We woke up to the first time we had planned a two-day
anchorage! After a leisurely breakfast, we relaxed for a while, then suited up for a walk
up the side of the glacier. We dinghied over to the shore, then hiked for about an hour to
a knoll about a mile away, 700 feet up, through a lot of alder, across a lot of runoff, a
couple of snowfields (these were the scariest bits: they were steep; one slip and we would
slide about 200 feet down into the boulders below!), gravel, boulders, and other glacier
debris. The view from the knoll was worth the climb: a fisheye view of the bay, Russell
Island across the channel, and a look down at the glacier. We had lunch on the knoll, then
hiked back down: it was tougher going down! At the bottom, we were quite close to the face
of the glacier (about 500-600 feet). As we rested at the water’s edge, the glacier
calved, and a chunk of ice crashed down into the pool at the base of the glacier’s
snout. The sound which accompanies this process is very similar to thunder, but usually
has a giant cracking noise first, like a loud gunshot. Then there is a giant splash, as
the tons of ice hit the water. The wave generated by this chunk was only about 2 feet
high, but we’re told that the large chunks, off the larger glaciers, can reach 30
feet!
The thing we are constantly aware of when hiking around these inlets and bays is the
larger-than-life size of everything around us. We are miniscule, microscopic beings in the
face of these glaciers and mountains. When we looked down the inlet at Ilari from our
knoll, we had trouble finding her. Distances are difficult to estimate. When we were
anchoring the previous night, we thought we were very close to shore, until people from
the next boat dinghied by, close to shore: they were much smaller than I thought they
should be!
One thing we have noticed in the park: no clear-cuts.
Everywhere, on the way up, hilltops, mountainsides, entire islands were bald. [It’s
sad to see: we are losing a resource that cannot be replaced. Although we are told
that there are more trees today in North America than there were 50 years ago, the problem
with second-growth forests is that all the trees are planted at the same time: this
creates, later in the cycle, a tree canopy so dense that no sun can get through, and so no
undergrowth can survive: this, in turn, prevents the animal life which once thrived there
from returning …]
"Great walk up the west side of Reid Glacier; sat on the knoll
about 1 mile up for lunch. Spotted lots of oyster catchers.
"Lots of calving from the glacier as we watched from the beach.
Then, back to the boat for a beer in the cockpit in the sun!"
