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Glacier Bay National Park is located across Icy Strait from Chichagof Island - 60 miles northwest of Juneau. The bay itself, almost 70 miles long, is surrounded by a horseshoe-rim of mountains which include the Fairweather Range to the west and the St. Elias Mountains to the north. The Park is said by many to contain the most spectacularly glaciated mountains in the world. Equally impressive is the Park's abundance of wildlife, particularly marine life which includes porpoise, seals, otters, sea lions and three species of whales.
As you enter Glacier Bay you will cruise along shorelines completely covered by ice just 200 years ago. Explorer Captain George Vancouver found Icy Strait choked with ice in 1794, and Glacier Bay was barely an indented glacier. That glacier was more than 4000 ft. thick, up to 20 miles or more wide, and extended more than 100 miles to the St. Elias Range of mountains. By 1879 naturist John Muir found that the ice had retreated 48 miles up the bay. By 1916 the Grand Pacific Glacier headed Tarr inlet 65 miles from Glacier Bay's mouth. Such rapid retreat is known nowhere else on earth. |
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