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Paddling Southeast Alaska: The Cruise Ship and the Kayak, Part 1

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Rob-Lyon-100x100Chain saws and brown bears, fishing boats and whales, floating hotels and sea kayaks. Author Rob Lyon recounts the contradictions and rewards of paddling Southeast Alaska.

 

“The wolves were ending their song when, from the sea, the whales answered it. George swears that this is true. The whale music was, he says, like whistling, trumpeting, and singing combined. It resembled no work of man he knew, but it blended perfectly with the chorus of the wolves. The forest’s mournful ululations mingled with the brass winds and the wood winds of the deep. The earth was singing to its moon, and the sea was harmonizing.

George sat silent in the middle of the music, yet did not feel left out. It seemed to him that the two worlds, land and sea, were coming together in him. This morning he had padded, like the wolves, on bare feet on the mossy forest floor, and this afternoon he had paddled Icy Strait, like the humpback whales. A triumverate, they praised the moon: lupus, George, leviathan.”

The Starship and the Canoe—Kenneth Brower

I first heard of the inside passage while reading Jack London, his stories of the gold rush, of prospectors elbowing aboard crowded ships at the Seattle waterfront, of sailing north through the fjords and forested islands of the Inside Passage on their way to Skagway and the glittering gold fields of the Klondike. But the passage really wasn’t played up much in those books and I didn’t get the bug. It was not until later in my life, after trading the high-living, high mountain life of Crested Butte for the chaos of SoCal, then coming to my senses and moving north to Oregon and reading The Starship and the Canoe, that the romance truly began. New to the allure of paddling northern coastal waters at that point in my life, I was anxious to see what it had to offer. I set to it with a passion and by the time I finally wet a paddle in Alaskan waters, I had danced with every woman in the room: the lovely San Juan Islands, Canadian Gulf Islands, Desolation Sound and Johnstone Strait, and the prettiest of them all, the outer coast of Vancouver Island. How would southeast compare? I was jazzed enough with the solo kayaking experience that I was willing to find out.

The author enjoys a sunny respite on a beach in southeast Alaska. Photos were scanned from a batch of old slides that survived a fire.
The author enjoys a sunny respite on a beach in southeast Alaska.

I was hoping to find something as wild and inspirational in Southeast as I’d discovered in BC. I knew it wouldn’t be the same cup of tea, nor as utterly devoid of people as the remotest outer coast, but I thought I might enjoy it all the same. The traditional homeland of the Tlingit and Haida, as well as a modern settlement of Tsimshian, it is a land of vast forest, fjords and inlets. After considerable research and chats with local fishermen and sailors, I decided to paddle the perimeter of Chichagof Island, the most northerly island in the Alexander Archipelago. I called up a purse seiner captain I knew and lucked out; he was heading north to Chichagof via a short stop in Ketchican and had room for me and my kayak. In northwest coast fashion, my wife blessed the voyage and cedared off the crew on the fantail of the Icy Bay one afternoon in early summer. Not much later I was waving goodbye to her quickly receding figure standing on the island dock.

I stood watch in shifts with the crew and slept on the nets piled in the hold (fishy odors were a motif on this trip). We anchored across from Angoon on the 20th of June at the eastern entrance to Peril Strait under warm, promising skies, and looking north across the bay was the shore of Chichagof, where a couple of brown bear were picking through the seaweed and awaiting my arrival. On the morrow I’d be sleeping with the enemy.

All packed up and ready to go, I spent the evening aboard the seiner chatting with my friends and fishing to pass the time. I’d tied a jig on the end of my fly line and lowered it over the side of the boat, leaning against the rail, watching the bears and thinking how they would take the slouch out of my camping routine, when suddenly I hooked into something big. It felt like a rock. Then ten minutes later I had a 20 lb. chicken halibut flopping on the deck. Welcome to AK!

Next morning I got into my wetsuit while the crew lowered my big double kayak into the water. I climbed aboard and waved goodbye, sad to have to leave both my friends and the pile of tasty halibut steaks in their possession. Fishing would be hand to mouth in the weeks ahead. Between my lack of refrigeration and the bears, I would catch only what I could eat, and then cook it well away from camp. My signature easy-going camp routines would take a hit in grizz country.

If there was one thing that I could not wrap my head around, it was the damned cruise ships. All else seemed integrally knitted with the place.

I paddled north up Chatham Strait for several days. Chatham is a broad, glacial-reamed corridor with steep gravel beaches set between rocky bluffs. I paddled close to shore while the sailboats, freighters, skiffs, and the ubiquitous cruise ships, stayed out in center channel. Postcard peaks glinted icy blue in the distance. I liked Chatham a lot—bowling alley straight, always a fresh north wind huffing, and stirring the soul with my first taste of the dramatic grandeur of the great Alaskan North. The few camp sites I came across were clean, mostly pea gravel and freshened by steady breezes out in the channel. This was the ancient stomping grounds of several native tribes, and I could well imagine dug-outs back in the day plying these same waters, hunting and fishing and traveling from village to village. In fact, the area is checkered with small reservations, and native skiffs and fishing boats are a common sight.

While the vast forest, darkling water and distant snow peaks stirred the blood, the experience of paddling southeast was relatively a busy one. There is a low, if incessant murmur of activity among the islands and waterways. Above the lap of water, the north wind soughing the 17-million-acre Tongass National Forest, there is always the distant whine of chainsaw, boat or plane. The ravens add a guttural counterpoint to these plaintive undercurrents.

Gunkholers like the area, and I would often have one anchored out in the bay or cove that I was camped in. And every day or so I would pass a settlement of some kind. There was, of course, plenty of space for everyone. It was more an aesthetic thing, I think, that I needed to get my head around—feeling never quite as deeply tucked away from civilization as I would have liked.

I settled into the right head space eventually, no matter that it lacked the zing, the heady inspiration, of the outer coast. But if there was one thing that I could not wrap my head around, it was the damned cruise ships. All else seemed integrally knitted with the place. Fishing boats, pleasure boats, freighters and tankers and small boats of one feather or another commuting back and forth were all in keeping with a blue collar Southeast motif, but these motorized rec centers, lit up like the Devil’s own birthday cake, had me pissing in their direction. Their passengers might as well have been at a skeet range, a swimming pool, or a night club, as sailing southeast Alaska. It made the card-carrying tourists we see in the islands at home look downright Therouxian (as in Paul) by contrast.

A squall appeared on the southern horizon one night while I was encamped on Chatham Strait. I had just returned from tossing flies to Dollys and pinks in a nearby stream. Within a twenty minute window I built a quick bright fire, had my Kershaw Blade Trader set for slice, and filleted out a single, small salmon I’d caught only minutes earlier. I had to hustle that meal and it was still fringe sushi by the time raindrops fell in earnest. Waves crashed on the gravel beach throughout the night and powerful storm tides forced a midnight relocation of my tent. Late in the morning after a sleepless night, I awoke to the sun burning brightly overhead as if nothing had happened.

The 4th of July found me sitting on the grass surrounded by people in the fifty-foot-square intersection that is downtown Tenakee Springs. Tenakee is home to the Two Minute Independence Day Parade, a fact not lost on me because I loathe parades. Two minutes was just about my speed and it was a fun bit of backwoods revelry. I chatted up the locals that hung around after the march and dipped in the local concrete cistern that constitutes the communal hot springs. But not that long after the parade dust had settled I was back on the water where the spouts of Humpback whales exploding against a dark blue provided just my kind of parade.

Sea and forest are so close I can wing a rock from one to the other, hear it splash or watch it disappear in towering cedar shadow.

At Point Adolphous I camped for several days, paddling with the big Humpies and eavesdropping underwater with my hydrophone. Sounding like grumpy old men one moment, symphonic musicians the next, I enjoyed nothing more on this trip, I think, than the time with those whales. I made tape recordings that I would play back in my tent on stormy nights. Adolphous was the northernmost point of my travel in Southeast. From there I angled gradually west and south across the mouth of Idaho Inlet, through the narrow Inian Pass, around Point Lavinia and toward the more exposed western coast of the island.

I found the locals in Southeast to be about as much fun as the whales. I was invited aboard a sailboat for an ice cold pilsner, complete with frosted pilsner glass, one evening, and I was tossed a couple Dungey crab from some friendly Gustavus crabbers on another. It was all part of the southeast Alaskan kayak experience. This is a huge piece of real estate with an exceptionally low population density. Just about right too, because you will truly appreciate someone when you run into them.

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I had three concerns coming into Alaska for the first time: bears, bugs and rain. Not at all an expeditionary of the hardest stripe, I go out to the coast looking for paradaisical conditions, not misery. There are always plenty of challenges to paddling a rugged NorPac coastline, inside or out, but the absence of a few pissy elements goes a long way toward enjoying it. Bugs turned out to be a relative non-factor, maybe because of proximity to saltwater and sea winds, but I camped on exposed points and bluffs whenever possible to get the benefit of the great broom winds. Grizzly, or Alaskan brown bear, as they’re referred to locally, are everywhere on Chichagof. I would spot them ambling along the beach and picking through the seaweed as I paddled by just offshore. It would be several weeks yet before the bulk of the salmon, haute cuisine of Ursus diet, filled the island streams. In the meantime, they foraged on roots and berries, and among the seaweed washed onto the beach. They glanced at me as they ambled by.

I always slept with my scattergun close at hand.

While the bears were always in my general vicinity, they were respectful of my presence—as long as they were made aware of it. You just didn’t want to surprise one close up. A yell or even a warning shot would do the job nicely and I would sing loudly whevever I hiked on occluded trails or rounded a sharp point on the beach. As often as possible I would pitch camp such that a wandering bear could spot me from a distance, instead of stumbling blindly into camp. Of course, all it takes is one bear with a lapse of protocol to make your day. With that in mind, I always slept with a short, stainless Marine Magnum shotgun by the front door of the tent. It did occur to me (more than once, frankly) that between a lack of skookum beaches, the bugs and the resident apex predator, life might be more relaxing camped out on the water. It was not uncommon to duck into the tent early to escape the skeeters and I ALWAYS slept with my scattergun close at hand. The upside to the gun was how friggin’ macho it felt, following the troll size bear trails through the forest with that shotgun strapped to my back.

As for the weather, azure skies were a rarity but it didn’t take much of a break from a 100+ inch annual rainfall to lift the spirit. Even a steady rain was okay if it didn’t go on forever. My baseline travel rhythm revolved around holing up when the weather was bad and paddling when it turned nice, or dry, at the very least. Packing up a wet camp is anathema. During my time in southeast the temperature hung in the fifties and sixties, a comfortable temp for paddling.

One of the things I’ve come to love about these northwest seashores, especially the outer shores, is the sandwich phenomenon. Paddling here is about traveling a fine line within a triumverate of ecosystems. You’ve got a peppy Norpac (or some variation) on one hand, and a brooding rainforest on the other with a bio quotient roughly four times the biomass density of an equivalent spot in the tropics. And a hair-thin, littoral zone in between.

Sea and forest are so close I can wing a rock from one to the other, hear it splash or watch it disappear in towering cedar shadow. Littoral drift refers to the constant movement of the components of the littoral zone, the sand and drift wood. And in less of a literal sense, ourselves. The best beach haunts I have known have me feeling as ‘home’ as I have ever felt, and just as impermanent, or immediate, at the same time.

The littoral is home turf, more often than not. Seldom do I venture inland very far, and I’m on the water six hours a day, max, and more like four. It is the forest denizens that make the visit—the deer, bear and cougar, and if we’re lucky, wolves. And when the whales swim close in we hear their blowy exhalations. Enormous mammals to left and right, naked sultans of their demense (much akin to what Dyson expressed in Brower’s intro quote).

It was a Saturday, sometime in late July, and I was encamped in a tiny cove inside swirling South Inian Pass, a short paddle from the village of Elfin Cove. The air was cool with scudding low clouds and it was drizzling quietly outside my tent pitched high on a gravel berm on a pea gravel beach. The only sounds that reached my ears were the lap of water and the rolling of small stones, the whoosh of a brisk north wind laying the wood to the forest canopy behind camp and the drone or whine of a passing boat or floatplane. I’ve always been aware of the trace sound of passing vehicles, be they on land or water, and their effect on me. I found the backdrop noise providing an underlying stimulation, as it represents the wheels of commerce and the lumbering of the great cultural juggernaut. It was a subtle motivation for me to get up and be busy.

Watch for Part 2 of The Sea Kayak and the Cruise ship next week.