Tracy Arm-Ford's Terror Wilderness, AK

Tracy Arm

[Sept. 2, 2013] Glacier Day! Today we motored up Tracy Arm, a narrow fjord more than 30 miles long, one-fifth of which is covered with ice. It's part of the fabulously named Tracy Arm-Ford's Terror Wilderness, and lies about 45 miles south of Juneau. (Fun fact: the capital of Alaska is not accessible by road.) The plan was to see the South Sawyer Glacier, then kayak partway back down the fjord.

Glacier-scarred walls

The first indication we were headed for glacier territory was the chunky, floating ice known as "bergy bits." Some were small enough to fit in your hand (or ice bucket) and some were monsters the size of three-story buildings, complete with embedded rocks. As we all know, only the top 10 percent of floating ice is visible. The captain steered carefully.

Meltwater with bergy bit

Next we noted that the rock walls show signs of massive scarring.

Then the sea changed color from the flow of glacial meltwater, full of "rock flour," or ground granite, which when suspended in water scatters the sunlight and turns it a milky turquoise. It's beautiful.

Narrow passage

A sharp-eyed passenger (not me) spotted a mountain goat high up a ridiculously steep slope. We passed plunging waterfalls, and the fjord is so steep that the captain could bring the boat right up to the rockface so that we were in the spray.

We passed a hanging glacier - one that doesn't meet the water - on the right, and another on the left. The canyon walls began to close in.

[To be continued]

Cleveland Passage, AK

Exiting Sikumi, minus dignity

[Sept. 1, 2013] Today, after a morning of fishing off Cape Fanshaw, we anchored in Cleveland Passage and climbed into kayaks - laboriously, off an inflatable dock, and with a lot of help. When you're bundled up in rain fowlies and lifevest, it's nearly impossible to bend in the middle. We had to be rolled into our vessels like sausages into a pan.

Floating over a salmon graveyard

Cleveland Passage is a sound about two miles long tucked between Whitney Island and the Alaskan mainland just northeast of Cape Fanshaw. It's a beautiful, protected place to kayak: lots of bald eagles, seals, and a salmon stream on the mainland.

Once situated in our tippy boats we headed to the stream. At its mouth, fanning out like alluvial deposits, were hundreds of dead salmon lying in mere inches of water. We were directly atop them. It was a little eerie. These were pink salmon who had completed their short life cycle of two years, returned home, spawned, and died. Coho and king salmon live longer than pinks, from three to seven years. We learned that pink salmon are not considered good eating in Alaska; they're used for canning (i.e., to feed us in the lower 48) and for bait.

Pink salmon swimming upstream 

Inside the stream we could see the fish straining forward and occasionally leaping. Three of our party went ashore to take closer pictures. "Watch out for bears," said Mike M.

Sea lion possibly attacked by orca

Further down the beach we came upon a dead sea lion with an orca-sized bite taken out of it. Our theory is that it got away and swam ashore to die. Ashlee, who enters medical school this fall, went ashore to do a post mortem.

Heading south, Cleveland Passage

Everywhere we looked there were bald eagles, both mature and juvenile. They were perched in trees, flying overhead, chasing each other, and crying out.

Don't watch

We continued south, paddling against the incoming tide. The waterscape was liquid pewter. The palette in Alaska, at least the part we saw during September, was almost entirely shades of blue and silver, with accents of dark green and mustard.

Then it was back to the boat, where we learned that getting out of the kayak onto the floating dock was possibly even more undignified than getting in.

And then it was time to head north to Windham Bay, where we were to anchor for the night. On the way the captain called us all on deck to watch humpback whales. When we finished watching them, and looked at the water behind us, it looked like this:

Late afternoon, Stephens Passage

At Windham Bay we set crab and shrimp pots, which we'll return to haul in two days. And then it was off for one of those glacier drinks.

Setting crab pots in Windham Bay

Cascade Creek Trail, Tongass National Forest, AK

It's been a busy summer with lots of visitors and plenty of swimming, dog walks, kayaking, standup paddling, and sailing. But no hikes and no exploring. Too hot, too buggy.

Alaska State footwear

At summer's end we addressed this deficit by taking the trip of a lifetime, to Alaska! There we cruised part of the Inside Passage in a small expedition vessel and visited friends and family in Anchorage and Homer. Most of the trip was too sybaritic to qualify for this blog, but we did manage to fit in some hiking and kayaking. This post covers our first Alaska hike.

Petersburg to
Cascade Creek

[Aug. 31, 2013] The afternoon of our first day out of Petersburg, M/V Sikumi took us to Thomas Bay, where the crew dinghied us ashore to Cascade Creek. The site is part of Tongass National Forest, a 17 million acre national park and the world's largest remaining temperate rain forest. There's a 4.2 mile trail, part improved and part very rough, that winds from a gravel beach up a hill and over a glacier-fed cascade to Falls Lake and

I don't know what this is, but it's damp.

then the western end of Swan Lake. In our borrowed Xtratuf boots - the state footwear of Alaska - we tromped through just a small portion of the trail, maybe half a mile, before it became too steep, slippery, and difficult for us flatlanders.

We hiked slowly because there was so much to see. Temperate rain forests like Tongass occur on the west-facing slopes of coastal mountains along the Pacific, from northern California up to Kodiak Island. They are boggy and foggy, mostly coniferous, with extravagant growth despite thin soil. In our patch of woods there were tons of giant skunk cabbage, blueberries, huckleberries, salmonberry, soggy "nursery logs" (fallen trees which serve as a growth medium for new trees), mushrooms, and ferns. Red cedar, sitka spruce, and western hemlock were the predominant trees. We saw tiny flowers in bright colors, but you had to look carefully. I didn't notice any of these:

Luckily we had good photographers in our group: Mary and especially Cheryl. They had sharp eyes, took most of these photos, and for them I am thankful.

Also I am thankful for Mike M., our leader and the mate of Sikumi, who wore a large gun on his belt and kept an eye out for brown bears, which is what grizzlies are called when they live on the coast. Brown bears love salmon and berries. Also they are very large and have horrific claws and teeth. Later when we caught up with Mike's son the reporter, he told us of the steady diet of bear-maulings he gets to write about.

Staying close to the guy
with the gun

The first portion of the hike was easy, spongy trail. Then it switched to a magical staircase up the hill. Who maintains these things in the middle of nowhere?

Cascade Creek

Then we came to a clearing with a good view of the cascade, climbed higher with considerably more difficulty, crossed a bridge over the frothing water and looked down into the abyss, climbed a bit further, gave up, climbed carefully down, and dinghied back home to cocktails made with glacier ice.

Boat Sweet Boat