6/28/2024 - 7/2/2024 We have permits to enter Glacier Bay National Park for five days and four nights. While the park is huge (24 million acres), the National Park Service limits the numbers of vessels that can operate in a day to 2 cruise ships, 3 tour boats, 6 charter vessels, and 25 private vessels. We are lucky and happy to be three of this small number.
Glacier Bay National Park is the ancestral homeland of the Huna Tlingit clans who sustained themselves for centuries on the abundant resources of the land and sea. Although villages inside the Bay were overrun by the Little Ice Age glacial advance of the 1700's, the Huna Tlingit re-established numerous fish camps and several villages in Glacier Bay soon after glacial retreat. The Huna Tribal House memorializes the clan houses that once lined the shores of present day Bartlett Cove, now the site of National Park Service headquarters in Glacier Bay. The project also provides an opportunity to revitalize Tlingit artistic traditions. Through a cooperative agreement between the tribal government and NPS, master craftsmen have trained a cadre of local apprentices and students in traditional Tlingit art and design, carving, adzing, and spruce root weaving. Over seven years, carvers have crafted and installed the elaborately carved and painted cedar panels that adorn the house front, four richly detailed interior cedar house posts and an interior house screen which depicts the stories of the four primary Huna Tlingit clans. Raven and Eagle totems were completed and installed in 2017 as well as the Healing Pole in August 2018. These precious cultural elements impart spiritual value to the Tribal House and its surroundings, but as importantly, their design and completion has expanded the circle of tribal members who share in cultural knowledge. The Tribal House serves as a box of knowledge to learn about Tlingit culture as well as for Tlingit communities and organizations to offer cultural workshops on topics such as Native art, woodworking, weaving, song and dance, healthy living, and more. (Ref: https://www.nps.gov/glba/learn/historyculture/huna-tribal-house-project.htm).
History
Geologists believe that Glacier Bay existed during a minimum of four Glacial periods ending with the Little Ice Age, which has a 4,000-year-old record, as the latest period. All glaciers in the park today are said to be remnants of this glacial period.
The earliest recorded history of the Glacier Bay area starts with the 1741 Russian expedition of Vitus Bering and Aleksei Chirikov. La Perouse (after whom one of the glaciers in the bay was named subsequently) established contact with the local inhabitants, the Tlingits at Lutya Bay, in 1786, though traditionally the Tlingit lived in the area before the last glacial advance forced them out.
6/29/2024 Touring Glacier Bay by Tour Boat
Due to its vast size, we opted to take a chartered tour boat through Glacier Bay National Park. This allowed us to benefit from a faster boat and guides with lots of local knowledge. They enabled us to see a variety of wildlife along with the glaciers.
6/30/2024 We took our three boats on a tour from Bartlett Cove up to Gieke Inlet and then back down to North Sandy Cove.
Quiz for the day:
What do you call a collection of otters?
A) a family
B) a romp
C) a lodge
D) a raft
Answer:
E) all of the above
We anchored in North Sandy Cove for our last two nights in the park. The sun came out and we enjoyed a calm evening. This cove has a gravelly bottom and the anchor chain dragging across the rocks is a very unnerving experience. Luckily it got very calm overnight and we were able to sleep.
6/30/2024 The three boats were anchored in North Sandy Cove by about four in the afternoon. Brad and I took a dinghy ride around the bay to explore and check water depths while Annette cooked dinner. We take turns with dinner, which is a treat for each of us to rotate the duties and rotate having to decide what to make for dinner. I do feel bad about the timing on this though as we had our best bear sighting while Annette worked on dinner.
We were looking at a small cove near a large rock slide in the bay when motion on the shore caught our attention. It was a black bear foraging in the bushes. We watched until the boat was about to drift into the rocks, at which point Brad started the dinghy motor and startled the bear. He posed nicely for us, then slowly ambled along the shore for a few minutes before heading into the growth.
7/2/2024 Our five days and four nights are up so it is time to exit Glacier Bay National Park. We took a slow pass by South Marble island to enjoy the wildlife there.
Comments