For subscribers
End-times tourism: Witnessing melting glaciers on a cruise in Alaska
Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve bears witness to the effects of climate change as it suffers the largest net ice loss of any of the 50 World Heritage sites with glaciers.
Sign up now: Get ST's newsletters delivered to your inbox
Glacier Bay National Park is one of those Alaska showpieces more often seen by visitors than by the residents of the US state.
PHOTO: UNSPLASH
Tom Kizzia
Follow topic:
Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve is one of those Alaska showpieces more often seen by visitors than by the residents of the US state. When I finally got there this summer, after more than 40 years of living in Alaska, I arrived the way most people do, on board a cruise ship, in the company of a few thousand tourists from around the world.
The remote park’s lofty summits and ice-carved fjords, the humpbacks and orcas and grizzlies, lived up to what I had heard. As passengers spilled onto the upper observation deck, agog, the ship’s theatrical pirouette before a wall of blue glacial ice showed off romantic nature in all its timeless glory.
