The sense of scale in Alaska is like nowhere else. I’ve climbed a many spectacular mountains and navigated massive glaciers in my time, but none of those experiences prepared me for the dramatic landscapes of Alaska. Researching activities in advance of the trip, one opportunity leapt out at me that I could not miss: kayaking to the Aialik Glacier where it flows into a bay.
My wife, Jenna, had so much fun on our Whittier sea kayaking trip that she leapt at the chance to see this wonder of nature up close. We boarded the water taxi in Seward under a drizzly, grey dawn and motored to the mouth of Resurrection Bay. The pilot took a detour into open water to bring us close to a pod of orcas. They powered effortlessly through the frigid, choppy waters, rulers of this marine domain in which we were just visitors. Two and a half hours after departing, our water taxi coasted up to a rocky beach in Aiailik Bay.
Misty skies created an air of mystique.
The landscape along the coast was entrancing at every turn.
Our point of embarkation in Aialik Bay.
The glacier is right there…except that it takes an hour and a half to paddle that far. Photo by Jenna Rizzo.
Jenna and I were part of the first group to launch from the shore. Our guide was Blueberry, a native from the Aleutian Islands who had only started kayaking six years ago and was on a personal mission to bring the lost art of kayak building and human-powered seafaring back to his people. He used a traditional wooden paddle while I gripped a more familiar fiberglass design. Although different, each felt like an extension of bodies.
It was a gift to approach the glacier in Blueberry’s company, the bay silent but for our splashing and the vocalizations of the glacier - groaning, creaking, cracking, crashing. His generosity of knowledge in the natural and cultural realms was a learning experience for which we were grateful. Instead of just sharing information he challenged us to think critically by posing difficult questions about the world we saw around us. What did we see? How was it different from the landscape around Seward?
The quiet, empty bay was placid and inviting. Photo by Jenna Rizzo.
Approaching the Aialik Glacier. It looks like it’s just in front of us, but at this point it is still several kilometers away.
After an hour and a half of paddling we stopped, still a ways away from the face of the glacier. To illustrate the deceptive sense of scale, Blueberry asked us to estimate the dimensions. As difficult as it was to believe, we were still one kilometer from the glacier, bobbing among chunks of ice in the black water, below the towering face before us which rose 200 meters from the surface of the sea.
Podding up we ate our lunch while watching massive sheets of ice split from the glacier with sharp cracks before tumbling in slow motion into the sea with thunderous crashes. Even at this distance the waves from the calving towers rocked our boats. Jenna and I could have sat there all day, entranced by this stunning display of nature’s magnificence. This was Blueberry’s last trip for the year and he sang a song in his native tongue to say farewell to the glacier. The lilting, haunting notes flowed across the choppy water and filled the bay, leaving me in awe at having witnessed a special, historical connection between people and place.
For scale, the triangle of rock in the middle of the photo is about 100 meters tall. We’re just under one kilometer from the ice at this point.
So close…or so it seems.
Podded up for lunch.
For the return trip our group took a different route, paddling through narrow passages of rock on the edges of Squab Island and Slate Island. By the end of the third hour in the boat my hips were screaming and I ached to stand on land. We rounded the southern tip of Slate Island, crossed over to our beach, and organized our equipment for the return journey.
Squeezing through the slot on Slate Island. Photo by Jenna Rizzo.
The rugged eastern shore of Slate Island.
On the way back to Seward the water taxi took us past more orcas (maybe the same ones?) and a group of sea lions huddled together on a rock, just out of the reach of the crashing waves. I sat outside for the return journey, staring out across the dark water to the dark rocks and dark forested ridges spearing forth from the sea. The soundtrack was the drone of quad 350hp outboard motors powering the craft through the swells. It was not lost on me that the bulk of this trip’s cost was fuel. Fuel that we burned to reach a glacier that was receding as a result of climate change driven by humanity’s consumption of petroleum. By witnessing the evidence of the problem we were contributing to it.
Back in Seward we were chilly, tired, and hungry. Jenna and I skipped the inevitable wait at the fashionable downtown eateries and popped over to the Thai restaurant away from the commercial core. This might have been an even more unexpected surprise than anything we saw in the kayak. The menu contained dishes we didn’t normally see at restaurants in Seattle and when the food arrived Jenna delivered the definitive pronouncement: the last time she had tasted Thai food this good was in Bangkok. In awe of what we had witnessed firsthand at the Aiailik Glacier and delighted by the quality of cuisine in this remote Alaskan outpost we fell asleep, still feeling the rocking motion of the waves.