10%

Glacier Bay National Park

By Scott Richardson

November 28^th, 2025

Bartlett Cove is 2,900 miles from Philadelphia as the crow flies, so it's no surprise that it takes all day to fly there. We were up around four to catch a 7 AM flight, in Seattle by 10 for lunch, and in Juneau by early afternoon. That left us with a three-hour layover in Juneau’s one-room airport, where the bar and snack counter closed soon after our flight arrived. From the window, we watched as small planes navigated the foggy, mountainous landscape. Around 4 PM, we boarded our final flight, ending the day on the tarmac of the foggy Gustavus, Alaska airport after flying 3,200 air miles.

Gustavus is a small town of 600 people. Its airport features a single warehouse building for a terminal, a tractor for hauling freight, and an outdoor baggage claim that unloads onto its sidewalk. A few small taxis waited to haul passengers to local lodges, but we followed the majority of travelers to a waiting school bus to transfer us to the national park lodge at Bartlett Cove.

The bus driver pointed out town highlights: the high school, which graduated two seniors this year, a business district consisting of a single restaurant and a 1960s-era gas station with rotary pumps, and the site of a 1957 DC-3 plane crash. He also stopped for visitors to take photos with the park entrance sign – I guess it's no surprise that those who enter Glacier Bay by land are the same people collecting park sign photos.

We arrived at Bartlett Cove to a perpetual drizzle that lasted for two days. We made a beeline to the dining hall for dinner and glacieritas: terribly sweet drinks that we had to try.

After dinner, I walked along the cove in search of wildflowers in the waning daylight. I reflected on the surreal feeling of visiting my 59th park, the total number of national parks that existed when I set out on my quest to visit them all. Around 10 PM, I found a porcupine in the bushes behind one of the lodge buildings.

John Muir brought notoriety to Glacier Bay by sharing his travels in San Francisco news columns. He believed in Louis Agassiz’s glacier theory, which proposed that a large ice sheet once covered the northern hemisphere. It was a radical theory at the time. Muir dropped out of his university studies and traveled to California, where he studied the Yosemite Valley and was convinced its forms were the result of glaciers.

Muir was an early rider of steamboats bound for Alaska. On his first trip north, he disembarked at Fort Wrangell, where he hired Tlingit paddlers to row him to Hoonah, due south from Glacier Bay. Muir told his native paddlers he had heard of “icy rivers” and a bay “filled with white thunder.” The Hoonah paddlers were hesitant to make the trip, both for fear of weather and opposing tribes, but they relented and accompanied Muir to Glacier Bay.

After exploring the bay’s glaciers by boat and on foot, he returned to California with evidence to support Agassiz’s theory, and shared his findings with curious readers who soon took their own trips north.

We hiked the Tlingit and Bartlett River trails through vibrant, verdant rainforest. While we hoped to see wildlife, we weren’t prepared with bear spray, so we were comforted when all we saw was a squirrel.

Moss carpeted every surface: the forest floor, rocks, tree trunks, and hung from every branch. The constant rain drizzle continued throughout the day, which can be expected in a cove that receives 70 inches of rain each year.

We met an eclectic hiker singing his way through the forest. A few days before he had encountered several bears along the same trail.

When we made our way back to the park road, we found a porcupine chewing brush along the edge of the forest.

Before dinner, we explored the visitor’s center and spotted sea otters from window. A ranger had a scope pointed into the cove, and we used it to follow otters along the shoreline. The ranger expressed her enthusiasm for otters, even showing off her otter keychain and her otter tattoo.

We ran down to the dock to see otters up close, and watched as they seemed to play hide and seek with us.

Muir encouraged people to experience Alaska for themselves. And they did. Steamships transported early visitors, and small boat trips in Glacier Bay became very popular in the 1950s-60s. In the 70s, cruises started to bring large numbers of visitors, and is how most visitors experience the park today. We chose an option to get a little closer.

We woke up early to line up for our boat trip to the glaciers. I had been expecting a bit of a crowd, but the boat was empty with barely 40 people.

The day started off rainy, but gradually grew sunnier as we cruised through the bay.

We started to see whales fairly early on. First, their blow, misting into the air, then they might briefly surface their back, then reveal their fluke. They tend to swim close to shore where fish is plentiful.

We stopped at a rock to see stellar sea lions, and saw two eagles.

Then a tufted puffin flew across the water, apparently a rare sight here. The boat crew and a naturalist on board were very excited to spot the tufted puffin.

At Gloomy Knob, we saw mountain goats tucked high on a grassy bluff.

Along the way, we saw several bears walking along the rocky beaches.

We sailed through the Tarr Inlet to Margerie Glacier where we saw several harbor seals, including one trying to hide her pup from our view.

Then, an abundance of waterfalls.

The glacier calved a bit before we left for Johns Hopkins Glacier where sea otters and harbor seals swam in front of the massive glacier.

By the end of the day, we had tallied at least four grizzlies and one black bear, numerous goats, puffins, harbor seals, stellar sea lions, sea otters, and eagles.

The final glacier we stopped for was Lamplaugh Glacier.

Back on land, we walked the forest trail through rainforest.

Muir said of tourists: “What a show they made with their ribbons and kodaks! All seemed happy and enthusiastic, though it was curious to see how promptly all of them ceased gazing when the dinner bell rang…”

Having experienced the wonders of the park, we were excited for more drinks at the lodge. We continued to sample the drink options: a Fairweather punch, named after a prominent peak, a Sunset sangria, and a Tipsy spruce. All overly sweet, but fun to drink.

After dinner, we wandered the cove to see the Tribal Clan house and totem poles. Near the public dock is the Yaa Naa Néx Kootéeyaa Healing Totem Pole. Designed by tribal elders, artists and National Park Service staff, it tells the story of an evolving relationship between the Parks Service and the Hoonah Indians. The pole depicts the Hoonah Lingit’s tragic migration from their Glacier Bay Homeland, to more recent collaborative efforts between the tribe and the Parks Service.

We were excited to visit Xunaa Shuká Hít (The Huna Tribal House), but it was closed throughout our visit. In front of the clan house, we found a group of young tribal members unloading a van. One of their mentors told us the kids were staying in the campground, and they had a cultural program planned to keep the kids involved with tribal history, culture, and their traditional homeland.

The tribal clan house is a physical representation of the Lingit people’s return to their homeland. While the park preserves scenery for visitors and provides refuge for animals, it also restricts the traditional hunting and gathering grounds of tribal members. This led to decades of conflict between tribes and the government. The tribal clan house is a gathering place where visitors can learn about native history, and clan members can host traditional celebrations.

I spent the evening photographing along the beach from the lodge down to the campground. Earlier in the day, we had met a guy and his brother on the boat, then talked with them at the clan house. I saw them once again in the distance along the beach while i was wandering alone. I also found fresh bear droppings along the shore, but didn’t think too much of it at the time. Months later, I found one of the brothers’ blogs in which they described a grizzly bear encounter along the beach.

We spent our last morning in the parking looking for tide pools, starfish, and other sea creatures along the beach. We made our way from one end of the cove, past the pier, down to the campground, and out onto the beach again.

We found many beautiful wildflowers near the beach, including the fascinating chocolate lilly, and layers upon layers of purple lupines. The campground looked quiet and somewhat secluded, tucked back into the mossy rainforest.

We found a heron fishing along the beach, a black oystercatcher guarding a nest, and bear scat on the trail.

We checked out of our lodge room before lunch, stowed our luggage, and had one last meal in the dining room. After lunch, we joined a ranger hike along the Forest Loop to learn about the progression of forest growth from lichen and beach grasses to conifer forests and alders. Moose enjoy hanging around kettle ponds formed by melting ice that can’t drain when leaves and brush trap in the water.

After our hike, we boarded a bus bound for the small Gustavus airport. Airline agents asked that everyone wait outside in the misting rain as the one-room terminal couldn’t fit more than a few passengers at a time. One by one, groups checked in their baggage which was hand searched as the airport lacked luggage x-ray machines.