Saturday | July 23

Ketchikan

“One final paragraph of advice: Do not burn yourselves out. Be as I am—a reluctant enthusiast—a part-time crusader, a half-hearted fanatic. Save the other half of yourselves and your lives for pleasure and adventure. It is not enough to fight for the land; it is even more important to enjoy it. While you can. While it’s still here. So get out there and hunt and fish and mess around with your friends, ramble out yonder and explore the forests, climb the mountains, bag the peaks, run the rivers, breathe deep of that yet sweet and lucid air, sit quietly for a while and contemplate the precious stillness, the lovely, mysterious and awesome space…” –Edward Abbey

Tlingit speaker Joe comes aboard and entertains our guests with a talk in the lounge. He gets a lot of laughs and applause for his discussion of Tlingit family life. He is from Saxman Village (just a couple of miles from downtown Ketchikan).

This is the site where an assemblage of totems are on the forested grounds, a photographers delight. An interpretive center and sales area is an attraction for tourists.

Joe tells us it is highly recommended to “spend all your money here in Ketchikan”, and learn more about the dynamic, vibrant culture of the Tlingits.

After working for InnerSea Discoveries since mid-April, today is my going-home day. My buddy Randall Tate also has time-off and we celebrate with our first sip of alcohol—a pint of beer--since early May.

We are amazed at the good taste of the brew at the Arctic Bar. We laugh and give a toast to the ship that happens to be just a “par 3”, or about a “5-iron” shot away from our table. We enjoy our freedom knowing that our fellow crew members are scurrying about for the impending arrival of the next group of intrepid travelers.

We hop aboard a small motorboat with an eccentric man behind the wheel. He is eating a messy Burger Queen burger and fries as we make our way across the Tongass Narrows to the airport. I ask him if he was for or against the “Bridge to Nowhere” that became famous when Governor Sarah Palin was in office. He was obviously against it as he has a thriving business as a water taxi driver.

I’ll be visiting family and vacationing before returning to Alaska in August to finish the summer season guiding folks in “the Great Land”.

Friday | July 22

Misty Fiords National Monument

“Between the woods the afternoon / Is fallen in a golden swoon / The sun looks down from quiet skies / To where a quiet water lies, / And silent trees stoop down to trees, / And there I saw a white swan make / Another white swan in the lake; / And, breast to breast, both motionless, / They waited for the wind’s caress…/ And all the water was at ease.” -A.A. Milne, The Mirror

 

Just after a hearty breakfast, we motor into the entrance of Walker Cove, drop the kayaks, and offer a 5-mile paddle into the upper reaches of the fiord.

The four of us guides split up and lead groups of several two-person kayakers along the granitic walls on either side of the fiord.

The route is very scenic and offers so much to experience with all of the senses.

Highlights include waterfalls, eagles, seals and colorful sea stars exposed by a very low tide.  Most of the sea stars are using thousands of tube-feet to pry-open mussels that are in abundance at the low to mid-tide level.  Some of these colorful starfish are dangling by just an arm or two from the undersides of the ebbing tide.

The local geology is a bit complicated due to the number of different terrains that “docked” as accretionary wedges here in Southeast Alaska.  I point out two different rocks that look alike by saying:  “This is a gneiss rock, do not take it for granite.”  The former is metamorphic, undergoing change due to heat and pressure, while the latter is an intrusive igneous rock.

Dikes and sills are seen in the bedding of the rock and are an interesting juxtaposition adjacent to the intertidal zonation of various, colored seaweeds and invertebrates.

At the end of the paddle, we are rewarded with a view of a brown bear feeding along a small river mouth.  We get quite close as the bear has little fear of anything that approaches from the water.

The bear is busy digging clams in the tidal flats surrounding the river.  Gulls and crows surround the bear for any missed invertebrates that get tossed aside by the bear.

After lunch, we enter Rudyard Bay for some afternoon sightseeing.

We are not the only ones, as we see several floatplanes coming and going.  This bay is a very popular area to visit.  The flight-seeing is offered by shore excursion managers on the cruise ships that dock in Ketchikan.

While watching a bear, we are surprised by a floatplane that circles our ship then comes in for a landing.  The pilot lands with precision in such a manner that even with the engines turned-off, the plane floats right up to the optimal viewing distance.  Passengers disembark the planes cabin and walk out onto the pontoons for an unobstructed view.  After watching the wildlife for about 20-minutes, the pilot takes off and flies over our ship on its way back to Ketchikan.

Bush pilots like to say that anyone who doesn’t fly is “geographically challenged”.  Getting up and over the tree-studded mountains to see the intricate waterways, forests and glaciers is a real lesson in geography.

In the later afternoon and on into the evening we are graced by the presence of several killer whales plying the coniferous-green waters.  We cannot quite determine if they are a fish-eating local pod or a mammal-eating transient pod.  Nonetheless, they seem to be following us out of Rudyard Bay and back into the Behm Canal.

“Find your place on the planet, dig in, and take responsibility from there.” –Gary Snyder

Wednesday | July 20

Wrangell

“It is not enough to understand the natural world; the point is to defend and preserve it.” --Edward Abbey ‘A Voice Crying in the Wilderness

“Rise and shine” says a guest to one of their shipmates. “Time for a feeding frenzy. It looks like the galley has gone wild”, responds another. Every meal aboard the WND is a smorgasbord of healthy foods offered typically in a buffet fashion. Folks can come and go when they want during the 90-minute meal times.

My colleagues and I love eating meals al fresco on the Sun Deck. The sense of smell and taste are heightened in the great outdoors and the scenery of land and seascapes is awe-inspiring in most locations. We can’t enjoy the scenery too much as these are the times that our expedition leader likes to meet and discuss the upcoming activity calendar. We have between three and five meetings a day, seven days a week.

We wake up to pouring rain all morning and later in the day we are thrilled to have brilliant sunshine.

Tours are offered to see Chief Shakes Lodge, petroglyphs along the shoreline and jet-boat tours up the Stikine River. Some of us enjoy going to the Nolan Center Museum just a few blocks from the pier. Others pay a visit to the library for using computers to catch-up with world events or check email.

A favorite past-time is talking with the locals, particularly the kids that sell garnets on the pier.

Many passengers enjoy sitting on the Sun Deck in the afternoon. It is fun for us to watch the salmon leaping out of the water.

The activity seems to have reached a peak in the last week in this part of the Alexander Archipelago.

Tuesday | July 19

Ideal Cove

“The first requirement of a naturalist is that he be curious. He should be capable of being astonished and eager to find out.” --Erwin Shroedinger

A persistent drizzle with low-lying fog greets us this morning. We offer long hikes on the Three Lakes Trail, a Tongass National Forest maintained system of boardwalks that loop in the forest around some kettle ponds. Part of the trail is along a logging road that is accessible for cars from the nearby town of Petersburg. Nonetheless the popular trail is very scenic.

The morning hike is about 5.5 miles long and we do the loop in a clock-wise fashion to Crane Lake first and then Hill Lake. About half of the trail is along 16-inch wide boardwalk. The trail is in good shape except for a few spots where support beams have rotted or the netting that keeps you from slipping on algae slicks has fallen-off the boardwalk.

The vibrant green vegetation are “eye-candy” for all of us sauntering through the front-country in Petersburgs’ backyard. Skunk cabbage, bunch-berry dogwood, leather ferns, surround the boardwalk through the forest sections and rushes, sedges and bog orchids are adjacent to the trail in the muskeg areas.

We are tempted to take a canoe out on the lake that is provided and maintained by the forest service. We did stop at picnic tables and were surprised by a sighting of a porcupine climbing up a spruce tree.

Cut trees is about all we see in the way of mammal sign. Beavers are quite active in the area and it never ceases to amaze how big a tree they can cut down. I’ve read about a researcher that played a tape recording of running water near a beaver and it tried to build a dam near the hidden tape recorder. Apparently, when the sound of running water stops, the beaver discontinues building the dam.

There are long sections of narrow trail where it is impossible to see your hiking partners around the next bend. Passing is not an option for folks who are behind photographers!

The reflections on the lake along with emergent aquatic vegetation such as the pond lily make for great subjects for photographers.

 

Periodic “National Forest” signs showing a symbol of a snowmobiler remind us one of the popular past-times in the area during the long winters here in Southeast Alaska. Some are pockmarked with bullet holes. I suppose vandals like the sound a bullet makes when it hits metal?

Mossy epiphyte platforms are in abundance on the dead, low-lying branches of the spruce/hemlock forest. On the largest, old-growth trees, the moss-covered branches are nesting sites for the seabird known as the marbled murrelet.

Back aboard the M/V Wilderness Discoverer, everybody is happy to peel-off wet layers of clothing and warm-up with hot drinks and camaraderie with fellow shipmates.

Monday | July 18

Thomas Bay & Baird Glacier

“Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and cheer and give strength…” -John Muir

Today (despite the threatening clouds and persistant drizzle) was a fabulous day for a hike on the glacier. Any day on a river of ice is adventurous and all of our guests that joined us had a blast.

The Baird Glacier is so intriguing because of the numerous features that completely baffle the mind as to how they were formed.

Case in point. Partway up the snout of the glacier are a series of longitudinal ablation crevasses that have closed back up and look like sutures on a skull. Pyramids of ice burst up and through these visible fissures and they are completely covered in sand. Sand just inches in thickness, often wet due to the melting ice that lies beneath.

Could it be the result of a jokuhlaup or glacial outburst flood? The pressure of the water pushing up through old crevasses in the ice? Who knows? It is fun to theorize.

We do see a baby tern chick that hides and stays hidden behind a cobblestone.

Other sights:

• a push or terminal moraine • moulins on the ice surface that look like blue swirling toilet bowls • a Semi-Palmated Plover that shows us the “broken-wing” tactic • soft, vibrant green mosses with islands of foliose lichens, pinkish blossoms of the Dwarf Fireweed or River Beauty (Epilobium latifolium) • 100’s of 1000’s of river-rounded granitic boulders in front of the glacier and angular, iron-rich rocks on top of the glacier • Arctic Terns dropping down to the waters surface to collect inch-long krill; others fly back to chicks holding fish in their bills • Harbor seals plying the waters in front of the river

The Baird Glacier comes off of the Stikine Icefield, an area that is approximately 100 miles long from the Whiting River in the north to the Stikine River in the south and about 30 miles wide from tidewater up and over the crest of the Coast Range past the international boundary into British Colombia, Canada.

Our trip upriver was very eventful. Melt-waters of raging Class II rapids. Our larger, heavier boat with 8 passengers barely makes headway. Both boats hit rocks, doing damage to the props. The banks of the river are loosely sorted boulders piled up high and it’s difficult to make progress upriver. For 5 minutes—at full throttle—we make about 200 feet of progress and finally make it to a safe landing spot.

We hike about a kilometer to the terminal moraine directly in front of the glacier. The remnants of broken pieces of ice create boot-sucking mud pits that are best to avoid. Curiosity always makes a few folks push down with just the right amount of pressure on a mud spot to create liquefaction.

Seeing geology in action is what the concept of uniformitarianism is all about, i.e. “the present is the key to the past”. This is what makes the study of the earth so fascinating. One can deduce what is visible in the here and now to landscapes and processes that have been going on for millennia, periods, eras and eons of time.

Sunday | July 17

Tracy Arm & Sawyer Glaciers

“Domes swell against the sky in fine lines as lofty and as perfect in form as those of the California valley, and rock-fronts stand forward, as sheer and as nobly sculpted. No ice-work that I have ever seen surpasses this, either in the magnitude of the features or effectiveness of composition.” --John Muir

John Muir, writing in his book Travels in Alaska, described Tracy Arm as a “wild unfinished Yosemite”.

 

We awake to a fine day. The anchor is lifted at 6 a.m. and the Wilderness Discoverer cruises up the magnificent fiord that is Tracy Arm. Yosemite-like domes, waterfalls that seem to come right out of the sky, and rainforests that exhibit many shades of green are passed as we motor at the speed of 9-knots up the 23-miles to the face of the Sawyer Glacier.

This is the Tongass National Forest, the largest National Forest in the United States at almost 17 million acres in size. It ranges from the Southeast Alaska panhandle between Ketchikan and Yakutat. It incorporates the Alexander Archipelago, located in the Inside Passage between the Coast Mountain Range and the Gulf of Alaska in the Northeast Pacific Ocean. The Tongass happens to have the largest contiguous, intact temperate rainforest in the world.

The temperate rainforest biome ranges from the narrow strip of land between northern California and Kodiak Island, Alaska. Some of the hallmarks of this rainforest is the presence of Sitka Spruce, a profusion of epiphytes such as mosses and lichens, a climate regime that includes around 100-inches of precipitation a year and the presence of nurse logs.

Small boat tours are offered to bring guests up close to the Sawyer Glacier. Photographic opportunities abound for camera-toting guests.

Brash ice is quite thick. Birds are flying back and forth in front of the tidewater glacier and seals are hauled out on small ice-bergs or “growlers”.

We are lucky to have two wilderness kayak rangers join us with two of their “artists-in-residence” volunteers. Our Tongass National Forest Rangers Solan Jensen and Sean Reilly give an insightful talk on the history of wilderness in the dining lounge.

After disembarking the kayak rangers, we ask guests to participate in three rounds of talks surrounding our adventure program of kayaking, stand-up paddleboarding or SUP, and how to behave in bear country. I lead the talk on SUP in the lounge with an assistant to “model” appropriate techniques.

It’s amazing how SUP has become the latest trend in ocean sports. As a fitness sport, it uses all of the major muscle groups. It works the core and legs while you try to balance and the upper body while paddling.

It’s easy to carry a SUP and that is one of the major advantages over having a sea kayak. On calm, flat days the only real hazard for SUP’ers is navigating wakes from passing boats. These boards are wider and more stable than a regular surfboard. However, I would not recommended trying to walk the nose and “hanging ten”.

For novice paddleboarders, it’s worth trying it more than once to build a comfort level and to see if the sport is enjoyable. Every time you get out on the water while here on vacation will make it that much easier to try it again back home.

The minimal effort of SUP-ing (not a great acronym, I just realized) for just a few minutes while circumnavigating the Wilderness Discoverer will allow a partner or crew to photo-document your efforts. That way you can prove to kith and kin how adventurous you really were in Alaska.

My overall message is to encourage folks to “get up, stand up…stand-up for bragging rights!”

The afternoon is spent whale watching in the waters adjacent to Admiralty Island National Monument. Kootznahoo or “Fortress of the Bears”, has the greatest concentration of brown bears in the world, about 1 bear per square mile on the 1,700 square mile island. We motor too far away to spot brown bears (visitors that want to see bears can go to Pack Creek on the northeast side of the island).

Humpback whales are spotted exhibiting a range of behavior such as spouting, lob-tailing and breaching. These fascinating baleen whales have travelled all the way from Hawai’i to feed all summer long.

Friends stay up late enjoying a lingering twilight and the ever-changing seascapes that almost hypnotize to a state of nirvana.

Saturday | July 16

Juneau

“Between the woods the afternoon / Is fallen in a golden swoon / The sun looks down from quiet skies / To where a quiet water lies, / And silent trees stoop down to trees, / And there I saw a white swan make / Another white swan in the lake; / And, breast to breast, both motionless, / They waited for the wind’s caress…/ And all the water was at ease.” -A.A. Milne, The Mirror

Today is shopping day. Yippee! This is my second turnover day since the start of the season where I don’t have to swab the decks with the deck department or break down boxes for the galley and vacuum for the hotel department.

Just getting off of the ship for a spell is good from time to time to stimulate the brain with the small town vibe of Juneau and the best part about it: the Juneau-ites.

Leah--our wellness instructor--and I hit all the big box stores: Home Depot, Fred Meyer and Costco to shop for various items that were requested from the different departments on the ship throughout the week.

We all work hard on these turn-over days and look forward to the arrival of our new guests after disembarking our old guest-friends in the morning.

We wave good-bye to the massive cruise ships docked along the waterfront as the M/V Wilderness Discoverer (WND) heads south through the Gastineau Channel.

 

“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeing new landscapes, but in having new eyes.” --Marcel Proust

Saturday | July 16

The Capitol City of Juneau

“Find your place on the planet, dig in and take responsibility from there.” --Gary Snyder

"If I were to choose the sights, the sounds, the fragrances I most would want to see and hear and smell--among all the delights of the open world--on a final day on earth, I think I would choose these: the clear, ethereal song of a white-throated sparrow singing at dawn; the smell of pine trees in the heat of the noon; the lonely calling of Canada geese; the sight of a dragon-fly glinting in the sunshine; the voice of a hermit thrush far in a darkening woods at evening; and--most spiritual and moving of sights--the white cathedral of a cumulus cloud floating serenely in the blue of the sky.  Edwin Way Teale, "On a Final Day"

Disembarkation day!

It’s off to many different destinations around the country for our guests. It is very tempting to take them up on their offers to stay if ever we visit their hometowns. Juneau is bustling this morning as we dock alongside the pier adjacent to large cruise ships and a float plane dock

A local tells me that the recent U.S. Census had between 5 and 6,000 people moving out of the capital city of Juneau, a drop from around 31,000 to 25k over the last 10 years.

Crew work hard in anticipation of another group that will board in less than 8 hours.

Thursday | July 14

Port Houghton

“It is only with the heart that one can see rightly, what is essential is invisible to the eye.” –Antoine de Saint Exupery

Today I lead two groups of hikers into the upper reaches of an incredibly rich ecosystem. We see hundreds of flatfish scuttling about on the mud-bottoms as we make our way up the estuary. 1000s of salmon dart in front of our small 10-passenger boat and a few dozen leap out of the water for some breaching action.

I ask the adventurers: “Why do salmon breach or come completely out of the water?” The answers all sound plausible, such as “because it’s fun” or “they leap to catch insects”. My observations: salmon just started leaping out of the water in the last two weeks. Countless thousands of them are nearing the end of their life-cycle by coming back—via olfactory and magnetic cues--to their natal streams. They are undergoing tremendous hormonal changes and are gearing up for the ultimate biological endeavor: Spawning until they die.

Are the salmon are leaping perhaps to knock off ecto-parasites such as sea lice? Maybe it is the gravid females trying to break up the chains of eggs developing from within their abdomens? Perhaps so much testosterone or progesterone is like having a bunch of high-school teen-agers getting ready for prom night? Whatever the reason, within weeks, all of these fish (the exception in the salmonid family are the Steelhead trout which can breed more than once) will be dead and their carcasses will be feeding dozens of birds, mammal and plant species.

We have spring tides (high highs and low lows) just after the full moon. This morning the low is a -2.5 feet and 6 hours later a high of over 14-feet. Imagine trying to fill a swimming pool 16 vertical feet in 6 hours, that’s 6 inches every 15 minutes of an incoming or outgoing tide.

The low tide is exceptionally different from the time that we scouted last night (10 p.m. at mid-tide). Many dozens of acres in the estuary are exposed and we have to drop-off a mile further out. The sessile or attached creatures are abundant in the intertidal zone. Sea anemones, crabs, urchins, mussels, barnacles, limpets and others are all competing for available space.

We find thousands of tiny garnets from garnet-infused shist rock. Eventually we make it above the wrack zone where algal drift is piled up and desiccating on top of halophytic or salt-loving grasses.

Harbor seals ply the waters and eagles are seen perched in almost every standing deadwood structure (snags) lining the serpentine slough of this biologically rich and productive ecosystem. Juvenile and adult Bonapartes Gulls, Arctic terns and mew gulls cry out as they search the waters for small schooling fish.

The old-growth forest is impressive. We enter and are surprised to find an old trappers or fox farmers dilapidated cabin nestled in amongst the old-growth spruce and hemlock forest adjacent to a euphonious, clear-running stream. We could only imagine what other stories this area had in the forgotten past. Fox farming occurred in many areas of Southeast Alaska in the early 1900’s.

We get back in time for a hot lunch on this misty morning.

In the afternoon, I go out with a smaller group and the same boat driver Michael. He and I are stunned at the height of the high tide. We motor up two miles further than the low tide and the whole area is almost unrecognizable. What was at least 100 acres of exposed marsh and estuarine habitat was completely inundated.

It was very tempting to motor farther up and get dropped off in bear country, however it was prudent to plan for the outgoing tide and so we were dropped off in what turned out to be the same exact spot for our pick-up.

Richard Droker, our guest that is a geologist and lichenologist (contributed images to the book Macrolichens of the Pacific Northwest, by Bruce McCune and Linda Geiser) was excited about my finding dozens of lichens. He commended me on my interpretation of the last several decades of forest management practices and the issues surrounding the conservation of the highly migratory salmon species. He said it was the best summation he’s ever heard on the issues, a nice compliment.

At the end of my discourse, Richard hands me a slip of paper labeling several species of bryophytes on it, including: Sphagnum moss, Hylocomium, Rytidiadelphis, Rhizomnium, Conocephalum, Scapania, and Discranum.

Later in the evening I see Richard looking through a hand lens at a small spruce branch laying on one of the tables in the lounge area. “How many species do you see, Richard…a half-dozen?”

A few minutes later, I am amazed to see the list: Bryoria, Alectoria, Usnea, Ramalina, Hypogymnia, 2 species of Parmelia, Nephroma, Platismatia, Lobaria, Lecanora, Lecanorine, Lepraria, Chrisothrix, Pertusalaria, Trentepohlia, a moss and liverwort!

Friday | July 15

Endicott Arm & Dawes Glacier

“The earth, that is sufficient I do not want the constellations any nearer, I know they are very well where they are, I know they suffice for those who belong to them.” --Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass, “Song of the Open Road” (1855)

We lift anchor at 0500 at Wood Spit and enter Holkham Bay, the outlet of both the Tracy and Endicott Arm fiords. We take the route up the Endicott in a thick fog. I assure guests that we should see a clearing close to the glaciers. High pressure is usual near the icefield surrounding the peaks of the Coast Range.

The cold, heavy air sinks down and pushes away the Low Pressure system from the face of the tidewater glacier. As soon as we get within a couple of miles, the fog lifts and we see blue skies and sunshine!

Very little brash ice is seen…mainly growlers with only a few bergy bits and ice-bergs near the spectacular Dawes Glacier. We disembark for small boat tours and stop about ¼-mile away from the 200-foot face of the tidewater glacier. Several small calvings produce the surprisingly loud “white thunder”. The Tlingit Indians had a tribe named after the sound made by the dropping of ice: Sumdum.

We enjoy seeing Arctic Terns diving down for small fish or resting on growlers. Seals were seen frolicking in the white-water of cascading waterfalls.

Two Tongass National Forest Service wilderness kayak rangers paddle over and come aboard for answering questions. Kevin Hood talks about the history of the Wilderness Act and answered questions about harbor seal census counts.

The most amazing thing Ranger Hood shared during his excellent talk was the 2009-2010 studies of the Dawes Glacier. Laser altimetry showed that the Dawes Glacier had thinned or deflated 70 meters in one year, making it one of the fastest wastage and melting areas in the world. Change is happening at a dramatic pace here in the 100-mile long Stikine Icefield!

After dropping the kayaks and the rangers off of our swim-step aft of the vessel, we search hard along the shoreline for four-legged furry animals. We see hundreds of Surf Scoters, otherwise known as the “poor-mans’ puffin” for the similar appearance to the Tufted Puffin. The latter is typically found nesting on protected islands closer to the Gulf of Alaska or in Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve. On the north shoreline, we see the beautiful blooms of the fireweed.

Outside of the Endicott Arm in Stephens Passage, we are lucky to find a pod of killer whales.

We are happy to see many kinds of behavior such as spy-hopping, lob-tailing and breaching.

A young orca was seen surfacing next to its mother.

We suspect these orcas are residents as it looks like they are surrounding and echo-locating for fish. We watch them for quite some time as they happen to be swimming north at the same slow pace that we are motoring.

Anchorage for this evening is just outside of the Taku Inlet. It is the Captains’ Dinner tonight and Marce introduces all of the crew to the rousing applause of our friendly guests.

A bit of sadness is felt as it was time to pack suitcases after a slide show presentation in the lounge shows all of the highlights over the last week of cruising.

is bustling this morning as we dock alongside the pier adjacent to large cruise ships and a float plane dock

A local tells me that the recent U.S. Census had between 5 and 6,000 people moving out of the capital city of Juneau, a drop from around 31,000 to 25k over the last 10 years.

Crew work hard in anticipation of another group that will board in less than 8 hours.

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