Capturing the Moment

   I watched an interesting movie the other day about the record retreat of many of the world's glaciers called ' Chasing Ice .' James Balog, a National Geographic photographer placed time lapse cameras in strategic positions looking over sixteen different glaciers. The resulting footage of these multi-year glacier time lapses give a striking visual to what scientists have been trying to say for decades. Lamplugh Glacier 2015 Lamplugh Glacier 2017    Inspired by this idea I have been trying to do my own glacier time lapses, albeit on a much smaller scale. While running trips with UnCruise in Southeast Alaska I have the opportunity to visit the same glaciers year after year. I try to get pictures from similar location and angles to allow a better understanding of the shifting face of the glacier at its terminus. Dawes Glacier 2015 Dawes Glacier 2017   Here are a couple of glaciers with pictures from over the last 3 years. Lamplug...

Sitting on the edge The terminus of the now grounded Lamplugh  This hike is for the extremers, the 'go get em' bunch that doesn't mind some dizzying heights, near vertical scrambles, and some steep dropoffs. If that sounds like you then keep reading. If not then maybe check out a calmer post about my first visit to Glacier Bay National Park three years ago.   In the heart of Glacier Bay National Park there is Lamplugh Glacier. I have heard about the ridge hike which starts from the lookers left side of the glacier for years, but until recently I had never gotten a chance to tackle it myself. Last week I took a hard charging group of hikers from my boat, the Safari Quest, to see just how high we could make it, and what kind of views we could get. Human Totem Pole at the top    For parts of the hike there is a worn trail. The views of the glacier expanding below you, and of all the mountain range extending as far as you can see are more and more ...

Ice Moose  Moose are relative newcomers to Southeast Alaska. At least the ones that are here now. It is theorized that moose used to be here but went locally extinct, and recently a different subspecies of moose has moved in through the major river valleys like the Stikine near Petersburg and the Taku near Juneau. If you want to look deeper into the science and DNA research of our moose take a look at this interesting article from the Alaska Wildlife News .   The fact that they are just now slowly colonizing means seeing them on one of our trips is a rare experience. Even for us running the trips it may be a once a season kind of sighting. Up in Homer and Denali we encountered moose around every corner, but here it is a rare thing indeed. So you can imagine our surprise when two moose were spotted just above where we had anchored near Lamplugh Glacier in Glacier Bay National Park. One took a stroll out onto some ice before calmly sitting down to take a rest.  C...

   One of the greatest spectacles in nature is watching animals work together to hunt. I have seen a pack of 13 lionesses taking turns to wear down a huge bull cape buffalo, and I've seen orca making an easy meal out of a speedy dall's porpoise, but something gets me every time I witness humpback whales bubble net feeding here in Alaska.    I had heard reports of a couple separate groups of bubble net feeders working southeast Alaska but until last night I had been unable to locate them. When I saw 4 or 5 whale blows very close together I had high hopes, and it paid off. We took the Safari Quest in for a closer look and sure enough, 7 whales erupted from the water in a tight formation as the surrounding birds flew in to grab the fish spilling out of the huge mouths of the whales.   We stayed with the whales for around an hour before having to motor on south but the entire encounter summed up the essence of traveling through Alaska. Hear we had these a...

  Every week I get to visit a tidewater glacier here in Alaska. It can be very exciting because tidewater glaciers, those that flow all the way down into the ocean, have a tendency to calve. This is where big, sometimes huge chunks of the glacier fracture off and crash down into the ocean. The noise created by both the fracturing and hitting the water echo throughout the fjord in what locals call the 'white thunder.'      A famous quote up here is 'they speak to you in creaks and groans, and thunderous roars.'   We were lucky enough to see some calving at Dawes glacier during our last two visits. It is pretty southern as far as tidewater glaciers go, and very active. The long winding ride up to the glacier through Endicott Arm has been chocked full of ice bergs, hinting at the activity of the face of the glacier. The 200 foot tall face of the glacier never ceases to amaze and confound me that something like it could actually exist. The fact that it is a...

Our Guide Dan Kirkwood Mom and yearling cubs  With our small group of five passengers this week we set up a special surprise visit to the Pack Creek bear viewing area on Admiralty Island. I have been wanting to go to this place ever since I started working in Alaska. The meadow at Pack Creek shows up in almost every bear documentary filled with bears. We knew that visiting in June wouldn’t be crowded since it was in between mating time in May, and the salmon runs in July and August. But we thought we would stop in , check it out, and see if we got lucky. We had the manager of Pack Creek Bear Tours , Dan Kirkwood, fly in to show us the ropes and introduce us to the bears we might be lucky enough to come across. He has spent the last five summers guiding daily fly in bear viewing trips to Pack Creek.    It looked like our lucky day when we awoke to a mom and two cubs playing and strolling along the shoreline. They stayed all during our breakfast, and then when ...

Le Conte Ice Gardens        A huge ice field forms in southeast Alaska’s coastal mountains due to an immense amount of precipitation coming in off the Pacific Ocean. This prolific snowfall produces the southernmost tidewater glaciers in North America. Le Conte Glacier is located near Petersburg, Alaska. Due to its high level of calving events the twelve and a half mile fjord heading back to the glacier’s face is often too choked with icebergs for vessels to reach it. However, reaching the glacier’s face was not our goal this trip.  For a look at my first visit to these ice gardens and more places where nature sculpts works of art in ice check out these other posts: * Le Conte Ice Garden * McBride Ice Garden * Mendenhall Ice Caves  What drew us to this area is an area I like to call Le Conte Ice Garden. The terminal moraine left behind when the glacier retreated creates a very shallow bar that often traps big pieces of ice inside the ba...