Glacier Bay Extravaganza

Joining us for the next leg of our 2014 cruise was Marcia's sister Cindee and her husband Steve. Steve is an accomplished nature photographer but had not yet visited Glacier Bay National Park. In order to give him the greatest opportunity to capture images in the best light, we agreed that spending the entire 2-weeks of their visit with us in Glacier Bay made the most sense. Since the NPS only issues permits for a maximum of 7-days at a time, it took some effort (mainly by Steve) to obtain two permits back-to-back (the NPS allows vessel operators to have two permits at a time).

To maximize their time, Cindee & Steve flew directly into Gustavus, a 9-mile shuttle ride to Bartlett Cove, the NPS Glacier Bay Headquarters. We agreed to meet them in Bartlett Cove at the public dock.

All of the logistics worked fine and we arrived the morning of June 22 at the dock about the same time as their ride from Gustavus dropped them off. Alaska's "finest" weather (i.e., rain) welcomed them to Glacier Bay. After we attended the boater orientation, we tanked up on water and discarded our garbage and recyclable material and took off for our first night's destination.

As it turned out, the worst weather of our 2-weeks in Glacier Bay was the first day. We had steady 15-20 knot head winds with 3-4 foot head seas pretty much all of the way until we turned into the calm waters of the entrance channel into North Sandy Cove.

Since we had the time, we worked hard at seeing as much of the park as possible from a boat. We covered over 400 miles cruising through the various bays and inlets, used 8 different anchorages (2 of which were new to us). We saw bear (brown and black), moose, mountain goat, wolf, river otter, sea otter (lots), stellar sea lion (lots), puffin, orca and humpback.

The best whale viewing was in the Bartlett Cove anchorage, arguably the most developed part of the park. Both orca and humpback whales cruised by within 50 yards of our boat.

The weather was okay but often cloudy and moist. Fortunately, the winds were generally light to moderate (i.e., less than 10 knots).

The best weather day was the day we went to the head of Tarr Inlet where the tidewater Margerie Glacier terminates. We stayed the night before in Reid Inlet about 12 miles south so our early start put us at the glacier before the cruise ships, tour boats and other pleasure craft arrived. It is a special treat to drift in the water a quarter-mile off from the face of a cracking and rumbling glacier. The occasional ice fall from the glacier to the water and subsequent wake persuaded us to move a little further out where we drifted with engine off to fully appreciate the setting.

The two permits were separated by a day in which we anchored in Bartlett Cove. We used that time to walk the trails at the park headquarters, do laundry at the Glacier Bay Lodge and take a provisioning trip into Gustavus for some fresh food.

On the morning of July 6, we tied the boat to the Bartlett Cove public dock once again and said good bye to Cindee and Steve whose return flight left later that day. We headed out for the next leg of our trip, back to Sitka.