GLACIER BAY, ALASKA
A Dynamic Natural History Adventure
Glaciers, bears, whales and more! Glacier Bay is a vast Y-shaped fjord on the southeast coast of Alaska, sheltered from the ocean by the Fairweather range. Only two hundred years ago, when Captain George Vancouver sailed by its mouth, the bay was a solid sheet of nearly a mile of ice . One century later, the glaciers had shrunk back 65 miles, the fastest glacier retreat on record. To travel up the bay is to retrace the path of glacial retreat, from the lush mature spruce and hemlock rain forest near at Bartlett Cove, to the the glaciers which calve icebergs into the water with a sound described by the Tlingit Indians as "white thunder."
Nature chose for a tool, not the earthquake or lightning to rend and split asunder, not the stormy torrent or eroding rain, but the tender snow-flowers noiselessly falling through unnumbered centuries.
by John Muir
