JUNE 7, 2022 – SANDY COVE TO GLOOMY KNOB TO TYNDALL COVE

It's 4:30AM and eyes are wide open, I think because it gets light around 4 that I keep waking up so dang early. After reading, tossing, turning, I threw in the towel at 5:30 and got up. As I am making my coffee I spy a spout once again along the shoreline near our boat! I can’t help myself, I am like a child at Christmas, wide-eyed with wonder and glee with each whale encounter. I can’t get enough! It is pouring again this morning with poor visibility. Our plan today was to cruise across the channel to a place called “Gloomy Knob” where the mountain goats frequent, before making our way down to a place called Tyndall Cove. This is our last day in Glacier Bay. We were reflecting last night (during our 20^th hand of gin rummy) that while Glacier Bay has the most dramatic scenery with the high concentration of mountains, and incredible wildlife, that neither of us really enjoys the waterways here. In our experiences the main waterways are usually quite rough and it’s windy a lot of the time. Being out in the middle of a wide channel of rough water with limited visibility (as it often is here) is not quite as enjoyable, but once we are tucked away in a small cove, engines off and soaking up the surrounding chorus of birdsong, and hey….whales swimming around the boat….not bad.

AFTERNOON UPDATE: And this is why we keep coming back here. Today was the most prolific wildlife day of our trip, beginning with said humpback whale I spied earlier this morning, well he decided to feed ALL morning long next to and circling our boat. John was just sitting at the galley table eating breakfast when out of the corner of his eye he saw a giant body leap out of the water! I ran to get my camera but not soon enough as the whale breeched again right away in the entrace to our harbor. The whale then advanced to the water between our boat and shore to feed. John and I sat outside and watched, experienced, and filmed this up close encounter for 3 solid hours. We had planned to leave around 9AM but then this happened! Again, no adjectives suffice, it was a once in a lifetime sustained whale experience. Even if we wanted to leave, we really couldn’t power up for the whale’s safety, and as a courtesy to the other boaters observing as well. Darn, held captive by a beautiful whale, now that’s a story. Eventually though he did move on, back out the channel into the main waterways. We subsequently pulled anchor and left for our cruise to Gloomy Knob to see if the mountain goats were visible. By now the rain had lifted and the sun was coming out, so the whale did us a favor by making us stay put! Once again, the water was whipped up into a chop so we briefly debated abandoning this side trip, but then what else did we have to do today? Onward. A slow cruise by the big bluff of Gloomy Knob, and a dogged search with binoculars revealed the “herd” spread across the top of the bluff, like little creamy dots along the rocks. I used my telephoto lens and was able to get a blurry outline of the goats, but nothing too clear. Goats: check that box. Luckily our anchorage for the night was in the opposite direction which meant following seas, so with the sun streaming into the boat and warming our bones, we enjoyed a peaceful slow swaying cruise to our cove. Motoring into the cove I spied a black bear chewing on the grass near the water’s edge – we have hardly seen any black bears this trip, most all have been Coastal Brown Bears. Anyway, a little farther down the inlet there’s another one on the same side, then another one on the opposite side – we are clearly in the black bear territory. We secured the anchor, and I did some dinner prep before it was time for our evening cruise around the bay. As I’m gathering my camera and binoculars, I spy movement on the beach, something the color of the boulders is trotting down the beach at a pretty good pace. Binoculars revealed a gray wolf! My life is complete! We jumped in the whaler and followed from a great distance so as not to spook him. Several times he stopped to stare at us across the water, as if sizing up the threat, but then moved on with his business. From our vantage point we could see that there was a black bear still on the beach, in the wolf’s path, completely unaware of the approaching wolf. The bear was upwind of the wolf so this was going to be interesting, we pondered what will happen. To our complete surprise the wolf chased the bear off the beach!! We thought for sure that the bear would rule, but it took off into the brush like a cat that had been chased by a dog. The wolf didn’t pursue, but kept on his mission of trotting down the shoreline. Eventually he reached a snowfield (the snowfields are down to the water in this cove), and went straight up and disappeared into the brush. What a great day, just so pleased to see a wolf in the wild, and that whale experience….just wow. Filled with gratitude.

I won't try to caption all of these as they are obvious for the most part. Lots of pictures today!