Alaska’s Kenai Fjords National Park is the state’s smallest, but offers outsized opportunities to explore the rich glacial landscape.
The Harding Icefield is the park’s crown jewel, almost 714 square miles of ice up to a mile thick. It feeds nearly three dozen glaciers flowing out of the mountains, six of them to tidewater. The Harding Icefield is a vestige of the massive ice sheet that covered much of Alaska in the Pleistocene era.
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The ancient ice gouged out Kenai’s fjords, creating habitats for throngs of sea animals. About 20 species of seabirds nest along the rocky coastline; the most charismatic of the birds are clown-faced puffins. Bald eagles swoop along the towering cliffs, and peregrine falcons hunt over the outer islands. Seabirds, by the tens of thousands, migrate or congregate here.
Approximately 27 land mammals and 10 marine mammals, including harbor seals, Steller sea lions, and sea otters, live here. Moose, black bears, wolverines, and coyotes roam narrow bands of forest between the coast and icefield. And just above them, on the treeless slopes, climb surefooted mountain goats.
