Alaska's Glacier Bay National Park

Glacier Bay National Park encompasses a vast 3.3 million acres (5130 square miles) of rugged mountains, the namesake glaciers, temperate rainforest, wild coastlines, and sheltered fjords. It is located at the northern extremity of Alaska's Inside Passage just west of Skagway and Haines. Despite its complete absence of roads, over 400,000 visitors come every year, mostly by cruise ship.

The Tlingit have occupied the area from Ketchikan north for countless centuries and their ancestors, the Huna Klingit, occupied Glacier Bay long before the last glacier advance. This drawing from the National Park website shows an extended Tlingit family harvesting salmon at a  summer fish camp in the late 1600s. The glaciers in the distance advanced around 1750, forcing them from their homes.

At sea level, this maritime climate keeps summer temperatures in the 50s and 60s which rarely drops to single digits in the winter.

Captain George Vancouver sailed here in 1794 and drew a map of the bay depicting one vast glacier. John Muir had visited the bay in a canoe and reported the glacier receding as much as a mile each year., and his lyrical writings of the bay changed America's perception of Alaska from one of daunting cold to enchanting beauty. In 1916, William S. Cooper, a plant ecologist from Minnesota, visited the area and fell in love with it, returning often in the following decades to scientifically study its ecology, and ultimately fighting for the area's protection. In 1925 he succeeded as Glacier Bay National Monument was created. In 1980, President Jimmy Carter signed legislation that elevated it to national park status.

Most visits today are by ship (predominantly cruise ship) or airplane. I had driven to Alaska in 2004 and opted for the plane excursion. Below are some photos from that aerial viewpoint.

The first photo shows a cruise ship far below approaching a glacier that extends into the bay...

The towering mountains and vast glacier are seen in the next photo...

You've probably heard of glacier moraine, and perhaps even seen some terminal moraine in Chicago, notably along two thoroughfares, Ridge Blvd. and Narragansett Avenue. Below you see examples of moraine -- accumulations of glacier debris, mainly soil and rock, that are pushed along by glaciers and eventually dropped to one side or the other or deposited at the terminus of the glacier. Below, a number of glaciers converge, dropping moraine at their respective edges...

The wing of our plane is seen in the lower right corner of this photo which also shows two glaciers converging from different valleys.

Below you see a glacier and its moraine trails leading right down to the bay...

The park has nine tidewater glaciers, all of which calve (shed their leading edge into the bay with thunderous crashes.) Glaciers only cover 27% of the park today. Encircling the park to the west is Fairweather Range with mountains of 15,000 feet, the tallest coastal mountains in the world. 20% of the park is ocean water so marine life is prolific.

Below is a shot of the towering mountains regressing far into the distance...