Search results

Tuesday | July 12

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.

Where is gMack now? InnerSea Discoveries Expedition Week 9

It has been an exciting week on the InnerSea Discoveries Expedition Click Links Below to read daily updates from Week 9 of the Trip:

June 25 - July 1, 2011

 

Saturday | June 25th

Ketchikan

Sunday | June 26th

El Capitan Passage, Caves and the Oyster Pick-up

Monday | June 27th

Klawock and Sea Otter Sound

Tuesday | June 28th

Little Port Walter

Wednesday | June 29th

Patterson Bay:  Scat and Cataracts!

Thursday |June 30th

Frederick Sound

Friday | July 1st

The Green Flush and an Ice Swim

 

 

Tuesday | June 14

Big Port Walter & Baranof Island

Today I have the pleasure of leading a half-day hike in the dazzling rainforest at Lover's Cove in Big Port Walter.

Check out the video below:

Most of the hike is bush-whacking through 5 to 10-foot tall salmon-berry shrubs.  Huge sitka spruce and western hemlock trees towered above us.  Rows of large trees grow on fallen nurse logs as we follow a meandering salmon stream.  

We find fresh bear scat full of teeth and hooves of a sitka black-tailed deer.

People are in a Zen-like state of awe.  While snacking, I address our group of intrepid travelers and say:  “This is it folks…the way the rest of the world used to be.  Prime salmon spawning habitat beneath surrounds us on all sides.  Streams in California used to be chock-full of salmon with grizzly bears feeding on them.  Now the streams are mostly empty and degraded.  The last brown bear in California was shot in 1924.  Extirpated…extinct.”

We have time for a group photo in front of a fallen giant and head back to the shore where a waiting small boat takes us back to the comforts of the “mother ship”.

Tonight we cruise a couple of dozen nautical miles to the north in Chatham Strait to another beautiful fiord.  Guests and crew come out on the decks for the ever-changing scenery and a chance to see wildlife.

The lighting, coupled with the fresh smells and the sounds of waterfalls cascading down the cliffs is very stimulating.  The gentle hum of the engine cruising at 4 to 5-knots is rather soothing.  Coming into a bay or fiord for the first time is sublime.  So new, so fresh…the water looks like oil, especially the reflections of sky and clouds.  The smallest waves create oblong circles reflecting blue sky and streams by like a moving Monet painting.

The songs of the crepuscular animals—the thrushes--serenade us as we move deeper into Patterson Bay to our anchorage.

Tuesday | May 31st

Everybody is excited as we enter a beautiful fiord named Patterson Bay, located on the southeast side of Baranof Island. It is a designated Wilderness Area right off of Chatham Strait. Everyone is on deck soaking in the scenery including the owner of the company Dan Blanchard. He leans on the rail in front of the bridge, telling us about his excitement on his first trip here while scouting this new itinerary we are presently embarking upon.