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Saturday | July 23
October 3, 2011 by admin
Filed under InnerSea Discoveries
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”.
Sunday | July 17
October 3, 2011 by admin
Filed under InnerSea Discoveries
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
October 3, 2011 by admin
Filed under InnerSea Discoveries
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
where is gmack now? innersea discoveries expedition week 11
It has been an exciting week on the InnerSea Discoveries Expedition Click Links Below to read daily updates from Week 11 of the Trip:
July 10 - July 16, 2011
Sunday | July 10
“Kayaking, Sauntering, Kelp-Bugling”
Monday | July 11
"Totems, Plankton, Weather"
Tuesday | July 12
"Invertebrates and Our Sister-Ship"
Wednesday | July 13
"Phantasmagorical Seascapes"
"Tidal Ebb & Flow"
Friday | July 15
"Killer Whales"
Saturday | July 16
"The Capitol City of Juneau"
Saturday | July 16
September 26, 2011 by admin
Filed under InnerSea Discoveries
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.
Tuesday | July 12
September 26, 2011 by admin
Filed under InnerSea Discoveries
Blashke Islands
“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”
-Henry David Thoreau
The expedition team is up at 0600 for scouting hikes and kayaks in a place we have not been to all season. A small-craft advisory was in effect for Chatham Strait, hence the change in the itinerary for the next three days.
I lead a walk on the north-east side of a complicated but small archipelago of islands. The far reaches of the arm where our group of adventurous hikers are dropped off is an incredibly rich area for intertidal invertebrates. The channel connects with an inner bay only at high tide.
Brightly colored leather stars cover a long and thick bed of mussels.
Dozens of tidepool sculpins are scattered about in tide pools, while a couple of Pacific Staghorn Sculpins succumbed to stressors with their last breaths in the shallow and heated tide-pools.
Air temperatures reached close to 80-degrees Fahrenheit, a veritable heat-wave in Alaska.
We enjoy a couple of hours of bush-whacking to a muskeg or peat bog. Plants include Shore Pine (Pinus contorta various contorta), the carnivorous round-leaf sundew, Labrador tea, sphagnum mosses, cotton grass, and dwarf hemlocks growing out of the acidic soils.
Upon our return to the inner bay of the island complex, everybody wades into the water to clean off the sweat built up from our inland foray.
In the evening everyone gets up on deck for the evening light show along the Wrangell Narrows that splits Kupreanof and Mitkof Islands. I give some interpretation of the navigational markers as we pass through this famous passage. Word is out amongst passengers and crew, that we will be passing—for the first time this summer season—our sister ship, the M/V Wilderness Adventurer.
We all get out on the decks and give a group yell as we pass each other port-to-port at about 5 nautical miles per hour.
Monday | July 11
September 26, 2011 by admin
Filed under InnerSea Discoveries
Klawock
“The white man must treat the beasts of this land as his brothers. What is man without the beasts? If all the beasts were gone, we would die from a great loneliness of spirit…for whatever happens to the beasts also happens to the man. All things are connected. Whatever befalls the earth befalls the children of earth.” --Chief Seattle, Puget Sound Suwamish Tribe 1854
More sunshine! We awake early and enjoy the slow cruise and docking at the pier in the town of Klawock, located on the windward side of Prince of Wales Island.
Our Tlingit hosts take us on a walk to see the totem-carving shed.
We also see the longhouse that holds the newly carved and painted totems.
A ¼-mile away behind the local shopping mall lies an empty lot that has dozens of old totems lined up in a row, exposed to the sun and rain. On the 1-mile walk back toward the ship, we visit the totem park at the center of town. Celebrations and pole-raising will take place in early August for 5 or 6 totems. Years of hard work and carving have gone into these amazing totems.
I have a couple of volunteers help me with a plankton tow on the pier. The pier lies in the middle of an estuary, where the river meets the sea. We can see the bounty of life floating beneath the ship including schooling fish, ctenophores and the lions mane jellyfish.
Back aboard, I set-up two stereoscopes and pour the contents of the plankton tow into specimen dishes for observation.
In the afternoon, we are back in Sea Otter Sound. Our wildlife spotters are able to find a couple of sea otter rafts. An announcement from the bridge alerts guests about a small-craft advisory in effect. Therefore, we won’t be crossing Chatham Strait over to Baranof Island.
As a result of the small-craft warning, we’ll be looking at an itinerary change that we all will be excited about. It sure is appreciated when folks on an expedition-style voyage have a flexible attitude, adapting to different circumstances!
The unknowns on any trip add to the excitement! Our expedition leader and captain spend hours pouring over the charts to determine what would provide the most interesting alternative (to sea-sickness and possible damage to items on the ship).
Sunday | July 10
September 26, 2011 by admin
Filed under InnerSea Discoveries
El Capitan
“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 “The Mountains of California”
All of our guests are asked to go through our three “station rotation” trainings in kayaking, stand-up paddleboarding, small boat and bear safety.
Each “evolution” occurs in a different area of the ship (two in the lounge and one on the top deck).
After grabbing paddle jackets and depositing them in the lockers, adventure-seekers are ready for disembarking on our first full day of activities at Prince of Wales Island.
We anchor at the north end of El Capitan Passage where Dry Pass enters a bay approximately ½ mile wide by 3 miles long.
Despite the fact that there has been heavy logging in the past (clear cuts are visible along with a logging road on the north shore that leads to a small, private lodge), the place is peaceful and scenic.
My job this morning is to provide a “kayak clinic” for beginning kayakers out in the bay. I demonstrate paddling techniques, bracing, how to turn around, get the rudder up and down among other pointers.
“We could try the ‘Eskimo Roll’ if you’d like?”, I asked jokingly. The temperature of the waters here are in the high 40’s to low 50’s Fahrenheit, or about 10 degrees Celsius. If we were to practice rolling and submerging, we’d want to don dry suits.
Highlights along the shoreline include a Sitka black-tailed deer (doe with fawns) browsing on grasses above the beach wrack or strand zone, bald eagles at their nest, breaching salmon and best of all: Sunshine!
On our way back to the ship, I recruit other kayakers to help find macro-algaes, in particular the bull kelp. The pneumatocyst or air float can mimic the head of an otter, especially when there is a wind chop or swell on the sea surface. We find some un-attached Nereocystis leutkeana floating with its holdfast attached to a tiny rock. We haul it aboard and put it in a bucket for further examination later today.
In the afternoon I lead a less intense version of a forest walk that doesn’t include 367 steps up a steep hill to a cave.
After my introduction explaining safety in bear country, I address my group of intrepid travellers with the theme for the day, one that has been a favorite of mine over the four decades that I’ve been leading interpretive walks:
“Folks, instead of hiking, we will saunter—serendipitously--along these Forest Service roads. Horace Walpole, a British writer in the mid-1700’s, wrote a fairy tale called the ‘Three Princes of Serendip’. They had a knack for the unexpected, for discovering things that they had no idea they’d find. So let’s use all of our senses and see what we might come across over the next 90-minutes.”
Our finds included the stinky raceme of the skunk cabbage, scatological findings from several mammals, squirrel pine cone middens, flowers, mushrooms and various birds that I identified “by ear”, amongst other delightful finds.
Back aboard, I give a talk entitled “The Multifarious Uses of Nereocystis leutkeana”, a demonstration of the marvelous seaweed called the “bull kelp”. There are a lot of histrionics involved, including audience participation and hand-held specimens.
Here’s a few of the highlights: • Bull Kelp is an annual that can grow to 20 meters • The range of this nearshore brown algae is from central California to Alaska • The decimation of the (urchin-eating) Sea Otter by the Russians led to an increase in the herbivorous (kelp-loving) sea urchins and a subsequent decrease in kelp and what the kelp forest harbors, including many dozens of invertebrates and fishes • Native American uses include food and medicine, and recreational uses including ceremonial speaking tube, musical instruments, siphoning hose, jump rope, lion tamer, target practice, etc.
I entertain folks by using a knife to cut the kelp specimens and volunteers entertain everyone by using the hollow stipe as a trumpet-like horn, bugling the announcement for dinner!
Saturday | July 9
September 14, 2011 by admin
Filed under InnerSea Discoveries
“If I had influence with the good fairy who is supposed to preside over the christening of all children, I should ask that her gift to each child in the world be a SENSE OF WONDER so indestructible that it would last throughout life, as an unfailing antidote against boredom and disenchantments of later years, the sterile preoccupation with things that are artificial, the alienation from the sources of our strength.” --Rachel Carson
All of the M/V Wilderness Discoverer crew forms a line off of the ship on the dock and we shake hands, hug and express our fond farewells to passenger-guests. Folks are very thankful for the natural history interpretive talks I gave over the week. My favorite compliment was one that spread over the ship about a search engine like Google called “Greg-gle”. A guest explained: “Instead of finding an answer by Googling, we think the best way to get an answer is to Greg-gle a query. You were so full of amazing answers on a multitude of subjects.”
One passenger said I would make an amazing minister with my views on Nature. Another said that I was more than a PhD…that I must have several honorary degrees with all of my knowledge on a variety of subjects. An Aussie stated I should run for President and that I would be famous in all of Australia for my ice-swimming and imitation of a seal on an ice-berg.
My fellow colleagues get a boost from the many compliments they received for a job well done. Each one of us, with our outgoing personalities and the pride we take in our jobs, makes small-ship cruising a big hit in the cruise industry. We feel good in knowing that our new company is profitable, as we hear rumors that InnerSea Discoveries may be purchasing some new vessels for upcoming itineraries next year. Kudos to the home office for their expertise in choosing this itinerary and recruiting great guides and crew. We are all giving memories for a lifetime for our guests.
After preparing the ship for the next group of guests, we have about an hour to ourselves onshore for R&R or personal business. It is fun to see how busy this town can get with a huge cruise ship in port!
where is gmack now? innersea discoveries expedition week 10
It has been an exciting week on the InnerSea Discoveries Expedition Click Links Below to read daily updates from Week 10 of the Trip:
July 2 - July 9, 2011
Saturday | July 2
TURNOVER DAY = SWABBING THE DECKS
Sunday | July 3
GLACIER CALVING, SEALS & WHALES
Monday | July 4
HAPPY 4TH OF JULY, EVERYBODY!
Tuesday | July 5
MOOSE PELLETS
Wednesday | July 6
CHIEF SHAKES LODGE
SNORKELING AND BANJO PLAYING
Friday | July 8
CLAM-EATING BEAR
Saturday | July 9
“WE NEED THE GREGgle APP!”
