" ..." a Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve Travel Page by mtncorg

The scramble from the flats of Reid Inlet over and down the Ptarmigan Creek basin is a rugged one, but filled with views and human history. If you are by yourself, you will need to retreat the same way you came up for the distance is a long ways. With a group, you can send some people up one direction and some the other way, keeping boats at each end to make it easy to reconnect at the end of the hike. We did the climb up from Reid Inlet thinking of only going up and back. Once atop, we net up with Bill Weir - he had come up from his camp down below at Ptarmigan Creek, being kayak-less (that was a tour boat drop-off point). Bill is the pioneer writer of Moon Publication’s Handbooks for Utah and Arizona (very useful books!). He was enjoying the wild spirit of the West evidenced in his books. We told Bill where our boat was down below next to Reid Inlet and made arrangements for each of us to push in opposite directions - Bill to Reid Inlet and us down Ptarmigan Creek. Then Bill was to paddle our double kayak back to his camp at Ptarmigan Creek allowing us to return to ours at Reid Inlet, completing our loops.

Down along the flats, in front of Reid Inlet, you can find old Joe Ibach’s cabin. Make the trip over time and even with our limited lifespans, you will see dramatic changes. One of the lads on our trip had been here in 1978 and had snapped this picture.

Today, the alders have slowly engulfed old Joe’s cabin in an attempt to erase traces of the Ibach epoch.

Push up from near the cabin, you will find a boot path heading upwards - sometimes a bit faint. As usual, the views get grander the higher up you go. Push on until you finally reach the crest - see the title picture for further evidence ;-] From the top, you peer down the next leg of the journey, the hike down Ptarmigan Creek (if you have made plans to have a boat on the other side, that is, or unless you have met up with Bill! Thanks Bill :-)) This is the view from a journey up here in 1978.

As you can see, the basic view remains the same. Only the details change a bit.

As you decend on rough trail, you come across evidence of earlier miners. Peer inside the cabin. It looks like they just stepped out for a walk - some forty years ago, perhaps.

- From the cabin, down to the seashore, your path finding skills are tuned slightly as you push through alders. Alders are far from my favorite trees. They can make crosscountry adventures into epics full of bad words being uttered every third step. I wonder if there are any grizzlies around?

Actually, care should be given. The National Park Service shut down the Ptarmigan Creek drop-off point a couple of weeks after we left. Reason: a couple of kayaks were chewed up by some of the playful giants!!