Glacier Bay National Park is a place I experienced on foot for a few hours last summer and it was a lot of fun.  A short hike with my fishing gear in tow yielded a rain-soaked afternoon of wilderness solitude.  But Glacier Bay is a water-oriented place and is best seen from some sort of watercraft.  You can cover far more area and see much more of the exotic wildlife the park has to offer.  So this time out, I availed myself of one of the guided boat tours available every day in summer.

The good ship St. Phillip didn’t even push off from the dock before the first few humpback whales were spotted, thus setting the tone for a spectacular day.  Eleven hours and many, many photographs later, I had a solid, first-hand appreciation for one of the most fabulous places on the entire planet. The symphony of land and water and life does not care that it impresses you, but it does.  The most incredible thing about a wilderness like Glacier Bay is its indifference to your presence.  A brown bear beach-combing for a meal pays no attention to the metal craft floating a hundred meters offshore despite the clicking shutters and grumbling engine.  The massive wall of ice doesn’t care who is watching when it sloughs a hundred tons of itself into the ocean.  The frozen peaks are unconcerned that the clouds have given way and exposed them to human eyes for the first time in a week.  This is a place where the dominance of natural forces is obvious to anyone who visits.

I watched a brown bear overturn large boulders as if they were made of cork.

I felt the great thunder of ice plunging down a 200 foot frozen escarpment.

Sea lions jockeyed for position on a marble exposure jutting from the bay.

A mountain goat and her kid rest on a patch of grass high above the cold waters.

More sea otters in one photograph than lived in the entire bay 30 years ago

Then there is breath-taking vista after breath-taking vista, including some rare glimpses of Mt. Fairweather; highest peak in the park.  The name is a bit ironic since frequent clouds, fog and rain shroud the entire south end of the St. Elias Range on most days.