Baird Glacier Exploration

Rediscovering New Lands in Southeast Alaska

Rebecca at the Baird glacier lake

   The retreating glaciers of Alaska are leaving behind a moonscape land of boulders, silt, and minerals that have been scraped off the sides of the valleys or scoured from the valley floor. This jumble of dirt, rocks, and silt is left behind once the glacier starts its retreat and is called the terminal moraine. The constant melting of the glacier can build up a lake between itself and the moraine which is what you see in famous inland glaciers like Mendenhall outside of Juneau.

   The terminal moraine provides a wonderful science experiment in plant succession. Recently uncovered land lies bare until the crypto-biotic soil provides enough nutrients for the pioneering nitrogen fixers to gain hold. Shrubby alder trees come in next and pave the way for bigger trees like spruce, hemlock, and cedar to follow. The whole process reminds me of Hawaii’s lava fields, new land which follows a definite progression of vegetation.

  

What's left of our skiff prop

   This week we explored one of these terminal moraine landscapes left behind by Baird glacier. Located in Thomas Bay, Alaska, Baird has been retreating very quickly. A few years ago folks who landed on the moraine here were able to walk right up to the glacier and actually climb on top of it. Nowadays the retreat has left an impassable lake separating the hikers from the glacier itself. Even landing on the moraine with a small boat can be difficult because to get there the driver must navigate a rushing glacial river cascading through the moraine and into the bay. A few rapids and strong current make boat handling tricky, but the real kicker is the fact that rocky depth can be hidden in the zero visibility that the glacial melt provides. Broken propellers are the norm here at Baird glacier which is always a worry in the forefront of skiff drivers mind.

   Despite these challenges, or maybe because of them, Baird glacier can be a very rewarding, wilderness, and otherworldly place to experience. It is also wild to see a place that can change so dramatically season to season, or even week to week. At the end of last year Baird experienced a huge amount of rainfall which triggered a mass breakthrough of the moraine pushing huge icebergs out 25 miles away to the town of Petersburg. Residents there say that this kind of thing happens every few years, drastically changing the face of Baird. So it was with an explorer’s eye that we sailed up through Thomas Bay this week to see what we would find.

  

Rock hopping to the glacier

   Arriving around 6am, we put a skiff into the water and all of our drivers and guides clamored aboard for an early morning recon. We tried several different entrances to river outputs, as well as a cascading section which turned out to be just as shallow as it looked. A couple of us took off across land trying to avoid the BSM, or boot sucking mud. The hikers and drivers reconvened to push the boat farther in, take a few more chunks out of the propeller, and finally make it to a landing spot that we recognized from last year. We learned that there had been some changes to the moraine/river landscape but it was still recognizable from the end of last year. We also learned not to try and drive the skiffs upriver on a 1ft low tide.

  

Ice everywhere

   As the tide came in however our options became even easier than years prior. We dropped hiking groups onto the moraine and we took skiff tours all the way up the river into the glacial lake. The hiking option is a boulder hopping, muddy, test of skill but puts you out on the shoreline of a lake filled with grounded ice bergs with Baird glacier providing the backdrop. The glacier is about a ¼ mile back from this shore. The skiff tours can make it to the lake but have limited access being blocked out by massive chunks of grounded ice. So as of now it’s not possible to get back to the glacier unless we hike in a stand up paddle board or kayak….which is a pretty intriguing option now that I think about it.