Sep 9/2005 |9.32 am
Dates:
Returning|| Picked up at BlueMoseCove by Baranoff Wind (a catamaran, looked kinda like this), boat ride back to Bartlett Cove, camped 1 night (alone! Aaaaaack!), take taxi to the one room airport. Fly Sep 6th at 5.30pm from Gustavus to Juneau (2 seater cecsna plane), Juneau to Seattle 3 hr layover, Seattle to Pheonix 5 hr layover, Pheonix to ELP arrive 11.30am Sep 7th.
Kayaking:
- Brand:
Eskimo - Type:
"Expedition Beluga", double - Weight:
79lbs, capacity of 700lb
This map is a very rough picture of Glacier Bay, with the unneccessary west arm blurred off. I dated the campsites, from Aug 22nd to Sep5th I messed up on one of the dots but I hope this map will be sufficient. Glacier Bay is an inlet off the Pacific Ocean, in southeast Alaska. In this trip, I meet my dad in Alaska, after arthur went on his trip in Prince Williams Sound. My dad too a boat for two days up to Glacier Bay. I met him at the campground, we sorted gear and camped there that night. The next morning at high tide we skirted out of Bartlett Cove and up into the Beardslee's Islands. Camped on Strawberry Island, the next day we jumped over to Flapjack Island, crossed Beartrack Cove, and camped on the tip of a small cove. Next day we headed up the East arm of Glacier Bay and camped just above Adams Inlet. Then onto McBride Glacier where we saw most of the Icebergs. Then we inteded to camp at Riggs glacier, but it was too ugly and so continued on to a point within Miur Inlet. The next day we did a "dayhike" paddling up to Miur Glacier. The day after that we relaxed and clean some of our gear and dried stuff out (the sun came out). Then we backtracked down the East arm and ccamped in Hunter's Cove, just past Wachusett Inlet. Stayed an extra day here. Then went down to Sebree Island. The next day was bad waves so we barely made it to just below tidal inlet and camped. After that, we crossed the bay and headed into the Scidmore area. Found a nice camp near where I was to be picked up Sep 5th and did some day paddling from there for the next 2 days. Then me and the rental kayak got picked up, my dad's foldable kayak and food was dropped off, and he continued on kayaking from there. I took the Baranof Wind boat back to Bartlett Cove, camped, then headed to the airport the next afternoon. There were alot of neat things in this trip. Unfortunately, my dad was paranoid about his camera so I couldn't take it out unless it had stopped raining. It didn't stop raining often, so my pictures are bunched together in just afew locations. I hear back from my dad Sep 22nd when he gets back. Ocean water is nasty and sea-creatures are very strange, and Kelp looks like some sort of medusa monster. These are in no particular order and are about %25 of their original size. I have a bunch more, jsut have to sort them still. On with the picture show:
Icebergs this big were beaching on the shore next to McBride Glacier. This thing was about 10 feet tall. Looks bigger in the pic.
Scidmore Bay, right at the end of the trip. I thought this was going to be a crappy, lowland area with no view, but it actually made some of the best pictures.
Heading up to Miur Glacier, where we wanted to hike up on the ice. This is looking back. There's a waterfall on the hills, if you can see it.
Our camp on Sebree Island, there was so much bear sign at this camp, my dad says the bears swim to the islands alot and claim them and get real territorial. Note the purple stuff. That's two feet of empty clam shells. Once it's low tide, theres lots and lots of barnacles (creepy and sharp) and lower than that are clams (sharp and crunchy), and at really low tide there's another layer of barnacles that are bigger, like an inch big instead of 1/4in. They have mouths and their alive. Somehow I always thought barnacles were plants. *Grimly mistaken.*
Miur camp again. Notice tha tide has swallowed most of the beach. There's a 30 foot peninsula of land underwater in that pic. We thought it might reach our tent, the tides were super high that day. Like 17ft high tide. Me on a mossey boulder above the tent.
This is a Miur Glacier. It used to be tidewater, which means it reaches a body of water and calves (chunks off) into it. Calving:The salt water forces the glacier ice to melt where it touches it at the base of the glacier, and hollows out the whole underwater part of the glacier. Once the weight above the waterline can't be supported anymore, pieces fall off. The reason Miur glacier is no longer tidewater is because it's receeding. It is now blocked by about half a mile of moraine. Glacial Moriane: Glaciers slowly grind up rocks as they move and push these partcles in front of it while it moves. Usually these deposits are mostly under the glacier. So when the glacier receeds and melts back, the moraine makes a small mound of grey dust in front of the glacier. This was really muddy, so even though we wanted to hike up on Miur Glacier, we couldn't get more than 100 yards before we gave up. The mud was too bad and we couldn't get the kayak high enough to tie it off on anything. It'd take us an hour to reach the glacier and by that time the tide would have risen and stolen our kayak and supplies. So we gave up and just took a few pics. My dad in the first, still wearing his kayak 'skirt'.
Me, smart enough to take off my 'skirt', but forgot the life jacket. This is the muddy glacial moraine that blocks Miur from reaching the ocean now.
This is an old picture of Miur Glacier I found on a website to show how much it's changed. It used to be tidewater, as you can see in this pic. This pic is old probably from the 80's (Figure A). Now it looks tiny and more like this(Figure B)):
Figure A
Figure B
Picture of the hilly country, alpine tundra areas. These hills were covered by ice 50 years ago, so nothing is growing here yet. In that time Miur glacier melted back 10 miles or so into the scrawny thing it is today. It used to cover these hills and gound them down, that's why they are round and knobby.
Dad-man frantically moving the tent before the tide eats us, while I get out the camera and take a picture.
Can you spot the cruise boat. We paddled along the bottom of this cliff, then crossed the bay. We'd been dreading crossing the bay because it's over an hour in open water, with the biggest fetch for waves and the possibility of becomming cruise liner roadkill. *near death experience crossing* Everything was bad when we crossed, but the weather was predicted to get 'obscenely horrible' tomorrow and we had to make a go at it. Headwind, doubletimed it paddling, my arms burned the whole time. Big waves we had to quarter and the wind kept picking up. We were so exhausted after this strech, it was out only goal for the day. I was only about 3 miles across, but it took us 2 hours even when we double timed it. (READ: strenuious and horrible) Coupled with my great fear of water and drowning, this was like a "keep moving or we're gonna die" feeling all day. Felt like an emergency, because the waves were building and this was the only day we could cross or else I wouldn't be able to get picked up and we'd run out of food and have to start eating our socks. O.O;
White Thunder Mountains. They looked better and bigger in person. This is up in Miur inlet, before we hit McBride Glacier and before Riggs and Miur glacier. Both Riggs and Miur sucked as glaciers, they've been receeding from global warming (or something) and the base of 'em looks real scrawny. From far away they look neat, but when you get up closeand can only see the base, it's not too exciting. *Wonders where Riggs pictures are*
I think this is from right above Adams Inlet, looking back. Don't remember, these mountains all kinda blend together. The poor grass at the bottom of the picture is being swamped by the tide.
Miur camp, stayed here 3 days. I climbed up on the hills above camp to take this. You can get a perspective of size here.
The bergs float around and kinda gathered in this little protected bay. This is at McBride glacier.
Humpbackwhale. Saw one backflip *yay* and lots of them blow air. Saw 1 tail flip, too. It was just like in the movies. In fact, movies are better because then you don't have to smell the stench of the ocean. Or get soaked by it's nasty salty, manky, kept-filled and bird-poop ridden waters.
My turn at steering and I was truely pathetic. Since I was the only one on the trip capable of using a camera, I took this from the back seat in the kayak. Kayaks have foot pedals that control a rudder in the back. Since we had so much stuff it was all packed around our legs and made "ruddering" difficult. Plus, if we flipped over that stuff would hinder escape; you'd have to pull it out before you could free your legs. Plus the 'skirts' attach you to the kayak and lock you in a bit. So while underwater and upside-down you have to calmly lean forward and pull the skirt elastic off the rim (takes about 50lbs of force in a really awkward angle), pull out some of your gear, and evacuate your legs, and not get caugh in the rigging, and head to the surface. Not to mention getting back into the kayak. So tipping over=death from drowning or frigid waters. You have about 3 minutes before you get too hypothermic to move and think right, and dry suits increase that to at least 30mims. So we wore the dry suits alot. Luckily, no tipping for us.
Cruise boat that's not following the speed limit. Never thought to ocean had spead limits.
Mc Bride Glacier front. There's me in my oversized man-clothes of my dad. The glacier face is still a MILE AND A HALF away in this pic.
Pretty tarp. Pretty grass. And sunlight for the first time in a week.
This was my island. Not so big, and you can't get off it at high tide. See if you can see me. I look like a grey 'V' from my shirt, on top of the boulders and to the middle-left.
Cooking tarp so we can eat in peace from the rain. Had to get our beast-of-burden, Mr. kayak, in the picture. More shells on the beach.
Kayak posing with fall colors. It's awsome to see the trees change, over the last 3 days of this trip they all flipped into yellow and dying mode. My first fall-trees-changing-color experience.
This is with McBride Glacier behind, White Thunder mountain to the left. Ahead and around the right corner is Riggs glacier. Ahead and to the left is where we went next, which brings you up to Miur glacier.
Trying to fit x amount of stuff in y amount of space. Then after an hour of loading you have to drag it to the water line again because the tide's gone down. Had to drag/carry/shove it an average of 40-100 ft when it was loaded because of the tide. Sometimes when the tide was going up, you had to drag it upbeach so it doesn't float away.
This was my favorate ice berggie. Had a nice hook to it. Surprisingly, the bergs weren't all shiney and blue. They were white, gray, brown from dirt or black from rocks, and sometimes crystal clear or rich blue. Just depends.
Bergs were left on the beach when the tide went down. They were all sizes, baseball to locomotive.
Coincidently birds flew up just as I clicked this picture. McBride again, getting covered by a hill as we got closer. The fog is covering these neato sharp and snowy peaks. I didn't even know they were there for a long time.
This is from Strawberry Island. Saw most of the whalies here. The tide was really big here. Looked like a fast river, and there was a tide rip next to the camp. Little did we know when we crossed over here; it'd been between tides so hardly any water movement when we landed here. Lucky because the tide rips are hard to see unless your above the waterline. This was the first camp.
Me, pensively drinking coffee and eating stale crackers. This is scidmore bay, during the last part of the trip.
Sunset in scidmore bay.
Me in a dry suit we borrowed. Official Oompa-Lumpa outfit. Weather for most of the trip was like this. Kinda camera limiting and blocked most of the views.
This is just a random picture I took of the forest around. It's officially a 'rain forest', which made me think tropics, and there's so much green stuff here I had to redefine rainforest=tropics into rainforest=rain.
Somewhere pretty with hills.
Nice water. The glacial silt clouds up the water so it makes for really neat pictures. All the water here near the glaciers looks milky. The tent hasn't moved but the water sure is. Compare the water level in this Miur pic to the ones of the Miur camp above. This angle really captures the essence of "water is going to rise and drown us in our sleep". The angle is funny though, the water is further than it looks, it was about 10 feet from the tent.
Me, at McBride, with those snowy peaks I mentioned.
My favorite iceberg pic. This one was really blue and awsome.
So that concludes most of the trip. Don't forget your jackets on the way out of the auditorium...
Glacier Bay | Kayak rental Co.
| survival journal |
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Glacier Bay Nat'l Park Apparently it's a Nat'l Heritage Site, also. Like the carlsbad caverns, and liberty hall. Kayak rental peeps they were surprisingly kinda and expensive |
| handy linkies |
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none |
| Alaska is fun |
| Well, alaskan people are very nice and small town-ish. They were very welcoming, and supposidyly %60 of visitors of Glacier Bay return at least once. |