Stanford Alumni and Friends in Glacier Bay
Beautiful Weather!!!! Yea! Morning found us deep in Glacier Bay National Park as the skies opened up with shades of blue. It meant that we did not have to lock our professor, Scott Burns, in his room for the day because of his long history of bad luck with the weather during previous Glacier Bay visits! We were awakened at the Reid Glacier, the first of many tidewater glaciers in the park. By the time we reached the Lamplugh Glacier, we were all on deck to marvel at the sunshine and 48 degree weather.
After breakfast we rounded the corner at Jaw Point to the awe of the Johns Hopkins Glacier, millions of small icebergs (some with harbor seals on them), many hanging glaciers, the snowcapped peaks of Mounts Orville and Wilbur, and one of the most beautiful scenes in the whole world. All the guests assembled on the bow, squeezing together like crystals of glacial ice, for a group photo against this beautiful backdrop. We needed beautiful surroundings for such a crazy group as this! As we passed out of the inlet we cruised by the great suture zone between the Alexander Terrane (ancient island atolls originating in the south Pacific some 300 million years ago) and the Wrangell Terrane. Professor Burns got excited - not a peep was heard from the rest of the group.
As we rounded the corner into Tarr Inlet a brown (grizzly) bear was sighted high among the rocks and we watched it forage for its breakfast among the alders and herbaceous plants. Perhaps it was also dreaming of the better grub soon to be found in the intertidal zone, once the tide lowered.
Just after the bear sighting, two spectacular glaciers, Margerie and Grand Pacific came into view. Margerie is advancing and has a sharp, vertical, 250-foot snout. We saw some exciting calves (ice slabs, not baby moo-ers). We were calling for the mother of all cows (a huge calve), but it did not happen. The poor Grand Pacific Glacier, blackened with its load of morainal material, has lost the pizzazz it had 10 years ago as it is slowing down and no longer has a dynamic front. Our naturalist Bryan Gates, a native of British Columbia, was excited nonetheless because the Grand Pacific glacier is, at heart, a Canadian glacier. The birders delighted in the huge kittiwake colony on the cliffs next to Margerie, featuring newly-fledged young of the year in striking black and white plumage. Everyone also enjoyed seeing horned and tufted puffins.
After lunch, served by our super crew, we headed south in Glacier Bay. We escaped the giant boats that were also looking at the glaciers. As we sailed south past Russell Island, Composite Island and Gloomy Knob, we got distant views of the Rendu and Carroll Glaciers (our 6th and 7th tidewater glaciers of the day (Glacier Bay has 12). We crossed the Bay to the west side to explore Geikie Inlet where we found some highly vegetated slopes and a cow moose down in the intertidal zone. Carol Keiper informed us about the amazing lives of marine mammals and the incredible productivity of the oceans during an afternoon lecture.
Our final stop before dinner was at South Marble Island, composed of 300 million year-old marble of the Alexander Terrane, which at one time was a coral atoll in the central Pacific Ocean. Part of the island was covered with Steller sea lions strutting and growling for us. We also saw many cormorants, puffins, guillemots, gulls and black-legged kittiwakes. Significantly, though, there were no juvenile kittiwakes to be seen at this colony as there had been at the Margerie Glacier colony. Had something disturbed this site to the point that no young would be produced this year?
After another superb dinner, we stopped at Bartlett Cove for some power walks and a visit to the visitor center. Porcupines, or maybe it was the same one each time, were seen by many guests while ashore. A passionate talk by one of the rangers ended our day and we returned to the ship for the trip south to Tracy Arm Fjord. As the passengers fell asleep, they relived the day of beautiful glaciers, the world's fastest deglaciation, the world's fastest isostatic uplift following glaciation, and the smell of Steller sea lion scat. The sky is blue and we hope for the Northern Lights tonight.
