Glacier Bay National Park
If you love tidewater glaciers, you are going to love this park. While the park is over 3 million acres the majority of what you can do and see here is on the water. You’ll see glaciers, snowcapped mountains, and plenty of wildlife during your time at Glacier Bay. This is a fairly accessible park as it is often visited by Alaskan cruise ship routes. If you want to get the full park experience including some hiking in Bartlett Cove, we recommend a stay at the park lodge.
When to Go
While the climate is fairly mild year-round in Glacier Bay (on the water at least) you are somewhat limited on visiting during certain portions of the year. If you are visiting via cruise ship, you are limited to the Alaskan Cruise season. If you are traveling to Gustavus via a non-cruise option, you can fly on an Alaskan Airlines flight from Juneau which typically operate from June to August. If you want to find another time of year to visit, you can but be prepared to put a lot more effort into the planning phase of your trip.
How to Get Here
We mentioned this above, but your main two options are taking an Alaskan Cruise, which will almost certainly have Glacier Bay National Park on its route or flying to Gustavus via Juneau. Juneau has a lot of interesting sites include Mendenhall Glacier and Tracy Arm Fjord, so you can (and should) take a couple days in Juneau to split up the flights if you choose that route. You can get to Gustavus year-round via the ferry system, but it will take more planning to make this work.
Trip Length
If you are on a cruise ship you are not going to spend more than a few hours sailing through Glacier Bay. If you arrive on your own to Gustavus we would recommend staying for 2 days. This will allow for one day on the water and one day to hike around Bartlett Cove. It also gives some flexibility to your scheduled boating day in case the weather doesn’t work out.
Where to Stay
Obviously, if you are on a cruise ship you don’t need to worry about accommodations. If you fly into Gustavus you are not going to have a lot of options if you want to be in the park. Glacier Bay Lodge is your choice (over $200 a night in 2018). Glacier Bay Lodge will actually transport you to/from the airport which is another perk of staying there. There are lodging options in Gustavus itself, but you would need to worry about transportation back and forth to the park which can be tricky here. If you chose that route, we suggest using the ferry system to have your own vehicle as rideshares and public transportation were not widely available during our visit.
What to Do
There really are not any off the beaten path surprises at this park. You know exactly what you are going for – to get on a boat and spend the day viewing massive tidewater glaciers as they calve into the water. While you can do this on a cruise ship in route to see many other Alaskan sites, we believe the best way to see the park is to get to Gustavus and take the Glacier Bay Day Tour. The tour leaves every morning from Bartlett Cove at around 7:30am and you will spend 8 hours out on the waters of Glacier Bay. Since it is a much smaller boat compared to the cruise ships, you are able to get much closer to the glaciers and other sights in route. The tour also includes lunch right before you get out to the largest glaciers. If you are more adventurous and looking to do some backcountry camping this would also be your mode of transportation.
For full disclosure, we were not tremendously lucky on our day trip as the bay was covered in fog for the first several hours of our trip. Thankfully it cleared out before we got to the glaciers which allowed amazing views there, but the first portion of the cruise by South Marble Island, where you would normally see all kinds of sea lions and birds, was completely covered in fog. In addition, the ranger on board mentioned you can normally scan the shores and the mountains for bears, moose, mountain goats, and even wolves, but not on this day due to the fog.
Once we were in the clear of the fog, the stunning snowcapped mountains and glaciers started to come into view. Your tour could go one of two directions as Glacier Bay forks at the end. You can go right to head to Grand Pacific and Margerie Glaciers, or you can head left which is what our tour did on this day and see John Hopkins, Gillman, and Hoonah Glaciers. No matter which way you go, the captain will likely get you really close to Lamplugh and Reid Glaciers. The boat navigates through all of the calved ice still floating in the water and seemingly gets really close to the glaciers. In reality you are still very far back to maintain a safe distance in case a large chunk of ice happened to fall off. It just seems close because the glaciers are so large. After we were done at the glaciers, we started our trek back which was pleasantly less foggy.
When we returned to the dock at around 3:30pm, we decided to walk around the Bartlett Cove area near the lodge. There is a really interesting whale exhibit where the largest humpback whale skeleton in the world (“Snow”) is on display. If you continue walking, you will eventually come across the Huna Tribal House which has a nice view of Barlett Cove. We sat here for quite a while and relaxed before heading back to the lodge to grab some dinner.
We were not done with the water yet though, as Glacier Park Lodge also offers a whale watching cruise in the Icy Strait. We got up early the next morning and were transported to the Gustavus public dock where we boarded the M/V Taz for 3.5 hours on the water. There is both a morning (8:30am-12pm) and an afternoon (12:30-4pm) option. We chose the morning as we were flying out back to Juneau in the evening. Whale watching is all about luck though and we didn’t have a lot of it on this day. We did catch a couple humpback whales, but none that came very close to the boat and certainly none that were breaching which is amazing when it happens. The captain mentioned he had a humpback, just the day before, come up almost right next to the boat – so we just missed out on that!
After our whale watching experience, we headed back to the lodge to grab some lunch and get in some final hiking in the Barlett Cove area. There is actually a ranger led walking tour on the Forest Loop trail each day and we decided to join that. The guided portion of the walk only goes about halfway around the loop, so we finished it off and then spent our final hours relaxing by the water before heading back to the airport for a flight to Juneau.
We really liked this park and look forward to coming back and hopefully getting out on the water with less fog and more whales!