Auk Bay, Bainbridge Glacier, Ice Bay, Herring Bay, August 10, 2008, by Bob

This morning I kayaked and Fullerton took out the dinghy. He spotted a black bear and her cub on the beach. I spotted a sea gull.

We took off and found Bainbridge Glacier. It looked like it was just behind a small sand dune, so we anchored and took the dinghy to shore to see the glacier.

We started to anchor near the river that runs into the ocean, but the depth finder kept jumping from 150 to 30 to 139 to 27, etc. I think the real depth was over 100 feet, but the depth finder was picking up a layer between the fresh glacier water with lots of silt and the cleaner ocean water of a different temperature. But if it was rocks, it might not be a good place to anchor. So we moved up the shoreline a bit.

The glacier turned out to be a few hundred yards back from the shoreline, not a few dozen feet like I expected. Things are larger than they appear. We went to the ice and looked around a bit. There's a pretty strong river coming out from underneath the glacier.
Glaciers are fun.

We decided that someone should be able to find gold or emeralds or diamonds in the newly unearthed earth of receding glaciers. After all, this land is newly exposed. Nobody has even picked up the multitude of large gold nuggets laying around.

After Bainbridge Glacier we went through the narrow, scenic Bainbridge Passage and headed for Icy Bay and a couple of glaciers there that calve icebergs into the ocean. There was a lot of ice in the bay. Maybe that's why it has its name. We threaded our way through big chunks of ice until we could see some glaciers, but I chickened out 2 or 3 miles short of the glaciers when the ice got thicker. There were a few icebergs larger than the boat. A lot of the ice chunks were not really icebergs, but were big enough to do some damage if we hit them very fast.

I hand-steered, zig-zagging through the ice for about an hour in and an hour out. I was pretty cold going in, and toasty warm by the time we left Icy Bay. It was well worth it.

We are now anchored in the back of Herring Bay. It's a really pretty place. I had planned to dive here, but there are tons of unfriendly jellyfish. I took out the kayak this evening.

It is 11:25 pm. Water temperature is 55 degrees (we're near a waterfall). Air temperature is 52. Indoors it's 62. Wind is light and variable. Water is calm with occasional ripples. Sky is dark.