at the entrance to the Muir Inlet. Wyatt had studied tide charts to time our passages across open water, making sure that rising tides would propel our three-kayak fleet.

Two hours later we beached at Muir Point, where we ate lunch, watched bald eagles lounging near the shore, hiked, and napped. We took our time leaving the Point because the outgoing tides would have left us paddling as helplessly as gerbils running on a treadmill, but when the tide was right, we continued on to Nunatak Cove.

We covered about 17 miles that first day. The next morning we paddled the final two hours to McBride lagoon, within sight of McBride Glacier. Entering the lagoon, we maneuvered through agauntlet of huge ice cubes—actually small icebergs—to our camp. Some bergs were as clear as cocktail ice; many were peppered with accumulations of sand and gravel.

Minutes after arriving, an explosion detonated water, snow, and ice skyward as a giant slab of the McBride’s front wall calved. More minutes later, waves high enough to surf slammed and flooded the shore, beaching bergs as big as buildings. Even from camp, probably about a mile from the glacier’s snout, we could see its aqua blue colors, areas where the calving exposed new sections of the glacier.

Northwest Travel March/April 2007

UP CLOSE
The phrase “see level” takes on new meaning from the perspective of a sea kayak. Travel-ing at water level creates an intimacy not experienced from tour boats or cruise ships.

It’s especially exhilarating to see a glacier calve when you’re in a kayak. It’s required that kayakers stay at least a quarter-mile distant because of waves and “shooters,” pieces of ice that slip underwater before exploding up. Calving is a natural light-and-sound show, but there’s also quiet joy seeing and hearing flocks of birds cruising just above the water, drifting up to bald eagles poised like portraits on bergs or simply listening to the sounds of silence.

Actually, it was seldom totally silent, especially at our McBride campsite. Bergs stranded by low tides in the lagoon or on shore continually snapped-crackled-popped. The dynamite sound of calvings magnified because it ricocheted off the White Thunder Ridge. After calvings, flocks of nesting kittiwakes chatter excitedly because the turbulent water exposes sweet-tasting bugs and insects.

We watched mother harbor seals with young pups riding on passing bergs. Along the shore were black oystercatchers, which blurt out sharp whistles if people venture too close. Thrushes shrieked like referee whistles. While paddling we were treated to low-flying flights of pigeon guillemots, their flapping wings sounding like rice paper clattering in the wind.

FEEDING THE TUMMY AND THE SOUL
I’m not sure if we ate to feed our paddle-induced hunger, or paddled like wind-driven whirligigs to work up an appetite. Wyatt repeatedly produced incredible meals—pasta primavera, fry bread, dumplings, puddings, noodles with tasty sauces, sausages, cups of fresh-brewed coffee, glasses of wine.

We fed our tummies at meals and our souls while paddling. One afternoon we glided our kayaks within a quarter-mile of the glacier, which

rises about 85 feet above the water and is a third of a mile wide. It constantly reshapes itself as it withdraws. Up close, the frozen mishmash of snow is tormented and fractured, with cave-like cuts in its base and distinct sets of high tide lines.

We soaked in the warm and sunny days. The day we paddled and rode full-moon extreme tides back to Sebree Island, I sometimes spun our kayak in a circle, reveling in the 360-degree view of snow-capped mountains, including the sparkling Fairweather Mountains and the striped Casement Glacier. Instead of using a tarp as shelter from rain, it was raised on poles to provide shade from the sun. Wyatt and Adam dove into the bay from rocks. Sarah, Randy, and I slipped in for quick shivery swims.

Earlier that day, we had been too lax, dilly-dallying at camp and paddling out of the lagoon just as the tide turned against us. It spun our kayaks in dizzy circles until we paddled close to shore and stroked furiously. We reached the inlet just before the speeding tide washed us back inside.

“My shoulders are beginning to burn,” Adam said. “Well, there’s ice packs everywhere,” responded his uncle Wyatt.

HEADING HOME
We fed kayaks up to the deck of the tour boat, where they were stacked and tied down, then clambered up the ladder. The next few hours we completed the Glacier Bay circuit, by itself a glorious trip. That afternoon we flew back to Juneau, where we headed our separate ways.

I had dreamed of this trip, but never imagined that Glacier Bay’s ruggedly raw beauty could be so visually and physically involving, especially from a “see” kayak.

Lee Juillerat is the regional editor for the Herald and News in Klamath Falls. He has written extensively about remote areas of southern Oregon and Northern California.