Glacier Bay National Park & Preserve

Glacier Bay National Park & Preserve covers 3,283,168 acres in the Alaska Panhandle, about 75 miles west of Juneau, and contains one of the world's most dramatic examples of glacial retreat — a 65-mile fjord system that was completely choked with ice just 250 years ago. The park holds more than 1,000 glaciers, including a dozen active tidewater glaciers that calve icebergs directly into the sea. The gateway community of Gustavus has no road connection to the rest of Alaska; visitors arrive by small aircraft from Juneau or aboard cruise ships. The park drew about 60,000 land-based visitors in 2023, ranking 60th among the 63 national parks, though hundreds of thousands more pass through by cruise ship each year.

Active tidewater glaciers — particularly Margerie and Grand Pacific in Tarr Inlet — that calve building-sized icebergs into the bay with a sound like cannon fire, audible from a mile away.
Humpback whales, which feed intensively in the bay's krill-rich waters through summer and are among the most reliably sighted large whales in Alaska.
One of the fastest documented glacial retreats in scientific history: the bay's main glacier receded roughly 65 miles between 1750 and the present, transforming a solid ice sheet into open ocean in less than three centuries.
Sea kayaking through a landscape shifting between floating icebergs, harbor seal haul-outs, and shorelines emerging from beneath glacial ice for the first time in living memory.

By air from Juneau: The standard route to Glacier Bay is a 30-minute flight from Juneau International Airport (JNU) to Gustavus Airport (GST), about 75 miles northwest. Alaska Airlines operates seasonal scheduled service to Gustavus in summer; smaller regional carriers fly year-round. From Gustavus, a park shuttle or taxi connects the 10 miles to Bartlett Cove and Glacier Bay Lodge. No road connects Gustavus to any other community in Alaska; all overland access is by boat or aircraft.

By ferry (Alaska Marine Highway): The Alaska Marine Highway System does not serve Gustavus directly. The nearest AMHS port is Hoonah or Juneau; a private water taxi or chartered vessel can continue from either to Gustavus. This is a slow, multi-leg route and is rarely used by first-time visitors.

By cruise ship: A large share of Glacier Bay visitors arrive by cruise ship, which enters the bay for a day of glacier viewing and wildlife watching before continuing on its Southeast Alaska itinerary. Cruise passengers do not disembark at Bartlett Cove; their experience of the park is from the ship. Contact your cruise line for routing and itinerary details.

By air from Anchorage or Seattle: Alaska Airlines connects Juneau to Anchorage (JNU–ANC, ~1.5 hours) and to Seattle (JNU–SEA, ~2.5 hours). Most visitors from the Lower 48 fly into Juneau and connect onward to Gustavus. No direct flights to Gustavus from outside Southeast Alaska operate regularly.

Two hundred and fifty years ago, Glacier Bay did not exist as open water. A single massive tidal glacier filled the entire valley from the Fairweather Range to Icy Strait, at its peak reaching 4,000 feet thick and extending nearly to the open Pacific. When Captain George Vancouver surveyed Icy Strait in 1794, he found only a slight indentation — roughly 5 miles of open water at what is now the bay's mouth. The retreat that followed was among the fastest ever documented: by John Muir's first visit in 1880, the bay had opened about 40 miles; by today, the main glacier has retreated 65 miles from Icy Strait to the head of the West Arm. The cause of the original 1750 maximum and the subsequent retreat remains a subject of scientific research, but the retreat broadly coincides with the end of the Little Ice Age.

The land beneath the park is still rising in response to the removal of that ice weight — a process called isostatic rebound. Measurements show the land surface near the upper bay rising approximately 1.5 inches per year, one of the fastest rates of land uplift on Earth. New shoreline emerges from the sea each decade, and beaches that were underwater a century ago are now dry ground covered in young spruce forest.

The bedrock exposed by retreating ice is ancient and geologically complex. Glacier Bay sits at a junction of several tectonic terranes — fragments of oceanic and continental crust that were accreted onto North America over tens of millions of years. The rocks include metamorphic marble and schist, ancient oceanic basalts, and granitic intrusions of varying ages. The Fairweather Fault, one of the most seismically active strike-slip faults in North America, runs through the park near the Fairweather Range; the magnitude 7.9 earthquake of 1958 triggered a massive rockslide into Lituya Bay at the park's southern edge, generating a mega-tsunami that reached 1,720 feet — the largest wave height in recorded history.

The park provides a visible living record of plant succession on recently deglaciated land. Bare glacial outwash exposed just decades ago progresses through pioneer stages — first weathered rock and mat-forming plants, then nitrogen-fixing dryas, then alder thickets, then Sitka spruce and hemlock forest. At Bartlett Cove, where the ice left about 200 years ago, a mature temperate rainforest already stands. Further up the bay, each subsequent stage of the sequence is visible in order — a spatial timeline of ecological recovery.

Humpback whales are the signature animal of Glacier Bay in summer. The park's sheltered waters are among the most productive feeding grounds in Southeast Alaska; whales arrive from Hawaiian wintering grounds in spring and are present through September, lunge-feeding on krill and small fish in the shallows of both arms of the bay. Sightings from the day boat tour are not guaranteed but are nearly so in July and August. Orcas pass through periodically, and Dall's porpoise and harbor porpoise accompany boats throughout the season.

Harbor seals haul out in large numbers on icebergs calved from tidewater glaciers, using the floating ice as a refuge from predators. Johns Hopkins Glacier is the most important harbor seal pupping site in the park; the NPS restricts boat and kayak access to Johns Hopkins Inlet in June and early July to avoid disturbing nursing mothers and pups. By late summer, seals are visible throughout the bay on any iceberg large enough to support them.

Brown bears are common on beaches and forest edges throughout the park; the Bartlett Cove area, the east arm, and the lower reaches of the bay see frequent beach-foraging bears in summer. Mountain goats live on the high rocky terrain of the Fairweather Range and are visible on steep slopes above the upper bay. Moose inhabit the lower valleys and forest edges. Wolves are present but rarely seen.

Seabirds are abundant. Tufted and horned puffins nest on rocky headlands, and marbled murrelets are found close to shore near old-growth forest. Bald eagles are ubiquitous; Steller sea lions haul out on exposed rocks in Icy Strait and the lower bay. The park's combination of marine and terrestrial habitats supports one of the highest concentrations of wildlife-viewing opportunities in Southeast Alaska.

Glacier Bay is the ancestral homeland of the Huna Tlingit, the Huna Kwan, who call the bay "Sit' Eeti Gheeyí" — the Bay in Place of the Glacier. The Huna Tlingit lived in the bay for thousands of years, fishing its waters and maintaining settlements at key locations. Around 1750, a glacial advance associated with the Little Ice Age forced the Huna Tlingit to abandon their homeland as the ice reclaimed the bay. They relocated to the community now known as Hoonah on Chichagof Island, where their descendants continue to live. When the ice retreated in the following century and the bay reopened, the Huna Tlingit recognized their homeland in the newly emerged landscape and made efforts to return. Government policy repeatedly blocked reoccupation after monument and park protections were imposed.

Captain George Vancouver's expedition surveyed Icy Strait in 1794 and noted the slight indentation that would become Glacier Bay, recording in his journal that the ice extended unbroken to the shore. By the time naturalist John Muir made his first trip to Glacier Bay in 1880, the retreat had opened the bay roughly 40 miles. Muir returned four more times, including with the 1899 Harriman Alaska Expedition. His journal accounts, letters, and eventually his book "Travels in Alaska" made Glacier Bay internationally known and inspired early conservation advocacy for the region.

President Calvin Coolidge proclaimed Glacier Bay a national monument on February 26, 1925, under the Antiquities Act. A series of boundary adjustments followed as scientific understanding of the area grew. The Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (ANILCA), signed by President Jimmy Carter on December 2, 1980, redesignated Glacier Bay as a national park and preserve and set its current boundaries. In 1992, Glacier Bay was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site as part of the Kluane/Wrangell-St. Elias/Glacier Bay/Tatshenshini-Alsek transboundary complex — one of the largest protected areas on Earth.

In 2016, the NPS and the Huna Tlingit Tribal government opened the Huna Tribal House at Bartlett Cove — the first permanent tribal structure in the park — formally recognizing the Huna Tlingit as the original people of Glacier Bay and restoring a visible cultural presence to the land their ancestors were displaced from.