Mike Olney is like a soccer mom on steroids. He has made sure we are all clutching sack lunches, complete with a homemade cookie. We’ve been instructed to dress in layers and our feet are tucked snugly into rubber boots. Mike slaloms the mini-van around monstrous potholes, plies us with stories and keeps track of what’s going on at home via a 2-way radio, all punctuated by a toss of the head to flick unruly black bangs out of his eyes – clear vision being essential to spot the odd wandering moose.
“Home” in this case is the 14-room Bear Track Inn, set in the southeast Alaska wilderness near Glacier Bay, and Mike is its slightly obsessive innkeeper. My husband, Paul, and I have come here to sample Alaska in the rough, far away from the throngs of cruise ship passengers and T-shirt shops. But fortunately, that doesn’t mean we have to rough it.
In this haven for the camping-impaired, Mike has made sure we can snuggle under down comforters, order up fresh seafood for dinner or flop on a cushy suede sofa after checking our email. Which is pretty nice when you’ve spent the day in a chill drizzle on the pitching deck of a ship watching, awestruck, as glaciers calve.
We’d arrived three days before, aboard the ferry Kéet, a 4-hour trip from Juneau. Mike had worked with us in advance to fill our visit with a bit of everything the area has to offer – wildlife, glaciers, kayaking and fishing.
“Alaska is like a gigantic refrigerator – cold and full of food,” Captain Louis D’Andrea explained on our first day’s wildlife expedition. Alaskan summers are a feeding frenzy for wildlife, particularly humpback whales, who spend their winters in Hawaii without eating a bite, then come north ravenous and looking for sex – like gray, 30-ton teenagers.
From onboard the double-decked boat we spotted puffins, guillemots and bald eagles; mountain goats scampered on miniscule ledges; sea otters gazed up at us with curiosity, floating on their backs, babies cradled in their arms.
D’Andrea spied a humpback, “Three o’clock,” he instructed, and we gazed to starboard. A wispy plume of whale breath hung in the air. Then humpbacks were all around us and the captain cut the motor so we could hear the husky huffs from their blowholes.
A pod of harbor porpoises arced past, and in the distance D’Andrea pointed out an elusive Minke whale. “Look, porpoises!” a fellow passenger cried out to his wife. “I don’t care about porpoises – I’m looking for the whale!” she snapped. Where else, I wondered, could these sleek creatures possibly be the losers in “wildlife bingo?”
Back at the dock, Mike was waiting for us – and dinner was waiting at the inn. Restaurants come and go in Gustavus, so most accommodations include meals or a kitchenette to cook your own. Although I wouldn’t call the Bear Track’s cuisine “gourmet” by big-city standards, it’s some of the best I had in Alaska, with local fresh fish like King salmon and halibut, as well as steak, caribou and chicken entrees. Meals included a salad or appetizer, entrée, sorbet intermezzo and some wickedly good desserts whipped up by John, the pastry chef.
Wine and Alaskan beers are available, but wine aficionados will be disappointed in the selections, which favor labels like Clos du Bois, Fetzer and Sterling. These choices did serve perfectly well, though, to toast the fact that we were not sitting around a campfire drying our wet socks on a stick.
* * *
The big attraction at Glacier Bay is…glaciers. The agile catamaran Spirit of Adventure sails out of the national park’s dock at Bartlett Cove and spends the entire day looping around the bay’s west arm, where tidewater glaciers regularly dump huge chunks of blue ice into the sea.
National Park Service Ranger Kevin Richards was aboard to provide insights. “Just 200 years ago, Glacier Bay didn’t exist,” Richards told us. When the US was founded, it was packed with glacial ice up to 4,000 feet thick, 20 miles wide and over 100 miles long. While we were busy making laws, fighting wars and inventing fast food, the ice was receding – and an ecosystem was evolving.
Traveling the 65 miles from Bartlett Cove is like riding a timeline back into the Ice Age. At the mouth of the bay, where the ice first melted, are mature forests of spruce and hemlock. Go further and you’ll find willows, giving way to scrappier alder and cottonwood, then pioneer species like horsetail or fireweed. Further still, and there’s nothing but ice and rock.
As we neared the end of Tracy Arm, flotillas of icebergs bobbed around us. Rivers of ice stretched down toward the water in every direction. Many of the glaciers were compressed to a vivid blue (the only light spectrum reflected due to the ice’s density); others were dirty with debris they’d scoured from their rock walls.
The Margerie Glacier was active, and Captain Nick edged the boat as close as he dared. A few splinters of ice showered off the glacier’s snout. “It’s going to calve in about five minutes,” the captain predicted, eyeballing a massive, protruding chunk of ice.
He was right. With a moan and a crack, tons of ice crashed into the sea. It was tough to fathom just how huge the chunk was until it sent a swell racing toward us. Nick jockeyed our vessel so we safely took the wave head-on, rocking with its power.
* * *
Kayaking is the ideal way to merge with Glacier Bay’s natural environment, and there’s a wide range of options – from a short paddle, to multi-day trips. We spent a day gliding along the coastline, amid humpbacks, Stellar sea lions, bald eagles and what’s known as a “herring ball.”
Our guide, Stephen Van Derhoff, helped us gear-up and snap ourselves into the 2-person sea kayak. Most in our group of six had never kayaked, but a quick tutorial got us in the water to be greeted by three sea lions who popped up so close I could count their whiskers. A few minutes later, we heard some Jaws-caliber thrashing. “They’re feeding,” Stephen told us.
Paddling on, we sensed a soft plish-plosh, like gentle rain. Our boat was surrounded by thousands of tiny, leaping silver fish – the herring ball – stirred to the surface by the marauding sea lions.
Rounding a bend, we saw a whale’s fluke break the water, then more whales, their spouts of breath punctuating the stillness as we drifted amongst them, trying to guess where a 45-foot giant might surface next.
* * *
After kayaking, I understood why Mike had ordered our activities the way he did, each day increasing our intimacy with nature. Our final day called for salt-water fishing, so now here I am, lunch in hand, preparing to get extremely intimate with some salmon and halibut. Mike is ferrying us to the town dock, where we’ll hop six-person boats.
We meet fishing captain Mike McVey, a slight man with a bushy brown moustache and plenty of patience. He pilots us out to Icy Strait, where King salmon are hitting. There are five types of salmon in the area, with King the most highly prized.
As we arrive, I spot a glistening, black body slicing through the water. Something akin to a dolphin, but much larger. “Orca!” McVey cries. Killer whales. Suddenly, we are in the midst of the orca pod. It’s an ocean-bound fireworks show; we “oh and ah” each time one leaps into sight.
Only McVey seems dejected. “They’re eating all the salmon!” As the orcas veer off, we join other boats chugging towards more fruitful waters.
I watch the sonar as McVey explains what’s below our hull. A few green blobs cruise by on the screen, and we leap into action. McVey jabs bait on our hooks and we plop them over the side. A yank on my line sends me scrambling. I gently raise, then dip my pole, reeling in slack. The fish takes a run and I feel a pang of remorse about capturing this wild thing.
Finally, McVey leans over the side and scoops my salmon into the net. At first he thinks it’s a Pink, the junk salmon of the sea, mostly used for canning. On closer inspection, he decides it’s a King. Out comes the tape measure. The taking of Kings is strictly regulated, and mine checks in at a mere 24”; the minimum is 26”.
Secretly, I’m relieved. Despite my salmon-loving taste buds, I’m happy to throw this fighter back. McVey gently lowers the fish into the water, making sure its gills start pumping again before releasing it to dart away.
We laze in the sun as it burns off the mist and watch the 15,000-foot Fairweather Mountains appear, the sky focusing to a crystal blue. McVey has been chatting with other fish captains. Up at the mouth of the strait, there’s a halibut-fest going on.
We wheel and pull up anchor, heading for deep waters where the bottom-feeding halibut lurk. We send our big, vicious halibut hooks down 300 feet. Across the waters, we hear whoops of success from other fishermen, followed by the sharp crack of gunfire as a shot to the head finishes off the bigger fish so they can be heaved aboard. Halibut can grow up to 400 pounds, and it’s not unusual for someone to haul in a 200-pounder.
This time Paul’s line gets a tug, and McVey buckles him into a belt that cradles the butt of his stubby halibut rod. It’s a 15-minute fight, a series of runs and reel-ins. At last, Paul works his catch up to the side of the boat and we can see the flat, mottled, diamond-shaped body. McVey bops the halibut with a club and hauls it in. It’s 39 inches, and about 40 pounds. Paul is already planning the feast we’ll have with friends back home.
Our goodbye to Glacier Bay is glorious. We wedge ourselves into a four-seater air taxi that hugs the snowy mountaintops on our flight to Juneau. In only 20 minutes, we are in the city. I sigh. No doubt, back at the Bear Track, Mike is just setting out the smoked salmon dip…
© 2002 Gayle Keck
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