Is this North America’s most spectacular coastline?

The light fell pure and still at dawn as our ship drifted through a land sculpted by ice. At the deep end of the Tarr Inlet, tidewater glaciers poked out and icy floes bobbed, the middle distance revealing ice sheets layered with thousands of spikes as pointed as crocodile’s teeth. The Fairweather Range, the highest coastal mountains on Earth, lunged into view and we greeted them with palms open out of respect. Next came U-shaped valleys and flint-crested peaks ragged as a seismogram.

In many ways, Glacier Bay National Park is North America’s most spectacular cruising destination. Miles from anywhere, tucked away in the bottom corner of Alaska, its dramatic fjords are only accessible by boat and there is a strict limit of two cruise ships per day. It is a coast of enviable beauty, the ancestral homeland of the Huna Tlingit, and there are no roads, campgrounds, hotels, or otherwise.