Three weeks in Alaska yielded a huge species list. That it happened to come out to exactly one hundred identified species is a coincidence. Although by the time our count was in the mid-nineties, I went back and checked and double-checked to see if we could get the satisfaction of one hundred. It’s a good thing that I did, since I’d have forgotten the Steller’s Jay if I hadn’t. Obviously, we saw a great many more species than this (particularly plants), but these were the ones we could identify successfully. The one hundred breaks down as follows: nineteen mammals, thirty-eight birds, no reptiles or amphibians, one fish, eight mollusks/jellyfish/etc., one insect, four blooming wildflowers, twelve trees, and seventeen other plants or non-blooming wildflowers or fungi.
As we sat on the runway at Anchorage International Airport, Sultana (Denali’s Wife, Mount Foraker) (clearly visible, center left) and Denali (just right of the plane’s tail) wished us a safe journey home.
Saturday morning, September 5 marked the beginning of the end of our time in Alaska. At noon, the ferry LeConte would depart Gustavus, and on it our two-say journey home would commence.
But first, we had some last-minute things to do at Glacier Bay National Park.
Standing here, with facts so fresh and telling and held up so vividly before us, every seeing observer, not to say geologist, must readily apprehend the earth-sculpturing, landscape-making action of flowing ice. And here, too, one learns that the world, though made, is yet being made; that this is still the morning of creation; that mountains long conceived are now being born, channels traced for coming rivers, basins hollowed for lakes; that moraine soil is being ground and outspread for coming plants,—course boulders and gravel for forests, finer soil for grasses and flowers,—while the finest part of the grist, seen hastening out to sea in the draining streams, is being stored away in darkness and builded particle on particle, cementing and crystalizing, to make the mountains and valleys and plains of other predestined landscapes, to be followed by still others in endless rhythm and beauty.
– John Muir, 1879, from Travels in Alaska, published posthumously in 1915
Tarr Inlet
Friday, September 4 dawned overcast at Bartlett Cove. We were taking the 7:30 am boat tour of Glacier Bay, which lasted eight hours and traveled 146 miles roundtrip from the dock at Bartlett Cove, up into the end of the Bay’s West Arm and back again.
The morning of Thursday, September 3, we’d spent paddling Bartlett Cove. After lunch that afternoon, we decided to take a walk along Tlingit Trail on the southern shore of the cove. Tlingit Trail heads east from Glacier Bay Lodge and runs a mere half mile one way. The walk took us a touch over an hour out and back.
While we were getting ready for our walk, the Red Squirrel who lived in the stump just outside the window of our room was taking an afternoon break from busily building a winter’s cache of food and defending it from all comers with loud chirps and barks. I took the opportunity to capture an image.
On July 16, 2001, a Humpback Whale was found dead, its bloated carcass floating near the entrance to Glacier Bay.
The carcass was towed to shore and examined. The whale had died of what amounted to blunt force trauma to the head from being hit by a large cruise ship. Researchers identified the whale as Snow (#68), a forty-four year old female, who had been pregnant when she died.
Thursday, September 3 was sunny at Glacier Bay National Park. It was the second sunny day in a row after some six weeks of clouds and drizzle, according to the staff at the lodge.
Back in early July, while we had been planning this portion of the trip while sitting on a veranda in southern Wisconsin, I’d turned to Sean and asked which of our two full days at Glacier Bay did he want to do a half-day paddle and which did he want to do our full-day boat tour. He’d replied that we should do the paddle the morning of our first full day. Now that we were actually here, his instinct could not have served us better. The forecast was for it to be sunny and warm on Thursday, and the drizzle was supposed to return on Friday.
It was sheer luck, but we’d be paddling Bartlett Cove’s waters while they were completely calm and shimmering in the sunshine.
Glacier Bay, at the northwest end of Alaska’s Inside Passage, was established as a National Monument by President Calvin Coolidge in 1925. Coolidge acted at the urging of the Ecological Society of America. One of their members, William Skinner Cooper, had realized the area’s unparalleled potential in the study of forest succession, the development of a complete forest ecosystem from newly exposed bedrock to mature forest.
Skinner had been drawn to Glacier Bay, as many before him had, by the writings of John Muir, who “discovered” Glacier Bay in 1879 and returned in 1890 and 1899. Muir publicized the wonders of Glacier Bay in contemporary magazine articles and eventually the posthumously published Travels in Alaska (1915).
In 1978, President Jimmy Carter enlarged Glacier Bay National Monument in anticipation of the passage of the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (ANILCA), which would eventually pass Congress in 1980. ANILCA enlarged the protected lands of Glacier Bay to over 3.2 million acres, establishing Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve.
The vast majority of Glacier Bay’s 500,000 annual visitors experience the Park exclusively by boat from the deck of a cruise ship. Only five percent of visitors actually set foot on the land of Glacier Bay National Park. We were among this small fraction. (more…)
Mount La Perouse in the Fairweather Range, Glacier Bay National Park
Wednesday, September 2 we departed Juneau via the Alaska Marine Highway System and journeyed to Gustavus (population 442), the gateway town to Glacier Bay National Park. Gustavus sits on the shores of Icy Passage, thirty-seven nautical miles west of Juneau. Our ferry ride would take just over four hours to reach it.
Our sailing was at 7am, but we woke at 4am because the Alaska Marine Highway System website stated we needed to check-in two hours before. The Juneau ferry dock was not on the Gastineau Channel in downtown Juneau, but rather near the northern end of the Juneau road system in Auke Bay.
We were bleary-eyed but excited as we loaded our bags into the taxi at 4:40. Our driver was a gruff, but friendly older fellow with a big beard. We chatted with him about our trip, Chicago, and that we had failed to visit “Juneau’s glacier,” the Mendenhall, while we were in town.
We arrived at the ferry terminal right around 7am, and we were the first one’s there. So we settled into some seats near a window that looked out at the water and waited for dawn.
Unlike the previous day, Tuesday, September 1 was rainless in Juneau, perfect weather for a hike up Mount Roberts, which rises immediately east of downtown. The Mount Roberts Tramway takes visitors on a gondola ride to a point 1,800 feet up the 3,800-foot mountain. We decided that instead of taking the tramway up and hiking down that we’d hike up and take the tramway down. Although the trail was only about 1.4 miles, the trailhead was about a mile from downtown, making the total hike 2.5 miles with an elevation gain of 1,800 feet. (more…)
On Sunday, August 30, we embarked on the final stage of our trip by traveling southeast to Juneau, Alaska’s beautiful capital city. Tucked between coastal mountains and the Gastineau Passage of Alaska’s famed Inside Passage, Juneau is inaccessible save by air or sea. Its population is small, only 32,000 people. Yet it is a cosmopolitan city that feels like the ultimate extension of the Pacific Northwest vibe of Portland and Seattle (and presumably Vancouver).
We decided that we could definitely live in Juneau. (more…)
Although we’d already spent two nights in Anchorage, one as we arrived in Alaska and the other between Kenai Fjords National Park and Denali National Park, it was finally time to stay for a few nights and take in Alaska’s largest city.
With a population of 300,000, Anchorage is the most populous city in Alaska and the sixty-third most populous in the United States. By comparison, Saint Louis has a population of 310,000, but Saint Louis has a much larger metropolitan population spreading out on either side of the Mississippi River. Most of Anchorage’s population is in the city and borough proper, which encompasses over 1,900 square miles, compared to 66 square miles for Saint Louis. So Anchorage is large and populous, but much less dense than comparable cities in the “lower forty-eight.”
It grew out of a tent city of rail workers that had risen in 1914 when the Alaska Railroad Corporation chose the outlet of Ship Creek on the eastern shore of Cook Inlet as its construction headquarters. The city was incorporated in 1920.
Morning was chill in Savage River Campground on Thursday, August 27, but the gripping cold that campground host, Liz, had forecast had not yet arrived. In the tent, we had a more insistent puddle than we’d had the previous morning. It had rained overnight, but in the bright gray morning, there was only occasional drizzle.
We’d started our last canister of backpacker stove fuel the day before, and it was fairly light when I started heating water in the coffee percolator. Damned if it didn’t cut out just as the coffee was done. It was the first time we’d estimated perfectly how much fuel we’d need on a trip.
Packing up over coffee didn’t take long. Our plan was to have breakfast at the park grill while we finished writing our postcards to mail from the Park. We also wanted to visit the Alaska Geographic bookstore and, of course, the Visitor Center.
After our mishap on Mount Healy, Sean and I salvaged the afternoon of Wednesday, August 26 with a visit to Denali National Park’s sled dog kennels. We arrived at the Park Headquarters parking area shortly before the 2pm dogsledding demonstration.
The use of dogsleds to patrol Denali National Park dates all the way back to Harry Karstens, who became the Park’s first superintendent in 1921 after it was established in 1917. In the winter, Park Rangers go on one-day to six-week long dogsled patrols of the inner two-million acres of designated wilderness, where motorized vehicles are prohibited. The patrols haul supplies, contact winter visitors, and prevent illegal activities like poaching and snowmobiling.
Wednesday, August 26 was rainy in the eastern part of Denali National Park. We woke in our tent at Savage River Campground to a steady rain. But unlike our overnight at Savage River on Saturday, the interior of our tent was mostly dry. We’d chosen a better-drained site for the tent than I had that earlier night. This time there was just a little puddle of moisture down near our feet, which wasn’t horrible given the insistence of the rain. (more…)
Tuesday morning, August 25, we awoke to a semi-steady rain, which had begun the night before. We would be departing Wonder Lake Campground under a thick cloud cover that only occasionally allowed the lower ridges of the Alaska Range to peek through.
As our full day at Wonder Lake continued, we enjoyed sunny skies over the tundra/taiga transition in which the campground was situated. We had spent the morning and early afternoon on a solid four-and-a-half hour hike to the McKinley River, and now, as we rested, the Alaska Range flooded the southeastern horizon with the Alaska of one’s imagination.
Mount Brooks (center), the Pyramid Peaks (right), Mount Deception (left)
Next morning, Monday, August 24, the sky was filled with a layer of low, thick clouds. From our chat with Ranger Andy the previous evening, we knew that the activities of our full day at Wonder Lake Campground would be determined by whether or not the skies were clear. Since they were not, we would spend the morning and early afternoon hiking the McKinley Bar Trail from the campground through tundra and taiga to the McKinley River. Had they been clear, we’d have hiked up one of the ridges above camp to take in the view.
Wonder Lake Campground, located at mile 85 of the Denali Park Road and thereby the closest campground to The Mountain, is comprised of twenty-six tent sites mostly arrayed along a gently sloping amphitheater beneath a low ridge. Amid the campsites and stretching beneath the campground into the middle distance is a landscape sparsely studded with tall, thin Black Spruce amid low tundra brush.
Sunday morning, August 23, we awoke in a puddle. It had rained insistently all night, and at 5:20am, our tent was cold and wet. Sean had been right. We should have just slept in the Jeep, since now we had soaked gear that we had to pack up in order to catch the 7:05am camper bus to Wonder Lake Campground.
I climbed out of the tent in the pre-dawn light. It was cold, but it had stopped raining. I lit the camp stove and started boiling water in the coffee percolator. As cold as it was, somewhere in the 30s, it didn’t approach the 27 degrees we’d woken to at Theodore Roosevelt National Park. But it was damp, and the camp stove promptly grew a layer of hoarfrost and froze to the picnic table.
Denali National Park and Preserve protects over six million acres (including over two million acres of federally designated wilderness) of boreal forest, tundra, and mountains in central Alaska. It also protects North America’s highest peak, an array of glaciers and braided streams cascading from the mountains, and an intact ecosystem enlivened by Alaska’s iconic large mammals.
The Park was established in 1917 as Mount McKinley National Park, largely to protect the astonishing herds of game, those large mammals, from over-hunting. Closest to the heart of hunter, amateur naturalist, and conservationist Charles Sheldon, who was instrumental in pushing for the Park, was the Dall Sheep, the only white wild sheep. Sheldon, a monied Easterner, was a member of Theodore Roosevelt and George Bird Grinnell’s Boone and Crockett Club and secured the club’s support in helping guide the bill creating the Park through Congress in the eleven years it would take to win its passage.
Mount McKinley National Park was greatly expanded, and its name changed to Denali National Park (although the mountain’s name did not then change), in 1980 with the passage of the monumental Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (ANILCA), which enacted the ultimate distribution of federal public lands in the state. With the passage of ANILCA and its signing into law by President Jimmy Carter in the waning days of his presidency, the Park was expanded from its original two million to its current over six million acres. Some 1.3 million of those acres are Denali National Preserve, where hunting is allowed. Most of the original Park became federal wilderness.
It was late afternoon on Friday, August 21, and our time in Seward had come to an end. After our visit to the Alaska SeaLife Center, we returned to Hotel Seward, from which we were ferried via van to the train depot just north of the Small Boat Harbor. We checked in, and waited until boarding began at 5pm for our 6pm evening train back to Anchorage.
Next morning, Friday, August 21, we slept in. We would be returning to Anchorage that evening via the Alaska Railroad, and originally we had planned this to be our day to hike to Exit Glacier and possibly the Harding Icefield. But we’d switched those plans based on the weather reports. It worked out perfectly. Wednesday afternoon had been sunny and glorious for our hike. Friday, although warm, was rainy, a perfect day to be indoors at the Alaska SeaLife Center.
Our nine-hour boat tour of Kenai Fjords National Park continued. That morning, Thursday, August 20, we’d traveled out of Resurrection Bay and down the coast, then in the early afternoon, we’d explored Northwestern Fjord. Now it was time for our last major stop before returning to Seward: The Chiswell Islands, part of the Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge.
Established like so many other public lands in Alaska by the Alaska National Interest Land Conservation Act (ANILCA) in 1980, the Refuge is administered by the US Fish and Wildlife Service and covers 4.9 million acres from the Gulf of Alaska to the Chukchi Sea. Although they are administered by two different services of the Department of the Interior, here off the coast of Kenai Fjords National Park, the National Wildlife Refuge and the National Park act in concert to protect wildlife.
It was just about ten minutes after noon on Thursday, August 20 when the Glacier Explorer rounded Aligo Point at the tip of Harris Peninsula and entered Granite Passage, which would lead us into Harris Bay and its farthest extent, Northwestern Fjord. The morning had taken us from Seward down the length of Resurrection Bay and then along the fjords and peninsulas of Kenai Fjords National Park.
Granite Passage
Appropriately enough, our course was northwesterly. As we sailed up Granite Passage, Harris Peninsula was to starboard and soaring, slender Granite Island was to port.
Next morning, Thursday, August 20, we woke early, although not as early as for the train the day before. At 9am, our tour of Kenai Fjords National Park was scheduled to depart. We’d assembled our day packs, binoculars, cameras, and extra layers of clothes, after dinner the night before. Check-in for the boat was at 8am, so by 7:40, we were headed out of Hotel Seward toward the small boat harbor a short walk away near the north end of town.
The weather was even better than we’d hoped. Over the previous week, I’d begun following the weather forecast for Seward closely, watching without daring to hope that the day of our boat tour would be beautiful. Now here it was, cloudless with a forecast high of 68 degrees. The morning sun was warm as it rose over the peaks of the Resurrection Peninsula opposite town.
Kenai Fjords National Park was established in December 1980 under the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (ANILCA), which also created six others of the eight National Parks in Alaska. The act resolved the general distribution of remaining federal lands within the state, transferring acreage to various entities, including the State of Alaska, but also retaining millions of acres within federal protection as parks, monuments, wildlife refuges, etc.
As ANILCA worked its way through Congress in the late 1970s, it had much vocal on-the-ground opposition from Alaskans and much lobbyist opposition from the extraction industries. The bill stalled multiple times, causing President Jimmy Carter to establish a series of National Monuments in 1978, among them Kenai Fjords, to ensure the protection of the most important parcels in case ANILCA stalled out completely.
Including a later expansion, Kenai Fjords National Park comprises 670,000 acres of rugged coastline, glaciers, mountains, and deep fjords. It is capped by the Harding Icefield, the largest icefield contained entirely within the United States, 300 square miles of ice spawning forty glaciers. It receives about 280,000 visitors a year.
The northern section of Kenai Fjords lies west (and above) the town of Seward (population 2,500). Seward, established in 1903 and once boasting the start of the Iditarod dog sled race, has seen boom and bust cycles based on railroad construction, shipping, fishing, and tourism. Its easy rail and highway access to Anchorage makes it an important terminus for various Alaska cruises. Its dramatic location on Resurrection Bay and its proximity to wilderness recreation make it a popular draw for Alaskans in the population centers north. And it functions as a gateway community for three major federal lands, Chugach National Forest, Kenai National Wildlife Refuge, and of course Kenai Fjords National Park.
It was too early to check in, so after dropping our bags amid the robust taxidermy collection in the lobby of Hotel Seward, we went in search of lunch.
Sean and I departed on our honeymoon trip to Alaska on Tuesday, August 18, 2015. Although there is a direct flight between Chicago and Anchorage on Alaska Airlines, we were flying on American Airlines because of the stipulations of Sean’s prize. Save that we had to make a connection through Dallas-Fort Worth, flying on American was just fine because it is our carrier of choice.
Also it allowed us two of our traveling traditions. My shot of the American Airlines fleet at O’Hare:
Sean and I married in Chicago on August 15, 2015. At the ceremony we were surrounded by eighty family and friends. It was a beautiful evening full of happiness.
Image: Chris Murphy
Three days later, on August 18, we departed on our honeymoon, a three-week long trip to Alaska that included three National Parks: Kenai Fjords, Denali, and Glacier Bay.
