Alaska: Part 2

Mon 7/7: Endicott Arm, Ford's Terror, Dawes Glacier

I woke up at 5:30 AM, and V woke up not long thereafter. I thought I was just waking up early, though when people later mentioned having been awakened by sounds of the ship weighing anchor at 5:30 in the morning. Maybe the anchor sound had been what had awakened me and I just didn't realize it. Anyway, being up early I shaved and then went to the 6:30 AM yoga session, one of four early risers to do so. Is there a nicer setting for a yoga class than the deck of a ship sailing up an Alaskan fjord towards a glacier? I think maybe not. In addition to the setting, this was the only yoga class I've ever been in that took a spontaneous break to check out harbor seals swimming by. 

Yoga on Deck

After yoga it was time for breakfast (omelette, pumpkin scones) and then getting rain gear and boots for our expeditions. I chose to use their rain pants because mine are old and yucky, but stuck with my own rain coat. I gave myself a choice of boots: I borrowed a pair of theirs, plus I had my neoprene kayak boots. Then it was into the skiffs to explore the Dawes glacier up close and personal.

Our activity of the day was a great, if low exertion introduction to the area. The ship had sailed deep into Endicott Arm and we loaded into little inflatable motorized skiffs, about sixteen people per boat to go up close to the the Dawes glacier, which sits at the head of Endicott Arm. We were lucky to have Jackie Hedgepeth, the resident marine biologist on board our skiff. We had chosen this particular week in part because there'd be a naturalist on board, and Jackie did not disappoint. She's what in old movies would have been described as a pistol, or perhaps as having a lot of moxie. She's a mile-a-minute Energizer Bunny bundle of energy. She is also one of these women who always looks "put together" in a classic way. Bouffant hairstyle, careful make-up, carefully coordinated outfit. Out on the skiff Jackie was a non-stop source of information about the rock formations, the glaciers and the marine life. She pointed out the round bowl shapes in the rock formed by the glaciers versus the V-shaped cuts formed by water. She explained why glacier ice looks blue (the highly compressed ice - it takes 100 inches of snow to make one inch of glacial ice - absorbs visible light except at the blue end of the spectrum). She passed out hot chocolate and came around with a bottle of schnapps to enhance the hot cocoa (it being eleven o'clock in the morning, I declined the schnapps). She took pictures of us with our cameras and hers. She even helped the crew with docking the skiffs.

Selfie at the Dawes Glacier

 

We got to see the glacier calve off some ice, and we got to see lots of harbor seals, just at the end of their pupping season, hauled out on the small ice floes. I spotted a harbor porpoise - a tiny little dolphin (some readers may know these creatures as "nise" - whatever the name, they're adorable) - swimming by. And we were back in time for lunch. I figured out later on that we are *always* back in time for lunch.

In the afternoon we attended an introductory safety lecture about kayaking, mandatory if you want to go kayaking. The good news about it is that it was presented in an entertaining way and was free from major errors. We also took a nap (not during the kayak presentation). At around 4 PM I headed up to the lounge with the intention of reading my book, only to stumble into a lecture on glaciers, plate tectonics, and everything else given by Jackie. I think we got a whole semester of geology in 40 minutes. Jackie finished up as we passed Ford's Terror on our way out of Endicott Arm. We all went out on deck and looked at the scenery.

Dinner was unremarkable, at least until the whales showed up at the mouth of Endicott Arm. Someone spotted some spouts in the distance, then we saw a pair of humpbacks repeatedly breaching and showing their tails and flukes. People kept jumping up and running over to the windows at whichever side the whales were on, completely abandoning their dinners. It was probably Claudia from Denver who spotted the whales first. Claudia and Dave were a couple about our age, traveling with Dave's dad. Claudia was extremely devoted to spotting wildlife and seemed always to have at least part of her attention focused on scanning the water. Dave heads some veterinary medical research foundation and so we actually chatted about grants management and cancer research. I must say that the passengers on this excursion were an accomplished lot: doctors, dentists, nurses and nurse practitioners, CEOs, professors, and a Member of Congress. Lots of teachers too. And one schlepper who does IT project management for a government contractor.

Seals Hangin' Out on the Ice

Another interesting point to tonight's dinner: we had taken on board a National Park Service Wilderness Forest Ranger and someone from the Southeast Alaska Conservation Corps (SEACC). These two guys were out kayaking for nine days, checking on the area, counting seals, pulling invasive plants and doing other eco-tasks. They were happy to be invited on board for a hot meal and to hitch a ride for a bit. They were also happy to talk with us both as a group and individually about what they were doing in the area of preservation. The SEACC guy sat with us at dinner. He had an interesting life story. He had been raised by homesteaders in an isolated cabin in Alaska (Q: "How many people were there in your town?" A:"It was pretty much just us."), went to school in Washington State, grad school at UC Davis, then returned to Alaska to do this kind of work. This was actually his first time in a kayak, and here he was out for a week and a half paddling the Inside Passage.I must mention as well that his mother had been raised in Brooklyn and wound up raising children in the Alaskan wilderness. Now, that's a change of scenery!

Tues, 7/8: Robert's Passage

One of the pleasures cruising is waking up every morning in a different beautiful place. This morning I left my cabin to find us anchored in a cove by Roberts Island in the Frederick Sound.The morning activity was a bushwhack hike on Roberts Island, led by the high energy and fun Megan. Large portions of the Tongass National Forest are undeveloped and so most hiking is by finding your own path rather than walking a defined trail. Since this is a rainforest environment the terrain is wet, lush and thick. Lovely forests of Sitka spruce and alder. The walk was a little bit challenging, including scrambling over fallen trees, climbing hills and pushing through brush, but not too bad. We didn't see any wildlife but we did see bear scat so there was evidence that there were bears about.

And what did you do on your vacation? Looked at poop.

We also were introduced to a particularly nasty plant, devil's club. It's a plant with dinner plate sized leaves, and both the stems and the leaves are loaded with thorns. If you grab one of these you're in for a world of hurt. Interestingly, apparently the plant has medicinal uses in treating diabetes. I'd see, and know to avoid, devil's club on all my hikes in Alaska. It must be a north-western plant, since the book I'm reading, which takes place in Montana, mentions a character walking through a forest of alder and devil's club. We also looked at huge skunk cabbage (an early spring favorite of bears, both because it matures early in the season and because its oxalic acid crystals help stimulate the bears bowels after months of hibernation) and saw some big banana slugs.

And what did you do on your vacation? Learned about bear laxatives. 

In the Woods on the First Bushwhack

While we were out bushwhacking others were doing shorter hikes, paddle-boarding, kayaking or taking tours in the motorized skiffs. In the afternoon I went out with a guided kayak tour, co-led by Mark, the expedition leader, and Tess, a knowledgeable and friendly young woman who is an earnest at-one-with-nature sort of person, though quick with a warm smile. The ship's kayaks are all doubles, which is generally not my preferred choice, but it would up being nice sharing a boat and being the expert helper for someone less experienced. I was paired with Claudia, who of course noticed lots of wildlife - primarily eagles. We paddled up into Roberts Cove, landed for a bit and did another mini bushwhack, where we got to look at more poop - both bear and moose this time. Mark, who is the equivalent of "Julie, your cruise director" of The Love Boat (except his hair is much longer), did a great job over the week of coordinating the activities. There were usually a lot of things going on: various long and short hikes, kayak outings, standup paddle boarding, and skiff rides. Of course, people were constantly changing their minds about what they were going to do. Mark handled it all very smoothly and always with a (only occasionally strained) smile.

After a nice dinner we went to the lounge for Jackie's lecture on humpback whales, interrupted by sightings of Dall's porpoise then, as if on cue, a humpback whale. It was a lecture with a lab class! The whale hung around for quite a while, lunge feeding at the surface. It would come up nose first with its mouth open, grab a bunch of fish or krill or whatever, then dive back down. It never fully breached and never showed its tail, but watching it out there feeding was quite spectacular.

Humpback Whale!

 

Weds 7/9: Thomas Bay, Cascade Falls

In the morning I kayaked with V in a double. This was an "open kayak" meaning that you could go wherever you wanted on your own, provided it was within a very limited perimeter around the ship. We putzed around looking at eagles and a big waterfall. We were out for about an hour overall  We received a mild rebuke upon our return from Tess for having paddled too close to shore (bear risk, apparently); we recovered from this scolding in the hot tub where we took a nice soak.I must say that V is really taking to kayaking too - is there a double in our future? If so, how many more anniversaries do we have left?

Now, the previous evening when they had announced the activities Mark had described one of the hikes, up Cascade Falls, as being a highly challenging five hour killer hike - more like he was trying to scare people away from it than encourage them on. Having heard this description I was leaning towards one of the easier hikes, the Patterson River Trail. the However, after Mark finished his discouraging description Megan came up to the people who had been on the bushwhack she had led the previous day (we happened to mostly be sitting in the same area) and whispered to us that it wasn't so bad as Mark had made it seem and talked the hike up. Well, despite this strange and contradictory description there were so many takers for this hike that they had to run two sections: the originally planned 6:45 AM group and a second group at 12:30, to which I was assigned. My group was led by Tess and consisted of me, two young Australian woman, and a (also Australian) mom with two 12-ish year old girls. The other group was coming out to the trailhead just as our boat hit the shore, and they looked pretty bedraggled. Except for Jackie, who marched out of the forest looking like she was ready to do the hike again. Only her hairstyle was worse for the wear (it was fully restored by the time we saw her again).

Our group's hike was shorter than what the early group did. They were out for six hours, while we were out for maybe 4 1/2. We turned back perhaps a little earlier than planned because the mom of the girls got to her point of having had enough. The morning group had apparently gotten into a mindset to push on and on, trying to reach a lake down the trail (ultimately they turned around before they got there). They wound up staying out for an hour longer than planned, while we were out an hour less time than planned. I later compared notes with Sean, a lawyer turned ju jitsu instructor whom I had met on the bushwhack, and by turning around when we did we indeed missed some of the more challenging elements - log crossings over more significant chasms, and the like. Still, it was indeed a challenging hike, up alongside the same waterfall we had seen from the kayak in the morning. Walking along narrow, slippery planks and logs. Scrambles up and down steep terrain. Overall elevation gain of over 1,000 feet. I'd say that some of the rock scramble hikes in Shenandoah National Park are actually more technically challenging, but this had the complication of being very wet, muddy and slippery. How muddy was it? Well, they literally hosed us off when we got back onto the Endeavor. And then hosed off our shoes some more. The hike was really worth it. Standing in the spray of a powerful waterfall. Gorgeous, lush forest. Tall cliff faces. Really marvelous sights. And a workout - my quads hurt by the time I got back and still ached the next day, which fortunately was a more restful day as we were spent the morning cruising Frederick Sound. 

Cascade Falls Group

In the evening we took advantage of a tour of the engine room with Jeff, the boat's engineer. Like many of the crew he had an interesting life's story as a serially itinerant wanderer. His story was at least as interesting as the description of the reverse osmosis desalinator and the Diesel engines, even to me.

Up in the lounge Ken, one of the expedition guides, gave a somewhat meandering lecture about the history and Tlingit lore of "ABC's" of the local islands: Admiralty, Baranof and Chicagoff. Ken's lecture had the usual distractions of a spouting whale and a gorgeous sunset. We learned that you can tell the history of the water temperatures that a salmon has lived in from its scales and that you can actually "bar code" a salmon by putting it in a known succession of water temperatures - which apparently is done for research tracking purposes. We also learned that the traditional Tlingit name of Admiralty Island is Kootznahoo, meaning Fortress of the Brown Bear. Ken is one of the older guides and clearly has devoted a lot of time over the years to learning about and developing a deep appreciation of the flora, fauna and culture of the area.