Ten thousand years or so ago, Tlingit, Haida, and Tsimshian hunters came to what the map now shows as the lower right-hand corner of Alaska. They came for a simple reason, food: rivers thick with five species of salmon, massive bird migrations, Dall sheep on the cliff faces, and deer, moose, and bear in the muskeg.

But you also have to think they stopped to admire the view, because they were hunting and fishing in Misty Fjords, where the southernmost glaciers in Alaska hang over granite and basalt cliffs rising 3,000 feet (900 meters), straight out of the still ocean.

Most people fly into the fjords from Ketchikan, taking floatplanes up the Behm Canal, past the bird rookeries on New Eddystone Rock, a 230-foot (70-meter) basalt tower, then circling in for a look at Punchbowl Cove, where waterfalls seem to pour from the clouds.

But the fjords are best appreciated at water level. From a boat, or once the floatplane lands, it’s easy to see how the 25-foot (eight-meter) tidal variation in the long channels of the fjords has kept the shoreline bare. There’s always a chance of seeing wolverines or otters come down to the beach to fish.

And if you’re very lucky, you may even spot one of the petroglyphs left behind by those long-ago hunters. They weren’t marking territory: they were marking their place, just like most visitors today, already figuring out when to come back.