This is a lovely morning - almost makes getting up worth it.
Small world: As I checked in the clerk said “Gustavus! I’ve never heard of that one”, and the lady at the next desk turned round and said “Oh, I lived there for fourteen years”. Gustavus isn’t big.
Bartlett Cove is unbelievably beautiful this evening. A campsite in the rain forest and a gorgeous sunset over the mountains.
I needn’t have worried about working out where to cross to the West side of the bay. For a number of reasons (many of them with brown fur, big teeth and long claws) the West arm is a bad idea, so I’m going to head up the East arm towards Muir Inlet.
Do I want a beer? Or something to eat? Habit says “yes”, but my internal clock replies “are you crazy? It’s 2AM, even if the sun is still setting”. Time to go back to the tent.
Small world again: In the next tent was a couple in, I think, their late forties with a son just two months older than David. They are from Bloomfield Hills MI and are teachers at the school attached to the beautiful stone church. They have just returned from four days of paddling in the Beardslee Islands.
Yesterday’s feeling of being somewhat lost is completely gone, and this place already feels like home.
I saw the whale! Over on the other side of the cove I finally saw the humpback that I’ve been hearing.
High tide is at 13:30 - I hope that I finish eating and get the boat assembled in time. If not, well… something will work out.
Now - here’s an idea: Don’t worry about the tide, pack my gear in the boat and paddle South towards Point Gustavus for a couple of hours. The turn around and come back here. That way I get to see more, and also get to the kayak and slide presentations that I mostly missed yesterday. It also gives me the chance to call home. Another idea: If I come back in time, I could take the Spirit of Adventure and see the West arm too. Sometimes things are only obvious if you stop aiming for the goal. Perhaps it’s a Guy Thing (“kill the deer!”). Now I feel much more relaxed, which is, after all, the point.
The birds here are rather wonderful, too, although I don’t recognize many of them. In the campground I saw a tiny long-nosed shrew going about its business totally unworried by my presence.
This evening’s dinner was, let us say, uncomplicated. Two cans of beans and a Guinness. At least I used a bowl and mug instead of just the cans.
I’ve just been to an excellent presentation on the park, and tomorrow I’ll head North. Just like any sane person would be, I’m a little nervous at doing this alone, and tonight I feel a little… tense? Time for bed, I think.
Something must be hunting in the water in front of me because a fish keeps jumping. Right now there is a silence so deep that any sounds are just lost in it. I’ll start packing to catch the high tide due at 14:00.
The channel turned out to be easy, and the incoming tide rushed me past the shallows (I’d prefer not to fight that current) and was soon alone among the Beardslee Islands, passing through channels that reminded me a little of rivers around the Chesapeake. There was that strangeness of scale here, though, that made everything too small until something like a kayak gave it perspective. The sounds from two fishing boats seemed to fill the silence until I came out into the bigger water by Eider Island where, naturally enough, the first thing that I did was to get lost. I quickly realized that the compass was right while I was wrong and got back on course. That trip up through the islands was absolutely magical; it was like nothing that I have ever seen or imagined. There were many birds, and every time that I looked behind, there was a seal following me. The main thing, though, was the bay itself. I have compared old growth forests to being in a great cathedral, but in the bay I see the hand of God, not of man.
Suddenly noticing that I was hungry, I stopped this afternoon on an island on the threshold of the bay itself to prepare my gourmet lunch -- cheese, crackers and yet another of those awful fruit pies of which I bought a lifetime supply (10). As I drifted munchingly away, a moose family appeared on the shore, and followed me for some distance, perhaps a quarter of a mile, along the South shore of the island. People who think moose are ugly cannot have seen them at the right time in a place like this.
It has rained throughout the day, and I’m concerned about both cameras. The guaranteed waterproof radio is no longer a worry because it doesn’t work at all. It’s nearly 10PM now, and although I have more on my mind it’s getting a little too dark to write.
I lay awake for rather a long time last night listening to bears around the tent and wondering whether I still had a boat (which was tethered to a large rock by 150ft of line).
Yep, the radio’s toast, too. Nevertheless, I feel fine this morning, albeit somewhat sleepy. Am returning to Bartlett Cove where, no doubt, I will find plenty to do.
Time for a decision. My plan had assumed that I would reduce the risk of traveling alone by carrying a VHF radio. Unfortunately, my waterproof radio was designed with the Lower 48 States in mind, and an afternoon of Alaskan rain has converted it into a rather small anchor. After a lot of soul searching I decided that I would not continue up the bay without the radio. I still don’t know if that was a good decision, although it was certainly a sensible one.
I woke around midnight last night and looked out on a deep misty twilight. I’ve never seen anything like it, and despite its dream-likeness, am sure that it was no dream. It never became truly dark last night, although neither was it truly light. Not light enough to notice the water in the tent, anyway.
It has begun to rain again, and with the sort of determination that tells me this is not unusual. I suspect that breakfast, breaking camp and loading the boat is going to be a dampening experience.
Right now, up on the top of the Fairweather Range, the snow is falling heavily on an ice field. I wonder what the world will look like when my rain of today is finally freed from the glacier. Will it be hundreds of years from now? Thousands?
I checked the video camera and radio again. The camera’s as dead as a doornail (no surprise) and the radio just mumbles to itself.
I just had a shock – a big humming and buzzing outside. When I calmed down I realized that it sounded like a humming bird passing by.<
Time to get moving
I’m sitting on a rock on the foreshore eating breakfast. I hear seals, loons and many other birds that I don't recognize. Earlier, I heard the snorting of whales, and once I saw a black back above the water.
A few minutes ago I walked down to the water. The place is absolutely teeming with life! Starfish and small urchins everywhere, anemones, kelp, sea cucumbers, barnacles, mussels, snails, clams… In Los Angeles I saw a fountain that invited you to walk among its many small jets that squirted at random – and here the same thing happens as you walk among the clams on the beach. Just offshore two loons are swimming peacefully and calling to each other.
I must still be nervous because I keep hearing bears – wonder what they really are. I was down by the waterline earlier when a loud “GRUFF!” Came from behind a large rock and I must have jumped a foot. It was a seal clearing its throat. That gave me quite an adrenaline rush.
A note about food: I’ve noticed that everything has more taste here. I opened up one of those fruit bars (“Sweet Surprise”) and could almost see the cloud of flavor escaping. This leads me to think about the way that we deliberately overload our senses (like the odd hyper-shininess of cars at camp). I will remember this and try to do something about it. Live more simply? By the way: If being here doesn’t make those $#@&! “Fruit Pies” taste good, then nothing will.
The tide is creeping up the shore towards the boat. I’m glad now that I didn’t pull it further up the beach at high tide last night. The sun is creeping through the clouds – time to find my shades.
The sun is properly out now, and the weather is pleasant. I was visited again by two loons for a while, but the main flying life now is a huge population of flies – every one of which seems to be in love with me.
Despite lingering disappointment, it’s good to be back. I like it here. I’m eating one of those yummy fruit pies, and have a great idea what to do with the rest of them: I’ll hand feed them to “problem” bears so that they don’t associate humans with food. I’m very tired, but today’s journey was worth doing one thousand times over. I started by paddling West along the North of the Beardslees and found the feeling of wonder again. By the time I launched (well, floated off, actually) the weather was very nice. As I moved along, the surface of the water became glassy calm for me to pass through a huge (huge!) flock of oystercatchers. I saw no more whales, but there were several porpoise fins undulating through the water. Such a feeling of serenity, floating along with a sense of going somewhere without movement. As I started south several seals escorted me from oystercatcher territory to sandpiper territory. There were thousands of them, sometimes letting me quite close before flying off. I had a very strong impression of the “fullness” of the bay, both full of life and the way in which the water seemed to be brimming over. The scene was by no means silent: sounds not only from birds but from snorting seals and the occasional mystery splash.
I didn’t really stop for lunch, just a pause on the rocky shore of an unnamed island to put food to hand, and then drifting as I ate. There was never a better restaurant.
More than any route I have ever taken this was different on the return trip. In fact, I wondered several times if I was really in the right place, but I always was. Perhaps it was the difference in the weather, but perhaps the real difference was in me and in the way I was seeing it. There was no real need to get back to Bartlett Cove tonight (the southern Beardslees are sheltered and safe) but I decided that I would if I could. And I did. The critical point is the channel between Lester Island and the mainland that has water for two hours either side of high tide. I made it through just in time, and had an exciting ride being pushed over tidal standing waves into the choppy water of Bartlett Cove.
An oddity was that, even though I knew it was impossible, I was convinced that I would arrive in Bartlett Cove downhill, like a ski slope. That sounds more like a dream than a conviction, but it was still a shock to come around the last corner in the channel and see the dock in front of me instead of below.
My arms and shoulders are pretty tired. Pushing a loaded double for, oh, 12 miles each way (?) is more work than I thought. Tomorrow I will rest.
Thought: We’ve run out of words for the place I have been. A hundred years ago I might have said that it was of awful and terrible aspect and been understood. But what now? Majestic is too small a word.
I just spent a while talking to a Good Guy called Don who spends his summers here as a Parks Service volunteer after retiring from the Navy (Electrical Engineer on subs & surface ships). Small world again – he spent years in Crystal City, and his girlfriend is from Aberystwyth (Wales). Interesting fact from Don: there has never been a bear attack recorded on a group of three or more people. Perhaps they find three course meals a tad too formal.
My senses are being allowed to work properly here. I can hear things that would normally become part of the background, like the texture of this paper as I write, the beating of a bird’s wings and the workings of the video camera (while it still had any). It’s been a while since my vision had so much bigness to understand; it’s only after four days that I’m beginning to really see this place, and I certainly had trouble taking in yesterday’s travels. Even my sense of smell is working better, and I know that I don’t smell too well (or too good at the moment – I’ll have a shower later).
Anyway. Mechanical stuff. What have I learned?
This place is about two miles from the lodge. The sounds here are very different from those on the bay. Instead of hundreds of bird calls with whale and seal splashes, the sounds here are small: a single bird in the trees, a small rodent in the marsh grass, the sound of a stream, an insect buzz. And so green! Everywhere you look there is something growing. It’s nearly high tide, so most of the rocks are covered.
Anyway… when I left my rocky perch by the Bartlett River yesterday I found out what I had failed to notice. It was high tide. The problem with high tide was that the only way back involved wading. Oddly enough, I had a towel with me so I was able to continue with dry feet after wading through mud and washing my feet off. Some of that mud didn’t seem to have anything solid underneath it.
I’m wondering about boat noises. For me the noises of a boat (splashing, clinking, rumbling of engines) are not really noise; they’re part of the environment. Perhaps these sounds would spoil the trip for other people.
I wonder how much difference the radio would actually have made. I suppose that, had I been wearing my dry suit (which I would for a crossing to the marbles) it could easily have saved me had I been in the water. I have seen lots of accident report summaries, and in many (most?) of them there is a common thread: something goes wrong, the decision is made to push on, something else goes wrong (repeat as necessary). I stopped at the first stage. Perhaps too soon, but I owe a debt to my wife and son. But it doesn’t really matter anyway (that I returned) – I’m having a great time anyway.
We’re just coming up to the second drop-off near Composite Island. Here’s what Alex’s group took for four people for four days:
Those glaciers aren’t just for decoration – they’re great big reservoirs of cold. The water up here is glassy smooth and colored a cold green, with chunks of ice floating in it. We just passed Queen and Rendu Inlets and are heading up bay again.
Seals like the pack ice at the base of the glacier because land animals can’t get at them and orca won’t go there. As a result, it’s Seal City. This inlet is the Ice Queen: Cold, regal, hard, irresistible, pitiless and beautiful. Unforgiving.
Now we’re coming to the last drop-off, in Geike Inlet. Two experienced backpackers in a double, and with a pile of gear so small that it makes me ashamed. It also shows how little I know. This is for two people for two weeks:
It’s disorienting to go from kayak speed to 25 knots, and I certainly don’t think that it gives you an understanding of the bay, but it was the only way that I would have seen the glaciers this trip. Once again, an experience (albeit insulated from the real thing) that would alone have been worth the trip (indeed, for many people, I think it is the highlight of the trip).
I forgot to mention a couple of things: I may not make it to camp at the glaciers, but one of my packets of crispbread will. I was having a mid-morning snack near the first group to be dropped off. One of the crew helping to get them off must have thought my crispbread was theirs. It’s up there right now. Of course, because it’s Scandinavian, it may simply have been pining for the fjords. Speaking of which, I noticed that the life rafts were manufactured by the Nordsk Gummibåt fabrik - what a great name.
I overheard a German woman, in her late fifties at a guess, express her surprise at the deck crew for the drop-offs: “five girls!”, followed by a relieved “ach so!” when the lone male reappeared up the ladder.
After arriving back at Bartlett Cove I noticed that the tide was at its highest, so I took the opportunity to go paddling without having to haul the boat down to the water (it’s living in the grass at the high tide mark, securely tied to a tree). I just headed for the mouth of the cove and sat there for an hour or so while humpback whales surfaced around me. There were a couple of harbor porpoises and the usual gang of seals, too. Every so often a salmon leaped in the air, presumably to escape from a seal. Now, here’s a totally unscientific observation: the salmon usually jumped close to where a whale had just blown. Either the seals are using the humpbacks as cover, or something odd is going on. It certainly wasn’t the whales going after the salmon because humpbacks are baleen whales.
Somebody on the boat expressed surprise that an animal as playful and inquisitive as a seal doesn’t approach kayaks. I pointed out that any tendencies to approach kayaks had been yanked out of the seals’ gene pool pretty smartly by the locals a long time ago.
The Swiss that I was thinking I might be able to go with are leaving tomorrow. Unfortunately, they are returning on the boat next Friday, which would cause me to miss my flight by a few hours. I’m thinking that I might head up into the Beardslees for another night.
I’ve been chased! By a hand dryer. The coin-op shower here has a hand dryer with a “magic eye”. Unfortunately, it’s hyper-sensitive and tends to see you as soon as you enter the room. I find myself creeping around the wall to keep out of its way.
Tonight’s dinner was another treat for the gourmet: ½ cup of wine, a can of beans (heated, and put in a bowl), one cup of Ovaltine and the rest of the first pack of crackers with jam, cream cheese and peanut butter.
It’s been a long day (I woke at 05:00 and I’m still up at 22:15 waiting for my laundry to dry).
Fascinating! There’s a whale just outside the cove that sounds different from the rest. Instead of the normal “phoosh” sound, it's making different kinds of grunts and just managed a musical tone. It sounded (so to speak) about middle octave, and had the tone of a brass instrument. A bugle, perhaps. After that, it and its companion flicked up their tails and headed deep.
Near the dock here there is a Tlingit canoe, beautiful craft with a fine prow and graceful lines. It was built in 1987 by three craftsmen working under the direction of an old man (95) who was the last person alive to have seen one built -- by his grandfather. The amazing thing about this beautiful boat is that it’s a dugout! And it took three men (plus the old man) a whole summer to build it with traditional tools (adzes) and painstaking care. It is perhaps the most amazing feat of boat building that I have ever seen. I was looking at it today and suddenly realized that the floor of wood chips around it was the Sitka Spruce chips that were removed as the shape of the boat was freed from the log. What I thought at first were leather thongs are actually Sitka Spruce surface roots painstakingly split and prepared by the old man’s wife in the traditional way. When the boat was finished the Amerinds came from all around, and there was a great ceremony. This boat represents the renaissance of memories and skills that were so nearly lost.
As I looked at this marvelous boat, some people came down from the lodge and looked. “It’s a reproduction of an old kayak” explained one. “Looks heavier than the new ones” said another. They walked away. I’m sure that I, too, am sometimes the swine before which pearls are cast. The hard part is knowing when it’s happening.
When I walked up to the lodge I came the long way, around the forest trail. This was the first time that I’d seen the forest in its normal state (in the rain) and I rather liked it. The overall impression is of softness and comfort. As if some kind person had taken a great carpet of moss, with small plants woven into it, and laid it over the whole forest floor.
While I was talking to Jamie, somebody came by who couldn’t start a trip because the fuel dock had run out of white gas (stove fuel - no wood for camp fires in the bay). I was able to help both him and me by selling him my unopened gallon of white gas. After seven nights I still have plenty of fuel left in bottle number one, with all of bottle number two to go. To have an extra gallon is ridiculous. It seems as if everything is either missing (radio, waterproof chart case) or present in embarrassing profusion (food, white gas).
Anyway, it was nice talking to Jamie. He seemed like somebody that I would have been proud to be twenty (or more) years ago.
Dinner wasn’t a huge success. The packet said “mushroom pilaf with vegetables”, and I suppose it was trying. It worked, inasmuch as I’m not hungry any more, but there was no pleasure in the encounter. The cheesecake (what a treat!) instructions said to wait ten minutes while it solidified. After twenty minutes I gave up and drank it. No great pleasure there, either. The good news, gastronomically speaking, is that there is only one fruit pie left. This evening was breathtakingly lovely, with the whales and a lone seal constantly adding to the display.
This is the most beautiful morning that I’ve seen here. The mountains are crystal clear, and the snowcaps have grown in the last week. The fireweed blooms are creeping towards the ends of the stalks, and there’s a chill edge to the air that tells me autumn is coming fast. But it won’t stay long.
As I walked to the lodge I met a most delightful chap called Don. He is the other half of the team I sold my white gas to yesterday. They are loading their Feathercraft K2 for 30 days in the bay, and they have less gear between them than I have.
Don explained that this has been a strange year for flowers, with the early bloomers being held up by the weather and everything coming out at the same time. The winter in Ontario was unusually hard, but he thinks it is simply a return to how the weather used to be.
A reminder of how glad I am to be making the trip this way: The couple behind me have been discussing their meal arrangements for about twenty minutes (lunch versus dinner at the lodge, dinner reservations at the Gustavus Inn, sandwiches, etc.). I know exactly what I’ll be doing - open granola bottle number two for breakfast, with whatever comes to hand for lunch and dinner. On the other hand, they aren’t likely to be mugged by something masquerading as mushroom pilaf or fruit pies.
I packed most of the gear and came back to the Beardslees. The rest of it I left in the food cache in the campground. This time I came through the Sitakaday Narrows instead of waiting for the tide to rise high enough to take me through the channel between Lester Island and the mainland. You have to be careful in the Sitakaday Narrows, and I was. I went through three rapids-like sections of waves over rocks. This is a long way round; I think I paddled for eight straight hours in wind, waves and confused currents. It was a wonderful paddle, one of the best trips I’ve ever made in any way.
Ho, hum! Whales all around again. Quite close, too. I even encountered a lone humpback among the Beardslees near Spider Island (I think). There was an oystercatcher, the usual bunch of seals and what may have been a sea otter.
Dinner isn’t quite up to its usual standards tonight. Somebody appears to have left the cooking pots in the food cache at Bartlett Cove. Luckily, beans come in their own handy-dandy cooking pot that lets you burn the bottom layer while leaving the top ones cold.
According to the calendar, I’ve been here one week, but that seems wrong. I’ve been here either a day or a year, but I’m not sure which.
Well, that dinner could have been worse. It could, for example, have been another mushroom pilaf or fruit pie. Time to put up the tent.
The sun has been down for about an hour now, but the glow in the sky lasts a long, long time. Actually, I have not seen true darkness here, no matter what time I have been looking. The wind went down with the sun and the water is almost calm. In front of me are the Beartrack Mountains standing around, naturally enough, Beartrack Cove. In the water is a gently moving reflection of the mountains. The overwhelming sound of silence is all around me, with occasional bird calls dropping like pebbles into a still lake.
Before I forget, last night’s dinner was baked beans au can and half of a large chocolate bar, with about six crackers and three or four bites of cheese as an aperitif. Lunch didn’t really happen, although I did eat my last fruit pie. Breakfast today was granola and milk.
Today wasn’t much of an animal day, although I was surprised to find a lone humpback again in the Beardslees; he stayed at least fifty yards away from me. A harbor porpoise (a young one from the size of the fin) came close enough for me to hear it breathing. The bird of the day was Forktailed Petrel; first I passed close to one of them that was vigorously defending a patch of air as it was following whatever was in the water below. It drove away several other petrels as I approached, and I was wondering if it would try to drive me off when the object of its attention must have gone deeper and the bird lost interest.
A few minutes later I was suddenly in the middle of a flock of petrels swooping down to pick up small fish. They totally ignored me as they plummeted into the water all around. The fish, and the fishers, soon moved away.
I left my cove on Kidney Island about noon, with the idea of going to the North end of Hutchins Bay, but soon changed my plans when I realized that the wind had suddenly sprung up and would make the southward journey difficult. So I turned round and headed South; first on the East side, and then crossing over to the West to avoid a small group of kayaks. I kept going South until I got as far as the river leading away East. Then it was back to the familiar waters of the inside route to Bartlett Cove. At the furthest point I stopped and watched a fisherman in a small boat checking his crab pots. We briefly exchanged greetings, and I felt as if I belonged. Actually, it’s just as well that it is familiar because yesterday’s water aerobics session on the rocky lee shore made the chart wet and wore away most of the Beardslees.
As I came through the channel I found myself gliding on crystal-clear water and stopped for a while to watch barnacles feeding just below the surface. Entering the narrows I was reminded by a stiff opposing current that the tide was still coming in. After passing through the narrowest part I came out into the cove to find the wind strongly against me, making for a slow and tiring paddle back to the campground, where I found my old place available. The waves in the cove were quite interesting at times and I noticed that a sailboat was double-reefed. That Klepper is such a good boat!
Lunch today was eaten in the boat: four crackers, a few bites of cheese, a Milky Way bar (dark) and a Fat Free Sweet Surprise (flavor: red. Also available in blue). From a culinary point of view it was truly terrible, but I’ve seldom enjoyed a meal more. My cooking pots were, of course, sitting in the food cache looking smug, so I made a cheese Florentine (not bad, actually) and added a couple of handfuls of peanuts, a Guinness, another Sweet Surprise (spiritual successor to the fruit pies) and a mug of Ovaltine.
OK. So my grand plans for paddling to the glaciers didn’t work out, but I have definitely found other things. The arboreal peace of the Beardslees, paddling day after day with whales, hikes in the forest and on the beach… I count myself very lucky to have found all this, and totally by accident.
There was quite a lot of eating going on out here this morning, with tiny fish through to large salmon leaping repeatedly from the water to escape something. Probably something to do with the seals that are all over the place.
There must be something about this place that encourages people to think. As I look around I often see people writing – even the people who work here.
After I put the boat away I had a shower and put on clean clothes. I’m relieved to find that it’s my boots, not me, that is the source of the solid smell of rotting seaweed. The weather is still fine (by local standards – it’s only raining a little) so I think that the forecast of three days of good weather if you can see Mount Fairweather could be considered true.
I just returned from a hike of the Forest Trail - about a mile through the forest. The focus was on plant succession as the vegetation returns to desolate areas after the ice retreats. Very interesting, and it opened my eyes to some of the things that I’ve been camping among. My mystery animal in the Beardslees (swam like a beaver, but sank gently below the water like a seal) was probably a sea otter.
The nationalities here are interesting. Mostly American, of course, with lots of Germans. Some Australians and Swiss, a few British and some miscellaneous unidentified. I haven’t noticed many Canadians, but of course they have plenty of wilderness of their own.
A rather odd couple arrived at the campground tonight, Indian or Pakistani. My prejudices have really been fueled by them. He walked in front carrying a small backpack, while she followed five paces behind with armfuls of plastic grocery bags. After walking around the campsite (with her five paces behind) he decided on a spot. She took a tent out of one of the bags and started to assemble the poles, while he took a large hammer out of the backpack and looked at it – apparently trying to decide which end he was supposed to hit things with. After a lucky guess he started to hammer pegs into the soft ground in random places, perhaps for practice. She had just finished assembling the poles when I left, and I’m sure that the tent was up very quickly if he kept himself busy hammering pegs.
Oh, yes - dinner. Eight crackers with jam or cream cheese, a can of beans, a pot of tea and the other freeze-dried cheese cake. This time it was definitely reminiscent of cheese cake, although I can’t describe it as a treat. All of the freeze-dried food is described as “serves 2”, which may be true if one doesn’t want any (a distinct possibility if we’re talking about the mushroom pilaf). In general, I’m surprised at how little I’m eating, even if there is no discernible lessening in the tension of my waistband. The tube of cream cheese is quite a success, by the way; it was a nuisance to prepare, but is very convenient now. The canned orange juice concentrate is ok too (although definitely not a substitute for frozen).
I met Alex again. What a nice man (see Friday August 2). He and his wife (who I have not spoken with beyond “hello”) are going out to watch the whales with their son, Alex II. But this isn’t just watching, because Alex II’s job is to catalog and photograph the whales here. I think that the Alexes must be very proud of each other - I watched the two of them loading up their boat.
It’s still raining quite heavily (must remember to ask somebody how the last two weeks compares with the norm) and I’m sitting outside the lodge under the eaves. The inside is full of sleeping people, and I don’t want to be affected by the field of somnolence radiation.
I went down to the dock this morning to look at one of the mini cruise ships called Wilderness Explorer. It looks like a good compromise: the boat is fairly small and what I would call “workmanlike” (i.e. more ferry than yacht in appearance). It also has a number of kayaks on board, presumably for the use of the passengers.
It’s still raining with vigor and determination. This is certainly a day when Sitka Slippers would be the best footwear, and good old foul weather gear better than the best Goretex. No problem, though. I’m happy just sitting here.
Oh, man! It rained today. After spending the morning at the lodge I had a few crackers for lunch and went for a walk., ending up at the Bartlett River and following it upstream for a while.
Dinner was less elegant than usual because of the rain and because of somebody lighting a fire upwind of me as soon as I got my stove going. Six crackers with jam and cream cheese, a can of beans and Ovaltine. The first 650ml bottle of fuel ran out tonight.
Note from the ranger presentation: Johns Hopkins Inlet is closed to all traffic (including kayaks) until July 1st.
I spent a while talking with a group that included Roger, one of the local charter boat captains and a Swiss woman called Lys who lives in Barcelona. Lys would like to go paddling tomorrow, and doesn’t care about the weather. Roger doesn’t want to go if it rains.
Speaking of which: a couple of times today I couldn’t tell whether it was raining or not, and that’s as good as it got. Rain and mist was the order of the day, so the promise of last night’s few minutes of sunlight on the mountains went unfulfilled.
I finished the granola for breakfast (that was two liters) and lunch was minimal - a Sweet Rewards (yuk!) bar and a Milky Way (dark). I had about ten crackers with jam or cream cheese (thereby finishing the cream cheese).
Oh, yes; I nearly forgot. In the day shelter group there was also a teacher from Birmingham University and her boyfriend who is a neurosurgeon at the Queen Elizabeth Medical Center, where I once worked - small world, again.
While I was on the beach later on, a group of three kayakers arrived in Kleppers - one single and one double. They were clearly finishing a day that had been indifferent at best (quote from the single paddler “do you want to buy this heap of junk?” - perhaps I should have offered him fifty bucks for it).
There are several ideas that have either occurred to me or been given to me today:
I just finished reading a book. That makes only three since I left home – 11½ days, including a day spent on airplanes. That makes nearly four days per book (although I did start one that had an unfortunate encounter with water) and makes a nonsense of the one book per day that I brought. That is pretty much in line with my chronic over-packing.
Well, well. The weather is clearing up a tad. I can see the Beartracks above the cloud that is over the forest.
I’m thinking about the three paddlers in the new Kleppers - how could the single paddler have bought such an expensive boat (new!) and been surprised by its handling characteristics when he got here? He called it a barge. Strange.
It’s less than two weeks since I arrived, and the nights have very clearly drawn in. At first, I could walk back to my tent at 10 PM, and it was almost light enough to read by the tent under the trees. Now I cannot even see the ground clearly as I walk back.
Another kayak idea, from the paddling partner of Jamie (who has left): To anchor a kayak away from the beach, attach a loop of bungee cord to a line at a distance equivalent to the anchor chain length. Put a rock into the loop of bungee. At the shore, put the rock, and the rock to boat length of , on the deck of the boat. Hold the end of the line (important!) and push the boat away from shore. When the boat’s at the right distance from the shore, tug the line so that the rock falls in the water. Done! The rock is heavy enough to keep the boat in place, but light enough to be pulled in. this is a whole lot easier than lugging a loaded boat out of the water when you stop for lunch.
Aha! The two Germans that I saw earlier in the week are back - I thought I recognized the Klepper double that came in this afternoon. They seemed unfriendly and bad tempered (which is exactly how I’d feel in a double Klepper with no rudder).
I had a nice conversation this evening with Albert, charter boat skipper, fisherman, carpenter etc. I met him last night, too. Once again, I look around and am (pleasantly) surprised at the number of people writing in battered journals.
I spoke with Jan this morning. He is the guy with the single Klepper Expedition. He’s much happier today, and we had a nice talk. He showed me a much better arrangement for the rudder pedals, replacing them with a small suspended bar instead of the teutonically over-engineered pedals. He’s been out for a while, and teamed up with the Germans because he felt uncomfortable alone. This makes me feel somewhat better, after talking to people who have been alone for weeks. After he met them he had a bear encounter, in which one passed within three feet of him as he sat in his tent, popped the spray skirt off his boat and tried to get at the dried fruit in the pocket of his PFD. The three of them (Jan plus two Germans) started banging pans together and shouting. The bear left.
In another incident, yesterday morning, a Japanese photographer had his fuel bottle bitten open on the beach while he was cooking breakfast. Yuk! Can you imagine biting into an inviting-looking fuel bottle and getting a mouthful of white gas? That's up there with being fed a Hostess Fruit Pie. (BTW: The photographer is camped next to me). I arrived on the beach yesterday morning just moments after everybody else, and the bear, had departed.
Everybody out in front of the lodge is watching a big excavator working on what looks like a new septic tank. The noise is getting to me a little.
I gave some of my food to Jan, who is running out and has several more weeks up here. The rangers loaned him the official Park Bicycle to go to Gustavus for supplies (the nearest store).
I had a shower after my stuff was ready to check in, and feel very clean and civilized.
As we came through downtown Gustavus I noticed signs for their school. They have their own K-12 school, and I thought what a wonderful place this would be to grow up. But what then? When it comes to time to become an adult, it must be very hard. Many of the people here do more than one thing; like Albert, and the Annie Mae Lodge Lady checking me in.
Somehow, all the food that I ate has made no difference – I still have five big bags, plus carry-on.
The swallows (swifts?) are really zooming around (which explains the itching on my arms. This airport is pretty small. The terminal is a wooden hut with an x-ray machine. The plane must be about to arrive because they’re asking us to go through security, but I don’t want to go inside yet. Aha! I hear jet engines, so my return to civilization is imminent.
Welcome to Juneau. The flight was short but spectacular, it has been raining hard here. This place seems a lot bigger than two weeks ago, and now it reminds me of an alpine town. The last time I was here the glacier was clearly visible in the sun. I’m watching bags come off (hoping not to see mine) and am struck by the energy of the handlers. There are several boxes of Dungeness crab that may have spent last night within a few yards of me.
So much bustle and energy! Light planes and helicopters everywhere, droves of people. And so lovely, even in this thousand-year rain. As we came in I could see that quite a few places are in pleasant sunshine.
So: What did I think of Alaska? Magnificent, changeable, unpredictable, wonderful. Jamie described Johns Hopkins Inlet as “It’s the most beautiful place you can imagine. It’ll kill you in a moment, and still be the most beautiful place”.
I never did see a bear.