When Captain George Vancouver, in the H. M. S Discovery, sailed past this area in 1794, there were only about five miles of open water, ending at the face of a massive glacier that filled what we know today as Glacier Bay. John Muir first came here in 1879, and camped on Russell Island, forty-eight miles into the bay. By 1916, the Grand Pacific Glacier had its terminus sixty-five miles from the entrance to the bay. With open water extending into British Columbia, there was talk of building a northernmost port on Canada's Pacific coast. A few decades later, the Grand Pacific had advanced (as it has done at least four times over the last ten thousand years) back into U. S. waters.
Glacier Bay is a place of change. As glaciers have retreated and revealed new land, life has returned. This is a dynamic process that is visible, even today, over short periods of time. From raw mineral soil near the edges of the glaciers, soil that has just recently been released from its icy hold, to spruce forests approaching two hundred years, the process of plant succession unfolds before our eyes.
As the vegetation creates opportunities, animals re-colonize the land. The first moose came into the Park in 1967, transforming wolves from solitary hunters of small prey, into pack hunters. As wolves increased in range and numbers, they forced out the once abundant coyotes, which now live in very small numbers in a few isolated areas. With coyotes gone, the red fox population has increased.
Striking scenery, tufted puffins and bald eagles, humpback whales, killer whales, a sea otter, Steller's sea lions and harbor seals, a brown bear, mountain goats, and a moose swimming for almost an hour across Glacier Bay's West Arm, filled our day. This brown bear was patrolling the shoreline along Tarr Inlet, near the Margerie Glacier.
