Oh My God where to try to start to discribe Glacier Bay..... 

To hear the thunderous crack of an iceberg as it calves into the icy blue waters of the bay. It reaches down in to your soul and takes root.  

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~The best time to see the humpback whales is in the lower portion. But you can see sea otter, harbor seals, bald eagles, Puffins if you are lucky and have binoculars you can see rare sighting of brown bear, moose and mountain goat.  
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Transfers of the park rangers

Durning this part of the tip you do not get off the ship. When entering Glacier Bay National Park a small boat comes up and transfers the park rangers on to the cruse ship. The ship cruises is always at a slow speed. The slower the better for any big waves are bad for all of the glaciers in the park.

Did You Know:  The sunlight that reflects off this rock flour is what gives the lakes their spectacular turquoise blue or green colour. 

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Ried Glacier

How old is the ice at the face of the glaciers?
Glaciers flow forward about 3 - 6 feet each day. Depending on the length of the glacier and the steepness of the valley it flows through, the ice at the front of the glacier is anywhere between 200 and 75 years old.

How old are the glaciers in the park?
Glacier Bay has experienced at least 4 glacial periods. The last, the Little Ice age, began about 4,000 years ago. The glaciers that still exist in the park today are remnants of that glacial period.

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Passage down John Hopkins Inlet

The cruis ship could not go down this inlet for safety due to the fog. If we went down we could have seen Lamplugh, Hoonah, Gilman and Johns Hopkins Glacier.  

Why are the glaciers advancing and retreating?
There is no simple answer. If a glacier has a steady source of snow turning to ice in the mountains, a good lens of water on which to slide along the bedrock, enough gravity and momentum in downhill movement, a good moraine of rock and rubble at the front to insulate it from water erosion and cold enough temperatures year-around, a glacier will advance. If it loses enough of these, it will retreat.

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Map of the Glacer's

this is a 3-D map the park rangers brought on the ship

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Silt/Rockflower

The silt is created when rocks underneath the surface of the ice are grinding from the movement of the glacier. The rock flour is very light and stays suspended in the lake water for a long time. The sunlight that reflects off this rock flour is what gives the lakes their spectacular turquoise blue or green colour. 

The turquoise lakes you will see are colored by glacial silt suspended in the water. Glaciers scrape bedrock into fine, round particles of rock or clay which are then carried away by tides or rivers. 

Very finely ground particles of rock, silt, or clay created by a glacier when its rock-filled ice scrapes over bedrock and which flow out from beneath a glacier in the meltwater.

 

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Tari Inlet

passage way up to Margerie & G.P Glacier 

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How high is the face of Margerie Glacier? 

The Margerie Glacier is about one mile wide, with an ice face that is about 250 feet high above the waterline, and a base about 100 feet below sea level. 

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Margerie Glacier

our first glimpse 

~When we where on the cruise the park ranger said the  Margerie glaciers advances forward about 5 feet per day. That means calve usually occurs a few times an hour... Calving is when a portion of the ice falls off the glacier and you hear the thunderous crack.  We had a very good calving four times but it was also raining so more active. 

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Margerie & Grand Pacific Glacier

Of of the common questions the ranger gets is why is the Grand Pacific glacier so dirty. With Avalanches, rock slides, tributary glaciers and the scouring of the valley have caused an accumulatoin of dirt and rock. 

If you can't open when click please copy and past their is a lot of amazing eye opening info on glacier's in the park 

https://www.nps.gov/glba/learn/nature/upload/Overview-of-Glacier-Bay-Glaciers.pdf