I just finished another canoe trip in the good old Mokercraft 'Hamling'! It was a great trip, with lots of rain, and some sunshine, but lots of animals and fun adventures. At the beginning we got to see a nice porcupine, here he is climbing a tree and looking like a tired old man trying to climb the stairs.
We got to the park and had to spend a day getting everything set up, but then we got out on the day boat to be dropped off! We paddled over to Gloomy Knob, and camped for the night, and had a nice whale swim by in the evening.
The next day we headed up the hill, and climbed up to the top of Gloomy Knob, which is a thing I've wanted to do for years. We found some junco babies in a nest on the way up.
And a bunch of these flowers that I found last year for the first time, the fairy slipper orchid.
From halfway up the river looks very nice.
We were joined by some goats in looking over the hills.
They let us get pretty close
And here is the view from the top. Behind Mike is the fairweather mountains
Here is looking north up the beach, if you zoom in you can see our camp spot on the central point
When we got back to camp, a big brown bear came out of the woods and began walking along the beach towards us. We were looking to get the camp packed up, and also keep an eye on this bear, so it was a bit of a challenge.
He was slow, but determined to walk along the shoreline, and that put him on a near intersection with us, but he passed without much fuss about 100 ft away.
Then we paddled up to Queen Inlet and camped on a big moraine flat. When we hiked up the flat the next day we got to the Carroll Glacier.
There are a bunch of caves in the glacier. Its falling apart, and so we had to explore the caves before they went away. A lot less caves than last year and many of the last year's caves were gone.
The ice is so pretty from the inside. Its hard to get a picture and hard to describe, but very moving.
Another view from the inside
And a few more
this is looking down the slope, it is a tunnel that is opening up.
Another view from the scalloped inside.
Then we started up to Margerie glacier and found another bear on the way
And met up with some folks who were friendly
When we got to Margerie we hiked up to a rock that I think I'm the first person to be on top of, and the view was great. It rained a lot, but there was a lot of big calvings
A wider view
When we paddled around Mike got out and stood on an iceberg when there was a big calving and some waves rolled by. The berg was grounded, but it was kinda crazy watching the waves roll by.
A wider view
From the other side of the fjord, we went for a nice little walk
And found Arctic terns dive bombing us!
We found the nests, and a few eggs
Then we headed down to Lamplugh Glacier, and camped on the moraine right in front.
There was a really cool spot to look from safety just under the face of the glacier, and it was amazing. Almost halfway up the face, but not in the path of falling ice.
Here's a wider view of us climbing up
And a look from a hike up the west side of the glacier. I'd done ridge hikes on the east side, but this was the first time climbing up the west side.
Then we paddled out to Jaw Point, which is the beautiful view spot to see Johns Hopkins Glacier. We left the canoe tied to the wall of the fjord and hiked up a bit for a view, and found some baby oystercatchers
Here's the canoe tied to the wall
and a view from on the hill. I think I've seen this photo before, with a tent in it, so its a camping site, or maybe a monitoring site for the seal researchers
I love the look of the dwarf fireweeds
Here's mike on the ridge
and some nice lichens on the rocks
On the way back we found a baby sea otter floating in the water and got a nice look at it
That evening the sunset was wonderful. It was the great finale to the trip
another view
and the clouds!
We had a fire most nights and made lots of "Margerie Pizza" for dinner
The next day we did the standard ridge hike and overlooked the glacier
And then got picked up by the Safari Endeavor and brought back to Bartlett Cove. After that we spent the next day in Gustavus visiting folks that Mike knew around here, and one of them brought us over to his house and let us take the zip line he had made. It reminded me that my dear brother needs to make a zip line at his place.
