Nootka Lupine and Mount Saint Elias, Icy Bay
Icy Bay, Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve
Nootka lupine (Lupinus nootkatensis) blooms across a low island in Taan Fjord while Mount Saint Elias rises across Icy Bay in the background. At 18,008 feet Saint Elias is the second highest peak in the United States and one of the tallest coastal mountains in the world, standing less than twenty miles from tidewater. The fjord itself was carved and re-carved by glacial advances of the Tyndall and Guyot systems, and the sediment-rich flats at the head of the bay now support dense stands of lupine in early summer.
Icy Bay sits in the remote southeastern corner of Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve, reachable only by boat or small plane. The combination of coastal rainforest, active tidewater glaciers, and a mountain of this scale right on the coast is one of the more dramatic landscape setups anywhere in Alaska.
Nootka lupine and Mount Saint Elias, Icy Bay, Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve, Alaska. Lupinus nootkatensis. Photo © copyright by Carl Donohue.
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