Glacier Bay, ALASKA

18 August 2011

It's a pretty humbling concept to absorb, realising that the land you're standing on was covered by a glacier, 1200 metres thick, only two hundred years ago. Glacier Bay Lodge is at the entrance to Glacier Bay, the furthest that George Vancouver was able to venture in 1794 because there was a bloody great ice sheet in the way. The local Tlingkit people tell the story that the ice, which had been quietly minding its own business up the bay for countless generations, suddenly began moving at the speed of a running dog, and chased the tribe across to Chichagof Island where they live today.  By 1888 it had retreated 44 miles from the sea leaving a scoured out valley where the animals and plants are still on the way back. It's now 65 miles from its original position in 1794.

We arrived at the Lodge in the afternoon of the 16th August, about 36 hours after we left Darwin on the same date. It was a good test of the resilience of the human body. Mine failed. Lex had no trouble, having long ago mastered Sleeping on Barb Wire Fence 101.  LA airport was a nightmare. How can a country as clever as the USA get an airport so wrong! Three hours of waiting in a huge crowd for bags, queuing for Customs and then queuing for Alaska Air saw our comfortable four hours' layover eroded to a mad dash for the connecting flight.

As we neared Seattle, the view out the windows gave us a taste of what was coming - high snow capped peaks of the Cascade Mountains on one side, Mt St Helens and more on the other, and several deep blue lakes in the caldera of volcanoes. Just like Mt Gambier, except these volcanoes are just sleeping.

We flew into Glacier Bay at Gustavus, a tiny hamlet boasting 11 miles of roads - two of them. One is called The Road, the other is called... The Other Road! Australia obviously isn't the only place in the world where place names reflect the vast imagination of the naming party. (How many Sandy Coves, Shark Bays or Shelly Beaches have you seen?) The airport is surprisingly sophisticated, and has more security personnel than any other type of employee - just like every other airport we've come through in the US.

Glacier Bay. There is finally a reason to describe something as AWESOME!  If all we'd been able to see when we came to Alaska was this place, it would've been worth it. Nothing prepares you for seeing a glacier up close. Close being a respectable quarter mile distant. The edge of Rendu Glacier was 250 feet high, dwarfing a 975 feet cruise ship nearby, just to give us some perspective. And they really are blue - it's not the tv colour. We spent a whole day cruising up several inlets with glaciers at their ends, and hearing about the local geology and history of the area from a naturalist with the Parks service. It was cold - very cold for a couple of sooky Territorians, but we didn't let the side down, and put on three or four layers of clothes, woollen beanies, gloves and wet weather gear so we could stand out in the freezing wind with the best of them. Then we realised the best of them were in the saloon getting outside of some hot chocolate...

Humpback whales and a pair of Orcas provided huge excitement, as well as sighting pure white mountain goats and families of bald-headed eagles on the steep sides of the inlets. The further you venture up the bay, the newer the land is, and the younger the vegetation. This is a truly dynamic system, rebounding gradually from the effects of the glacial retreat since the early 1800s. Very recent history.