ice. As that ice retreated, new land was exposed and plants became established. One of those plants was willow, which is one of the moose’s most preferred foods. Moving in from the Haines area, moose made their way to Glacier Bay via a pass called Endicott Gap which connects through to Adams Inlet on the east side of Glacier Bay. This moose is eating the last stubs of willow that remain above the snow level.

Owls are typically nighttime hunters. One of the exceptions is the Short-eared Owl. This species can be seen flying over grassy meadows in search of its prey, which is typically small rodents, as can be seen in the talons of this bird. I watch as this owl plucked what I guessed was a red-backed vole out of the grass. It flew away, only to be hounded immediately by a nearby raven that had been watching closely. The raven harassed the owl until it dropped the vole. The raven then swooped down and caught the vole before it hit the ground.

Every spring and fall, the morning air fills with the ancient and primal call of the Sandhill Crane. The locals know that when they hear this sound in April, winter is gone. And when they hear it in September, winter is not far off. The cranes migrate along a corridor from Northern California to the Alaskan Arctic, stopping over for a day or a week or more at the same stopover points each year.

Every spring and fall, a magical and ancient sound falls from the skies of Glacier Bay. Sandhill cranes stop over in Glacier Bay as they migrate up and down along the western edge of North America. This shot was taken near the Brady Glacier (seen along the very bottom edge of the image) with the Fairweather Mountains glowing in the morning light.

$On a cold winter morning, three Trumpeter Swans navigate the ice-choked Salmon River in Gustavus – the gateway city to Glacier Bay. Here, the frozen fresh water meets the sea and the ice is fractured into thousand ds of plates as the tide rises and falls. The swans move amongst the ice feeding on the bottom and edges of the river.$