Two days of sailing took us from Bartlett Cove to Russell Island, with an anchorage at North Sandy Cove along the way. We saw few other boats, since their numbers are strictly limited by the park's permit system. We did see much wildlife.

Passing South Marble Island, we saw several sea lions − more of them later.

We disturbed an extraordinarily large flock of birds, who had perhaps been drawn to a herring ball.

And in Reid Inlet, we saw a killer whale.

We also passed the aptly-named Gloomy Knob (elevation 1,331 feet), supposedly a place where the local mountain goat population likes to congregate. I saw no goats on the Knob, though I do think I may have seen some in nearby Tidal Inlet.

Russell Island was not our intended anchorage. We sailed first into Reid Inlet, hoping to anchor at the feet of Reid Glacier, but a williwaw drove us out. We had to content ourselves with a few photos of the glacier before we sailed to Russell Island and anchored in its lee.

Reid Glacier is three quarters of a mile wide and nearly ten miles long. It rises up to a hundred feet above the waterline. Its flow rate − the rate at which this gigantic slab of ice is sliding down the rocky channel it has carved − is one to three feet per day. (A flow rate is what makes a glacier a glacier; otherwise, it's just an ice field.) Despite this, Reid Glacier is slowly receding: at sea level, it's melting faster than it's flowing.