A Glacial 4th of July Filled With Puffins, Sea Lions and Bears ... Oh My!

July 4^th – South Marble Island to Reid Glacier in Western Arm

We pulled anchor at 8 a.m. on the 4^th of July, and went on to ultimately cruise 45 nautical miles up the west arm of Glacier Bay.

 

Steller sea lions at South Marble Island

We detoured over to South Marble Island first to take a look at a colony of steller sea lions that were gathered on the rocks, sunning themselves while big bulls engaged each other in battles to protect their harems of females. Mature males weigh about 2,000 pounds, while the females average only 600 pounds – easy to tell them apart.

 

A rare siting of more puffins

The Marble Islands are also nesting grounds for puffins. These cartoon-like black and white birds with orange beaks are shy and hard to photograph ... but we certainly tried.

Glacial cocktail ice!

As we moved on up into Tidal Inlet in the western arm we passed two cruise ships and began seeing pieces of floating ice coming down from the glaciers up ahead – so the Captain stopped the boat to pick up a few for 4^th of July cocktails!

We anchored at the inlet in front of Reid Glacier, a non-tidal glacier that is 130 feet above sea level, .75 mile wide and 9.5 miles long. We decided to take the tender to the face of the glacier, which turned out to be quite eventful when we got stuck on a sandbar just at the head, prompting Roland and Rick to jump knee deep in ice cold water to walk us out. In the meantime, we couldn’t help marvel at how Engelenbak looked like nothing more than a small speck against the shore in the distance (see photos below).

View of Reid Glacier from Engelenbak...

View of Engelenbak from Reid Glacier ... look hard, we're that dot in the middle of the horizon!

Later in the evening, after enjoying beautiful Glacier Cosmos from our glacier ice, eagle-eye Rick spotted a grizzly bear moseying its way along the shoreline toward the glacier. It’s deceiving to watch these huge animals move so slow and deliberate, when you know they have the power to accelerate from 0-40 mph in a heartbeat.