Saturday | June 4th

This is our crazy, hectic turn-around day. Our expedition team helps the deck, galley and hotel departments with swabbing the decks, putting away the endless boxes of galley stores and cleaning the lounge and dining areas. We get 45-minutes off the ship before the new group of guest-passengers arrive, an improvement of 15 minutes from our inaugural visit two weeks ago.

Friends and family know that we are on an amazing summer voyage and that we love them and miss them and will eventually make it home for our two weeks vacation. I happen to have the latest slot for a break in August.

Some of us are randomly selected to submit a urine sample and fill out a Federal Drug Testing Custody and Control Form. This involves me as a donor and our HM as a collector. Specimen bottles are sealed, signed, put in an envelope and mailed to a test facility where a medical review officer will receive the specimen and give a negative verification.

Later, after taking on our new passengers, our Chief Engineer barks over my radio: “Bridge, this is the engine room. You are good to energize the bow thrusters.” We push off the dock, slowly slip by the huge cruise ships that occupy city blocks worth of real estate and head south in Gastineau Channel for a new weeks worth of adventures.

 

Wednesday | June 8th

This week I get to take a group of folks camping. All morning I prepare tents, sleeping bags, sleeping pads, cooking gear, etc for our boat ride out to Gedney Island, just a few miles from our anchorage in Yes Bay.

 

We arrive early afternoon and are thrilled to see a 200-meter long beach with large driftwood logs tossed up in the wrack zone beneath the overhanging branches of spruce, hemlock and cedar. We unload our gear into two areas, our tent zone and 100 meters away our kitchen and campfire spot.

Thursday | June 9th

 

I lead a circuitous circumambulation over moss-covered logs to a peat bog or muskeg. We enjoy the sponginess of the wetland and I point out a carnivorous plant that lives along the margins of small ponds called the roundleaf sundew.

We take on nature-names. I call myself “Greenleaf “and joining me is Lone Wolf , Black Bear, Columbine, Salmon, Misty Fiord and Aguila. I ask folks to come up with a highlight from this week and a story to share around the campfire later in the evening.

Our dinner, campfire and story-telling were quite moving. We enjoyed a new kind of semora, taught by our Aussie friends. Instead of melting the marshmallow on the end of a stick, why not slice open a banana and stick the chocolate and marshmallows inside? What a delight along with sleeping in the incredibly peaceful out-of-doors.

Friday | June 10th

We have an early morning pick-up after hot cocoa and coffee.

All tents down by 6:30.

 

We are laughing and excited about telling everyone onboard the ship about our camping expedition.

 

Tuesday | June 7th

Today we venture to the Tongass National Forest Cascade Creek hiking trail! My cabin-mate and fellow expedition guide Randall Tate and I lead a group up the dramatic Cascade Creek canyon.

It is a technical hike with countless roots, rocks and turns on the 10-inch wide trail with steep, uneven steps and wallows of mud. Many rail-less bridges lead across skunk cabbage gardens. The entire hike follows a fast-moving river. It is an addicting ascent…one always wonders what is around the next bend.

The spirit of adventure on this hike was palpable. We worked very hard and still managed just a 1 mph pace due to the nature of the trail. We have one mis-hap on the way down just above the rushing waterfall, as Nicole slips and displaces her patella. Our week-long Wilderness First Responder training course in Seattle paid-off for us. While Randall straightens the leg, I use my thumb to easily push the patella back into anatomical position. Nicole shouts “I love you” to the surprise of husband Jason. Nicole just felt a tremendous relief from the pain. On a scale of 1 to 10 with 10 being the most pain, Nicole went from an 8 to a 1. I radio the ship for some help and a slow walk out ensues with Nicole and Jason after additional staff arrive at the scene.

 

Monday | June 6th

The highlight today is walking over a push or terminal moraine and onto the snout of the Baird glacier with a group keen on one of the ultimate adventures in the great outdoors. The lowlight (many laughs afterwards) was walking across a bizarre looking terrain of hardened mud that soon jiggles to a state of liquefaction.I am person three in a four-person “rescue” from a mud-sucking, boot-eating session along the glacial snout. It is only slightly terrifying, mainly because it feels like you are being sucked down slowly into quick sand. Perhaps we should call it “slow mud”?

Paul has mud splatter on his face. Janice and Alex have the gray rock flour all over their boots up to their knees on their pants.

Our pick-up spot has changed dramatically due to the tides. Our sister vessel, the M/V Wilderness Adventurer could not make it up against both the river and the katabatic or gravity winds coming off of the glacier. We are all in a festive mood after this exciting adventure.

Sunday | June 5th

We have tweaked the itinerary a bit, which our owner insisted that we can “throw the brochure out the window and come up with the best damn itinerary possible”. I had suggested that we skip Wyndham Bay as our first day (which we did two days ago) simply because it is so close to the spectacular Tracy Arm fiord.

We motor up the latter and see several black bears along the shoreline scraping and slurping-up barnacles.

I am stunned to witness a 1-mile plus receding of the Sawyer Glacier since my first visit here 17 years ago. We put the ship close to a very distinctive waterfall that carves its path amongst a pile of moraine debris plastered to the cliff above the final 200-foot drop. This is where the 36-passenger sister ship M/V Wilderness Explorer that I used to work on (old sister ship made in same location as our current Wilderness Discoverer) would off-load kayakers within sight of the insanely blue tidewater glacier.

We enjoy seeing completely barren rubble as we take small boat tours up a very long mile to mile in a half up to see some massive calvings and spectacular blue ice-bergs (including one that looks like a frozen surfing wave). Indeed, as a cow drops a calf when it gives birth, a glacier drops tons of ice from seracs at its 200 to 300-foot face to give birth to ice bergs, bergy bits and growlers.

High above us by several hundred feet I point out the trim-line, where barren rock that has not seen the light of day for centuries if not many millennia is exposed and meets the vegetation line. It’s very obvious that there has been tremendous thinning in this wastage and ablation zone. Three distinct medial moraines are visible, telling us that there the lateral moraines of three other tributary glaciers feed into this river of ice called the Sawyer Glacier.

Studied since 1945 by the Juneau Icefield Station, these receding glaciers have been the subject of many studies by researchers. They collaborate with the Mauna Loa Observatory on the Big Island of Hawai’i which has marked a 1% increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide, a “greenhouse gas” that has contributed to climate change.

In the afternoon we are blown-away with Alaskan resident killer whales, around 25 to 30 of them. Some of them come directly underneath the ship and right alongside, stunning all of us as we realize our telephoto lenses do not work this close.

What could possibly top this? How about dozens of breaches (rise and break through the surface of the water to create a loud percussion and splash…thought to be a way to communicate with other whales miles away about the location of spotty food resources) from the Humpback Whale?

Better yet…a 45-minute bow-riding session from a dozen Dall’s Porpoise as we pass the Five Fingers Lighthouse in Frederick Sound. They are black and white cetaceans that are much smaller but whose color patterns look like killer whales (but they are much smaller, have a triangular dorsal fin and flat or spade-shaped teeth). Watching them create a rooster tail by moving so fast in the water is incredibly satisfying.

I finally realize the utility of the underwater camera mounted on our bow. The live feed is stunning, strait out of a National Geographic movie. It is shown in the lounge on our large-screen “adventure” television. I remind everyone to get out and listen to them breathing, a very rapid and distinct “two” exhalation followed by a hollow sounding inhalation. I tell those on the bow to go inside and watch them on t.v.. The porpoise directly in front of the bow are pushed on a pressure wave. They don’t have to move their caudal peduncle or tail flukes up and down in rapid motion as the other ones that are on the periphery.

This is as close whale bliss as it gets.

Friday | May 27th

Enjoy a misty day in Misty Fiords National Park, taking guests on spectacular small boat tours in Walker Cove. The scenery is stunning and we are fortunate to spot a black bear along the shoreline along with lots of seabirds and sea ducks such as the Barrows Goldeneye, Surf Scoter and Pigeon Guillemot.

Wednesday | May 25

I met a native of Wrangell, David McHolland, he was born and raised here he sets trap lines for Marten and River Otter and occasionally Wolverine and Wolves. Found out that the Grassy Headlands at the mouth of the Stikine River is a prime stopover on the Pacific flyway for 10,000 Snow Geese, 5,000 Sandhill Crane and has a spring time population of 2,000-5,000 Bald Eagles.

 

Over 100 glaciers feed into the Stikine river which make the water have it's muddy tone.

At 3:18p.m. while still going upriver to see the Shakes glacier bergs in a frozen lake (spotted a Mountain Goat), I announce to the jolly crowd: “42 minutes until ‘all aboard’ back at the ship”. We eventually make it back exactly an

hour later. We then cruise by many islands that I have not seen before…experience another dinner on deck with fabulous scenery and engaging conversation with fellow crew members.

 

Loved when I heard Randall say: “Another rough day at the office!” to me when we were clearly feeling good and perhaps a tad bit of guilty pleasure about being off of the ship enjoying the scenery with all of the good passenger guests on this excellent shore excursion.

 

Thursday | May 26th

Yes! We are in Yes Bay today, anchored in front of the Yes Bay Lodge, a fishing lodge located about 50 floatplane miles north of Ketchikan. This is located on the Cleveland Peninsula of the mainland just a few miles from Revillagigedo Island.

I conduct a couple of snorkeling sessions, one in the morning and the latter in the afternoon. My favorite part was diving down to pick up one of the dozens of huge sunflower stars and showing the guests. I looked like a Rastafarian with it on my head.

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