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Enter the Ice Age! Margerie glacier and a breaching humpback whale represent some of the breathtaking sights of Alaska

Under the azure Alaskan skies, icebergs floated along the bay heading mindfully to the vast waters beyond. A squawk of a gull and the distant breach of a Humpback whale broke the hushed quiet of the landscape. Mottled in the far distance by a sandy bank, a family of glacier bears lapped the waters fresh off a bank of snow before it merged with the saltiness of the sea.

However, there was a bigger spectacle that held me in awe. Two thousand cruise-ship passengers watched the enormity of the Margerie Glacier. Ahead stood the bluish-white mammoth swath of ice more than a mile wide and at least 250 feet tall with another 100 feet crouched below the icy waters of the bay.

The stillness suddenly gave way to a thundering growl and a huge slab of ice, probably the size of several freight trucks came crashing into the waters, roaring spume all around. A few kayakers a mile away felt the impact, as they oared furiously away.

The snow-capped mountains of the Fairweather and St. Elias ranges straddled the many lush fjords of Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve in southeastern Alaska. With over 3.3 million acres of forests, lakes, shores and peaks, this is one of the largest biosphere reserves in the world and has also been designated by UNESCO as a world heritage site.

In this land of constant restlessness, glaciers recede and advance. The story of Glacier Bay predates the Pleistocene Ice Age over 13,000 years ago. Frequent attrition of the Earth’s plates below led to seismic and volcanic activity, shaping those tall mountains and valleys. With the advent of the Ice Age and later eras, retreating ice had scoured the earth, sculpting valleys and fjords, lakes and rounded hills.

Geologists believe that the Little Ice Age that started over 4,000 years ago reached a peak around 1750 AD, when the general melting began. Towards the end of the 18th Century, when the British explorer Captain George Vancouver sailed here, he discovered a mountain of ice hundred miles long and about 4,000 feet thick — the present Glacier Bay was just a massive foundation of ice.

Eighty years later, the poet-naturalist John Muir observed to his amazement that the ice had since retreated almost fifty miles into the bay — probably the fastest glacial retreat ever recorded.

Over sixteen rare tidewater glaciers loom the landscape of Glacier Bay. Tidewater glaciers need the perfect conditions of topography and precipitation to sculpt. Such glaciers unlike the ones on land, wind their way to the sea, often moving at a rapid pace of 7 feet a day. Eaten away at their snouts by the continual gnaw of salt water, these glaciers often ‘calve’ — with huge pieces of ice cracking off their faces.

Glacial calving is the secret of an iceberg’s birth. Twelve of these like the Margerie Glacier calve frequently, dislodging gargantuan slabs of ice into the cold waters of the bay. The impact of such an activity could be so powerful that history has recorded massive waves the size of tsunamis wreaking havoc on this geography over the centuries. In fact, ships aren’t permitted to approach the John Hopkins Inlet within a mile of the massive cliffs that ensconce the glacier.

Glaciers are formed in those misty climes when the rate of snow accumulation far exceeds the rate of melt. When snow falls, it morphs into granules, and further pressure resulting from increased accumulation, these granules turn into ice — which over time, becomes a solid glacier. Gravity and climatic conditions further cause the glacier’s advancement or retreat.

Along the cruise, glaciers and bergs appeared to us in different colours. Many like the Lamplugh Glacier were clad in white raiment of compressed snow and ice.

When ice packs densely, the glaciers appeared blue since the longer reds of the light spectrum are absorbed leaving only the shorter blue colours to reach our naked eyes. Some of the glaciers like the Grand Pacific Glacier yawned huge beds of rock, blackened by the silt deposits that the tributaries picked up along the way to its glacial snout where ice meets water in the ocean.

Over 40 species of mammals including bears, moose and wolves and more than 230 species of birds thrive in this exotic landscape. A Tlingit community of 1,000 thrives in nearby Hoonah — a boat ride away.

We had passed by several other glaciers — the Rendu Glacier, the sixteen-mile long Lamplugh glacier and the grayish mass of the Reid Glacier. It was evening as we left the gullet of the Tarr inlet, headed towards Skagway.

The sun smiled shyly casting long shadows of trees upon Russell Island. Neither the curious explorer Vancouver nor the later John Muir had been able to observe the beauty of such a pristine land as we could today. The glaciers that had since then retreated several miles inward now revealed their most cherished secrets.

I knew I would return — there were many more secrets to uncover.

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