Today we traveled in Icy Strait, an extraordinary place even in a land of superlatives. A couple of hundred years ago the strait was indeed icy. The disintegrating glacier filling Glacier Bay once choked the place with grinding bergs. Now ice-free, the Strait is still wild, grand, and occasionally treacherous. In winter, huge waves roll in from the Gulf of Alaska, sculpting the shore into craggy cliffs quite different from shores of the comparatively placid Inside Passage.
Sea otters prefer the outer coast, and today we found many, munching clams greedily or busy with compulsive preening.
Skies cleared in the afternoon as we went ashore by Zodiac. The lofty Fairweather Range glowed in the sunshine. Highest coastal range in the world, these mountains still nourish the glaciers of Glacier Bay. Indeed, the mighty Brady Glacier, sloping down from the high country, has advanced inexorably even as Glacier Bay has emptied of ice.
