Glacier Bay is a work in progress; the boat ride to its head is a chance to see creation unfolding. The bay John Muir discovered in a canoe in 1879 didn't exist a century earlier. Eighteenth-century explorers found instead a wall of ice a mile thick where the entrance to the branching, 65-mile-long fjord now opens to the sea. Receding faster than any other glacier on Earth, the ice melted into the ocean and opened a spectacular and still-unfinished land. The land itself is rising 1 1/2 inches a year as it rebounds from the weight of now-melted glaciers. As your vessel retraces Muir's path -- and then probes northward in deep water where ice stood in his day -- the story of this new world unravels in reverse. The trees on the shore get smaller, then disappear, then all vegetation disappears, and finally, at the head of the bay, the ice stands at the water's edge surrounded by barren rock, rounded and scored by the passage of the ice but not yet marked by the waterfalls cascading from the clouds above. And there, still doing their landscape-shaping work, are the great, blue glaciers, the largest among them the awesome Grand Pacific Glacier.
Glacier Bay, first set aside as a national monument by Calvin Coolidge in 1925, is managed by the National Park Service, which has the difficult job of protecting the wilderness, the whales, and the other wildlife while serving the huge public visiting the park. This rugged land the size of Connecticut cannot be seen by car, only by boat or plane, and the presence of too many boats threatens the wilderness experience and may disturb the wildlife. The whales appear to be sensitive to the noise of vessels and, since the 1970s, when in some years hardly any whales returned, the park service has used a permit system to limit the number of cruise ships that can enter the bay. Any boat sees several other vessels on a day's journey up the bay, but how much they bother the whales and other wildlife is difficult to measure precisely, and political pressure always pushes for more huge ships. In response to legislation passed by Alaska's prodevelopment Congressional delegation, the park service increased the number of cruise ships entering the bay, but in 2001 environmentalists won a court ruling that briefly reduced the number and held off a further increase pending study. In 2003, the Park Service completed an Environmental Impact Statement on the issue. It allowed an increase from 139 cruise ships a year to 184 per year if recommended by a science advisory board. Increases proposed under that program have been more than environmentalists support but fewer than the cruise industry wants. To read more about the park's vessel-management plan, go to www.nps.gov/glba.
On my longest visit, I saw humpback whales breaching (leaping all the way out of the water) every day. I saw orcas, too. One day, while fishing for halibut from a small boat in foggy Icy Strait, just outside the park, I heard a sound like thunder not far off. Like thunder, the sound was repeated, growing closer, but its source remained hidden behind the white circle of fog that surrounded us. Then the smooth water suddenly bulged and a huge, barnacled creature shot upward and crashed down with a sharp clap and a splash that rocked the boat. And then it happened again. The whale went on performing for most of an hour. A day later, I encountered the same spectacle while sea kayaking in the park's Bartlett Cove.
Leaping whales and falling glaciers are hard to beat. But the park also has major drawbacks to consider. Sightings aren't guaranteed, so there's a risk that you'll spend a lot of money and not see any whales. And even though this is a huge wilderness, the ways to see it are limited, so most people never get away from crowds. The lone concessionaire-operated tour boat into the bay costs $182 per person and is usually full of people. The large cruise ships that bring most visitors to the park view the scenery without getting up close to the shore or wildlife and miss the shore-based attractions. Smaller ships see more, with smaller groups and more chances to get outdoors. Independent travelers can spend a few days in some of Alaska's most attractive remote accommodations, in Gustavus, with great fishing, hiking, sea kayaking, and tour boat rides into the park. But the only way to see the heart of the park in true solitude is on a boat you charter for yourself (out of range of most budgets) or on a rugged overnight sea-kayaking adventure.
As an alternative, consider the other places to see Alaska's glaciers and whales that are easier and less expensive to visit. If you're in Juneau, consider a day trip to Tracy Arm instead. In Southcentral Alaska, plan a day trip from Whittier to see the glaciers of western Prince William Sound or from Seward to see Kenai Fjords National Park. There are other places in Southeast rich with marine wildlife as well. Still, Glacier Bay beats them all -- and just about anyplace on Earth -- for the combination of lots of whales and lots of big glaciers.
