Kenai Fjords

We boarded the boat in Seward under a sky that couldn’t decide what to do, and the captain told us plainly that we might see everything or almost nothing — that’s the deal with the Gulf of Alaska. Lia, who gets seasick, chewed her ginger tablets and gripped the rail as we motored out past the last houses into open water. Within an hour the decision had been made for us: a humpback whale surfaced off the bow, exhaled a plume you could smell, and rolled its fluke into the air before diving. The whole boat gasped as one. From there the day only escalated, and by afternoon I’d stopped trying to photograph everything and simply stood in the cold wind, letting it happen.

Faces of the Fjords

Kenai Fjords is a wildlife place first, and the cast keeps coming. Sea otters floated on their backs in rafts, cracking shellfish on their chests with an unbothered domesticity that made Lia laugh out loud. We passed a rocky islet crowded with Steller sea lions, enormous and belligerent, barking and shoving one another off the ledges. Puffins — both the tufted and horned kind — whirred past the boat on stubby wings, and the captain cut the engine near a cliff alive with nesting kittiwakes, the noise and smell of thousands of seabirds washing over us. I’ve been on plenty of wildlife boats that promise much and deliver a distant seal; this was not that.

At the Ice

Then the boat turned into a narrow arm and everything went quiet and cold, the water thickening with floating ice. At the head of the fjord a tidewater glacier — a wall of cracked blue and white, taller than it looked until we were close — met the sea. The captain held the boat still and told us to just listen. For long minutes there was only the drip and groan of the ice. Then a section calved: a crack like a gunshot, a slab of ancient blue ice peeling away and crashing into the water, sending a swell that rocked the boat a full minute later. Lia forgot she was seasick. We both just stared, understanding for the first time what “glacial blue” actually means.

Exit Glacier on Foot

The next day we gave our stomachs a rest and drove to Exit Glacier, the one part of the park you can reach by road. A short trail leads up to the ice, past roadside markers showing where the glacier’s toe stood in years past — each one further back than the last, a sobering timeline of retreat you walk through in reverse. The trail up toward the Harding Icefield climbs hard and fast into alpine meadow, and we only did part of it, but even from the lower viewpoint the river of ice below us was vast beyond reckoning. A marmot whistled from the rocks, wildflowers nodded in the wind, and I felt very small in the best possible way.

Getting There

Kenai Fjords National Park is reached through the town of Seward, about a two-and-a-half-hour drive or a scenic train ride south of Anchorage. The heart of the park is only accessible by water, so book a full-day boat tour out of Seward — the longer cruises reach the tidewater glaciers and the richest wildlife. Dress in warm, waterproof layers even in summer, bring motion-sickness remedies if you’re prone, and pack binoculars. Exit Glacier, just outside town, is the one area you can drive to and hike, and it makes a fine landbound complement to a day on the water.