Glacier Bay Wilderness is a wilderness area in Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve in the U.S. state of Alaska. It consists of the park section of 3.28-million-acre (13,300 km2) Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve. Surrounded by a spectacular, glaciated horseshoe rim of mountains, the bay is sheltered by the Fairweather Range to the west and the Saint Elias Mountains on the north. The highest peaks, topped by Mount Fairweather at 15,300 feet (4,700 m), stand almost three miles (5 km) above the sea and attract intrepid mountaineers. No trails exist, but backpacking is growing increasingly popular, often along numerous icy streams sometimes welcoming and sometimes choked with brush. Brown and black bears are numerous on shore. Firearms are not permitted in the park section.
Famous quotes containing the words glacier, bay and/or wilderness:
““The glacier knocks in the cupboard,
The desert sighs in the bed,
And the crack in the tea-cup opens
A lane to the land of the dead.”
—W.H. (Wystan Hugh)
“A great work by an Englishman is like a great battle won by England. It is an unfading bay tree.”
—Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–1889)
“The man in the wilderness said to me,
How many strawberries grow in the sea?
I answered him as I thought good,
As many red herrings as grow in the wood.”
—Mother Goose (fl. 17th–18th century. The man in the wilderness (l. 1–4)