July 3, 2022: North: To Alaska!
It’s a new chapter in our adventures: the first time we
have officially taken Tenacious to Alaska! Getting to Alaska by boat means leaving
the relative safety – and comfort – of the Inside Passage, with its friendly
islands that block the capricious winds and seas of the Pacific, at least for a
few hours. We have been on the “outside” many times, but it’s our first time
crossing the chunk of the Pacific Ocean called Dixon Entrance.
Captain Pat has been poring over weather maps and forecasts
for days, watching for conditions that will give us a smooth crossing. Today is
The Day. Winds are forecast to be 5-10 knots and seas two feet or less. We are
anchored near Prince Rupert. As the early sun brightens, we pull the anchor and
carefully navigate Venn Passage, a treacherously narrow and convoluted shortcut
that will save us two or three hours.
Blessedly, the weather data is spot on, and the waters of
Dixon Entrance are glassy smooth.
We clear US Customs by phone, simplifying our transit into
Ketchikan. As we approach the city, things quickly get exciting. In the narrow
channel that runs along the busy waterfront, fishing boats vie with pleasure
boats, ferries, supply barges, seaplanes and channel markers to make their way.
Everybody must deal with the enormous cruise ships, four of which are in town
today, and the huge Alaska Ferry that shares the channel with us all just now.
Watching our charts, we search the seething waterfront for the
entry to our harbor. The wind comes up, pushing our bow around just as the
harbormaster tells us our mooring is all the way inside, in a slip that runs
alongside main dock, parallel to shore, and right at the bottom of the ramp to
land; a temptation to which Jake will surely succumb. Options are limited, so I
grab the bow line and Captain Pat starts down into the harbor, past the rows of
boat sterns on either side. A gust of wind catches our upswept bow and tries to
push us off course, but the intrepid Captain Pat guns the engine just in time
to wrestle the bow back under control and land us in the slip. He has to ram the
engine into reverse to stop us, but he makes it look easy, and it’s a piece of
cake for me to jump off the deck with the bow line and take a wrap around the
bull rail. We are in Ketchikan!
We have successfully made the infamous crossing from Prince
Rupert, across the open water of Dixon Entrance and up Revillagigedo Channel to
Ketchikan, AK.
July 12, 2022: Petroglyph Beach, Wrangell, AK
I’ve always been interested in the native cultures of the
Pacific Northwest, so when I hear about the petroglyphs (rock carvings) at Petroglyph Beach just outside of the little town of Wrangell, I’m all over it. We don sea
boots and rain gear, because, 1) It’s Alaska! 2) It's been raining for the past month! 3) It’s what everyone wears here! We spring for a taxi (THE taxi, as it turns out) and head for the beach. The rocks with images are scattered all over the beach. It's like a treasure hunt to find them. The sand and broken shell of the beach are rearranged by each tide, and some of the rocks are partially or completely buried, Previous visitors have dug some of them out already. Others, we find on our own.
Research says that they are quite old. Some are
identifiably
of Tlingit origin. The Tlingit, Haida and other tribes have inhabited these
shores for thousands of years. Other images appear to be even older. The older rock carvings include spirals and odd monkey-like faces.
These ancient shapes have been found in rock carvings and early art all over the world. How do you explain
that? I wish I knew more. July 20, 2022: In Search of Grizzlies
Mole Harbor, on Admiralty Island, has a reputation for having
lots of grizzly bears, which explains why we’re here. Because of depth, our anchorage is a long way out, but with my trusty
binoculars I scan the distant river estuary in search of thick brown coats. Finally, I can
see several creatures in the distance. There are four or five of them. They
aren’t big rocks or tree stumps (a mistake I have made before), because they
are moving. It's pouring rain so we wait a bit for it to let up before we launch the dinghy
for reconnaissance. The river estuary is wide and deep, thick with
bear-nutritious sedge grass (also known as ‘bear grass’, for friends who have ordered
flower arrangements!) with a maze of shallow sandy-bottomed channels that meander through hummocks of sedge. The salmon use
these water pathways to return to their natal spawning place. We can see salmon milling around in the crystal clear water,
jumping and finning in the shallows.
It's not easy to find a way into the estuary. The river
delta reaches far out into the bay. Patrick stands in the dinghy’s stern with a
tiller extension in his hand, seeking the deeper channels that will carry us up
without having to resort to oars. I’m seeing more brown animals scattered
around the shoreline in the distance. So exciting! We have been searching every
shoreline for bears for weeks!
We try one channel, then another when that one shallows
out. We reach the point where we can’t go farther, though we are still a long
way from the animals. Once we are still, dinghy grounded on glacial till, I can focus
the binoculars. I zoom in on the nearest critter. I’m looking at a bear that
seems to have a big rack of antlers. I start laughing helplessly. I turn to Patrick
and explain that the grizzly bears have antlers and flippy black tails. Without missing a beat, Patrick says, “Grizzly
deer!” I know ‘grizzly deer’ will be one of our inside jokes for years to come.
July 22, 2022: Dawes Glacier and Ford’s Terror
Sunshine at last! It’s a glorious day and we are on our way
down Endicott Arm on our way to Dawes Glacier. It’s a trip of almost 7 miles
from our anchorage.
We started seeing icebergs when we came into Holkham Bay yesterday.
The closer we get to the glacier, the larger and more frequent they become. The
packed-down density of glacial ice makes them very heavy, not to mention that
they really are bigger underwater, so Captain Pat studiously avoids any bumps with our
hull.
We watch one berg suddenly turn upside
down and begin rocking back and
forth as if alive! They melt into fanciful shapes,
with columns and holes, pillars that stand straight up out of the water. And
the colors! Heavenly shades of aqua and turquoise blue, framed by the milky blue-green water off the face of the glacier and the reflected blue sky. By the time we get to
within ¼ mile of the glacier face, there are many dozens of them all around us and
I’m thinking of redecorating our bedroom in shades of glacier blue.
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| Dawes Glacier in Endicott Arm |
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The glacier itself is astonishing. It looks like a huge,
splintered ice road marching relentlessly to the edge of the sea. From the deck
we hear loud thunderclaps of fracturing ice, and even the roars of a couple of
calves falling from the glacier’s edge. The surrounding mountains soar from
untold depths below us to thousands of feet above. We are surrounded by floating
sculptures. Such majesty! It’s difficult to turn back.
It will take several hours to get back to our anchorage so we need to put our skates on in order to time our entrance to Ford’s Terror for
low-water slack. Ford’s Terror anchorage is legendary among boaters around the world.
It was named in the 1880s for a sailor who entered the inlet at slack tide but
found himself stuck there for 6 hours until the tide turned and he could get out
again.
There is a tricky and twisty, narrow and shallow passage between high rock
walls through which we must pass to get to the anchorage. When the tide turns,
huge volumes of water are either trying to enter or escape the inner bay, creating
a tidal rapids with overfalls of more than three feet high and currents up to 14 knots!
And this area has never been thoroughly charted. So – we need to go in when the
water level inside the inlet is the same as the water level outside. Because the
waters in this huge glacier basin are a milky, opalescent jade green with all
of the silt of the rocks ground to “flour” by the glaciers, it’s impossible to see
hazards below the waterline. The cruising guides say the narrows can be transited
at low-water slack, but it takes some cojones.
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Fords Terror entrance
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It’s now or never. With only me and a blue iceberg as
witnesses, Patrick enters the narrow channel. I’m standing on the bow, holding
on to the furled foresail, leaning far out over the steel pulpit and hoping if
there is an uncharted rock or shoal, I’ll be able to detect it and point the
way to safer waters. The only thing I see in the water is a vague, slightly
darker patch of something that is probably kelp, swaying with the current.
After that it’s nothing but pale-green, opaque water.
Beside me, mountains rise
directly out of water. A few evergreen trees cling to impossibly tiny ledges,
their branches touching the mountain from base to treetop. Moss and brush find
crevices in which to grow and thrive. Waterfalls, from tiny trickles to wide,
lacy curtains and roaring deluges line the passage walls. A couple of ravens are
conversing, and their uncanny croaks and chuckles echo down the channel.
After we’re through the nastiest couple of hundred yards, Patrick
tells me that at one point we had less than two feet of water under our
keel. I’m glad I didn’t know that while I
was on bow watch.
July 23: Ford’s Terror Anchorage
We were in awe of the sheer enormity of this stunning place
when we came in last night, but it was raining pretty hard and low clouds obscured
the tallest peaks. Rain continues this morning, but it’s clearing up and the
clouds are burning off. Ribbons of mist that wound their way overnight between
mountain peaks and among the trees are silently stealing away. As the marine
layer lifts, this stunning place is slowly revealing itself. Time for a dinghy
cruise!
There are waterfalls everywhere, plumped up by the rain. From
tiny trickling rivulets in narrow crevasses, to wide, lacy flows over water-smoothed
rock, to roaring cascades that begin thousands of feet above our heads the parade of waterfalls continues as we putt around Fords Terror. A huge bowl of bare rock, neck-hurtingly high above our heads, spills a stream of pure water into the valley below.
We take the inflatable over to the bottom of a lacy fall that polished bare rock down to the water's edge. Patrick nudges us right up to the rock. In the front seat, I'm getting wet!
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There is a grizzly bear in there, I swear!
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Just before we pull anchor, my endless glassing of the shoreline with my trusty binoculars pays off. There is a big, healthy grizzly on shore. It ambles along the rocky beach a bit before turning toward the forest. He hangs out among the salmonberry bushes for a while before slipping back into the narrow strip of woods at the mountains base.
We are awed by God's creation. Pictures will only begin to tell the story of the enormity
and the beauty of this place, because I have difficulty finding words.
Lowe Inlet has been one of our favorite destinations since our first visit years ago. There is a waterfall there, with perfect fishing-bear "platforms" one each side. We anchor in the outflow directly in front of the falls, and are close enough to see if the bears are fishing from the foredeck.
The
Universe has brought us here at the right time: salmon are running and
we have two black bears taking turns fishing. The bear on the right
fishes for a while, then when the bear on the left side emerges from the
forest to fish, the right-side bear scampers back into the woods. The
left-side bear must be the alpha. He catches several salmon as we observe. The eagles and ravens watch carefully for the right moment to snatch a scrap or two after he leaves each carcass.
