Glacier Bay

The crack comes first, thunder rolling across still water, then a wall of ice peels off the glacier face and collapses into the bay, sending a swell out through the brash. Humpbacks surface between the floes, exhaling columns of mist into air that tastes of salt and minerals.

Glacier Bay covers 3.3 million acres of rugged mountains, dynamic glaciers, temperate rainforest, wild coastline and deep sheltered fjords, and it is Homeland to the Huna and Yakutat Lingít, whose ancestors watched the ice advance over their villages. Barely 250 years ago the whole bay lay under glacier; the ice has since pulled back some sixty-five miles, one of the fastest documented retreats on Earth, opening the fjords that day boats and kayaks now thread. Icebergs calved from the tidewater glacier faces are a common sight, and the cold, nutrient-rich water draws feeding humpback whales through the summer. No road reaches the park: you come by boat or small plane, most often through the tiny gateway settlement of Gustavus, and the silence between calvings is nearly absolute.