Alaska News

Bear Glacier Lake kayaking in Kenai Fjords National Park

Bear Glacier is an otherworldly place, a vaguely lunar, primordial landscape. A glacier with "racing stripes" that slide into the lake. The valley created by the massive, retreating Bear Glacier is distinctly U-shaped, a broad, lush green floor with young spruce and some older birch that comes in handy for rain protection and fire building. Icy fresh drinking water cascades down one cliff face. A wild place with wildflowers as tall as 4 feet near the falls. Nestled in the U, the camping is protected from the sometimes-fierce, subarctic winds off Resurrection Bay. You can hear the surf pounding shoals that protrude into the bay, but it's all beyond a longshore bar that separates you from the rough seas. The bar is known to produce some surf-worthy Alaska backwash.

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