Port Althorp
Bear prints, Port Althorp
Lowering zodiac from Sea Bird, Inian Islands
Kayaking, Port Althorp
Fairweather Mts from Inian Islands
Selection of Alaskan beers, Sea Bird, Inian Islands
Cave in cliffs, Inian Islands
Sea otter, Inian Islands
Steller seals, Inian Islands
Steller seal bull, Inian Islands
Sea Bird, Inian Islands
Sunset, Inian Islands
Sea otter, Inian Islands
Over night we sailed northwestwards up Icy Passage between Chichagof Island and the Chilikat Range of the mainland. At breakfast time (0730) we anchored at Port Althorp, an area explored in 1794 by Captain George Vancouver in the ‘Discovery’.
With a brilliant blue sky and warm conditions (10° C at 7:30 am) we used the zodiacs to cross over to a rocky beach where there were signs of former human activity; supposedly an old fish cannery but all that remained were a rusty barge and large log linked pontoons.
The view back towards the entrance to Port Althorp was dominated by the Fairweather Range with its snow-capped high peaks of Mt. Crillon and Mt. Bertha. This stunning vista gives a hint of what’s to come as this is part of the Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve that we are visiting tomorrow.
The first activity for the morning was to walk with our guide Carlos around the head of the bay, across boggy flats and small streams to a river where pink salmon were spawning.
The mud flats we crossed had numerous paw prints indicating the recent presence of brown bears.
At the river, activity in the water was frenetic with hundreds of salmon going through their desperate spawning ritual prior to dying.
Quite a few were already dead or near death as indicated by their change in colour and the progressive decomposition of their bodies soon after they spawn.
Then we kayaked in the bay for an hour and returned to the river we’d visited previously from its banks and observed the salmon from above. It was a fascinating, although a distressing scene, seeing all these beautiful creatures hell-bent on dying.
The open waters of Port Althorp were home to many hundreds of sea-jellies, most of which were large ‘lions mane’ jellies.
In the afternoon we spent an hour out in a zodiac meandering and searching in amongst the Inian Islands.
We managed to photograph a number of marine birds and sea otters but the most interesting encounters were with the steller seals, reputedly the largest of all the seal family. These were mainly juvenile males at a ‘haul-out’ where amongst them was one large animal that was still not mature. The male steller seals can grow to a massive size, apparently twice the size of a grizzly bear. We later encountered a single mature male on its own and it was about the size of a large elephant seal.
Our afternoon of natural history travel brought us into close contact with more humpback whales but these were moving and thus a fleeting glance was all we achieved. Many porpoises were sighted too but they showed no interest in us.
We then sailed to a small town called Gustavus, just outside the boundaries of the Glacier Bay National Park, to pick up a ranger and Tinglit cultural interpreter who will stay onboard overnight and be with us tomorrow.