Chain 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. Read Part 1 

 

Elfin Cove closed its matchbox-sized post office at noon. Sitting in the PO was a 41 lb. box of food, instant coffee, Clif Bars, dehydrated meals, bags of Pamela’s  home made granola, a big sleeve of AA batteries and some fresh reading material. If I didn’t make it there by then, I’d be sitting out a long, three day weekend in a boxed-in, shingled cove in the rain, not at all the preferred option.

I finished up my Clif Bar breakfast and crawled out of the tent naked into a cool drizzle and picked my wetsuit off a log. The skanky scent of unwashed neoprene was redolent, but a smell, frankly, I’d even gotten to liking. A little. In any case, the odor is more agreeable than the visceral distress of donning the rubber.

I made it into Elfin Cove, snagged the swag, did my laundry, called my honey and picked up a couple of six packs of beer.

I gave a quick, distracting yelp as I pulled the suit up over each warm leg, and another, louder, near scream, as I rolled up the trunk.

I made it into Elfin Cove, snagged the swag, did my laundry, called my honey and picked up a couple of six packs of beer. Then I powered back out of the outpost, looking due north into the pearly whites of Brady Glacier just west of Glacier Bay. Steering the bow increasingly south, I could feel the pull of home set in. I was still several long weeks out, but my new southerly heading was comforting. I paddled down the long boulevard that is Lisianski Inlet, then hung a right past tiny Miner Island into a frisky, narrow race at the entrance to Lisianski Strait. I spent a single night on a narrow, buggy shingle in Stag Bay (lordy, a proper beach was a luxury in this country) and a night in a tiny slot among the jumbled rock and boulders at Point Urey. Then the next morning I shot out through jagged rocks into open Pacific! The Big Pond!! And oh I could feel the difference! It was like being in a room of profound, deep thinkers with breadth to their imagination versus a room full of chatty lightweights.

The Pacific was aptly named, I thought, or at least its number was up, for pacific described the sea conditions in which I paddled most of the outer coast of Chichagof, between Point Urey and the inside of Kruzof Island. Like a heaving bosom, swell gently lifted my boat. Waves broke bone-white over reefs and sunken rocks, broke sedately, like white-washed plantations. It was an ocean open-house for a good week running.

Around the point, hidden among a labyrinthine network of bays and little islands, I spotted an orange gas can lashed high in a tree. It marked a trailhead leading to the nearby springs. White Sulfur Hot Springs is a draw for sailors, fishermen and kayakers alike. I made several new friends here, sailors, whom I would rendezvous with again down the coast, and again in Sitka.

The next afternoon I was paddling in building swell and confused seas off Cape Dearborn, looking for the tiny, camouflaged opening in the rocky bluff that marks the entrance to Dry Passage. It was dead low tide and anybody’s guess which notch in the reef it might be. After several fruitless dashes between sets of breaking waves I finally found it. I pulled the boat up onto eel grass shallows while I waited for the tide to turn, and hunted up several nice Dungeness crab for dinner.

Apropos and footnote to this, several years later a young couple moved onto the hill where we live (swelling the population to an even ten). Craig was from Sitka, and he told me how he once lived for a year in a treehouse he built on Hill Island, right there at Cape Dearborn, living off what he could catch, shoot and gather. Furthermore, Craig’s wife Amy, a blonde, Nordic Goddess of a woman, had heard of this modern day Andrew Selkirk and traveled to this island to find and romance him, and that’s how they met. I can only (if repeatedly) imagine how fulfilled Craig must have felt with her in his arms in those treetops.

Several islands south of Hill, the Myriad Islands are a regional kayaking destination, and beautiful in their own right. A cluster of rocks, reefs and tiny islands hang north of Khaz Bay and the long open stretch of water off the Khaz Peninsula. I threaded my way through them looking for a bit of beach to camp on, and didn’t find it. I do love my idyllic clamshell beaches, while here in the Myriads, as well as most of the western side of Chichagof (and pretty much the entire Inside Passage, for that matter), I was paddling within arm’s length of mud banks and rocky, inhospitable shore. I blew right through the Myriads in righteous weather and staged myself for the most exposed passage of the trip.

The Khaz peninsula runs for roughly twenty miles to Peril Strait and the end of the outer island circuit. Virtually the entire route is exposed to the North Pacific and there is little place to come ashore in an emergency. Your best bet here is to wait for good weather and turn on the after burners. Good weather was an understatement the morning I woke up, packed up and started south. The seas were mirror calm. Again, I felt a bit of empathy with old Vasco de Balboa on the naming business and enjoyed a rare, gentle passage along the dramatic mountainous peninsula known locally as “The Khaz.”

I spent the time catching bright salmon on flies in the turbulent currents or relaxing with a book in a last touch of fine weather.

At this point I could have made a beeline due south from Point Leo to Cape Georgiana and continued down the outer coast of Kruzoff Island. Given how much I talk up the outside, you might wonder why not. But after over a month in the field, I was ready to go to pasture on a quiet beach, maybe even a little cabin, and wind down. There are certain subtle, I want to say organic, forces at work in the human psyche when planning and undertaking challenging journeys. Oftentimes difficult to articulate, like in this case, but regarding Kruzoff, it did not seem integral to my journey and would have felt somehow tacked on. I have little doubt but that it would have been worth doing, should I have chosen to, but I have to call them as I feel them and Kruzoff, at the end of a long journey and not critical to the overall itinerary as it was initally designed, just did not make the cut. The fact that it was so close to Sitka and that locals were known to boat their ATVs over to the island and motor over the logging roads to the west side, had some bearing on the decision.

It was like being in a room of profound, deep thinkers with breadth to their imagination versus a room full of chatty lightweights.

At the end of The Khaz lies Salisbury Sound, and at the end of it—tiny Sukoi Inlet—where I waited in line with a queue of yachts and fishing boats (reminding me of the front door bottleneck at the first day of school, or a long, giant cervix) to pass through into the diminutive Krestof Sound and on, finally, to Sitka Sound.

I made it to the east side of Kruzoff in short order and hung at the mouth of Fred’s Creek by a decent Forest Service cabin with a view to downtown Sitka, glittering across the expanse of Sitka Sound. A trailhead led from the beach to Mount Edgecombe, an extinct volcano, the rim of its mauve-colored crater usually hidden in cloud.

I spent nearly a week there on a long crescent beach with the little forest service cabin situated at the forest marge. I embellished camp with the luxury of a water collector, stream-cooled beer and a solar shower. I read by Petzl-light at night and even played a deeply immersive board game, solo. One party of people had the cabin booked during this time, and I had it free to use thereafter. As usual though, a good tent on a clean beach was the better dig. Then mid-week I started up the trail leading on a 14-mile round trip to the volcano.

I hiked through miles of Alaskan muskeg to the base of the mountain. Deer cabbage ground cover, stunted trees and blueberries bordered the marshy open land and a puncheon walkway meandered across. At the base of the cone the little trail steepened severely. Fog closed in and the wind picked up and I stashed my pack for the final ascent. I slogged on toward the caldera.

At the top, finally, sweating and wobbly in the legs, I found numerous Nepalese-looking rock cairns dotting the barren, windswept summit. I hunkered down in the lee of the rim and waited for the clouds to clear. Sure enough, a few minutes later the clouds feathered away and I could see the shallow pool in the bowl of the crater below. I could also see out around the island, an extraordinary panorama of sea, forest and white-tipped mountains, and back to the east, Sitka, my portal home.

Raven Radio, or Heathen Talk Radio—as they call it—came clearly over the water from Sitka as I languished in camp after the climb. Unfortunately it was Metal Month. It took several days for my legs to come around (they were even a bit atrophied after six weeks in the saddle), and I spent the time catching bright salmon on flies in the turbulent currents at the mouth of Fred’s Creek or relaxing with a book in a last touch of fine weather as August rolled around. And at the end, mentally done with paddling, I hitched a ride with a couple of cabin visitors back across the sound to the Alaskan Ferry terminal on the outskirts of Sitka.

The fantail of the SS Matanuska looked like a tent display in the camping room at REI. Third class passengers lived bohemian style on the solarium of the Alaskan Ferry, ninety some odd budget minded adventurers, all of us bedded down together in a space the size of a basketball half-court. But unlike the Titanic, third class was having all the fun. There was beer a plenty and I caught the smell of herb wafting together with diesel fumes. We had a gas grilling each other on our time in southeast. But when people asked me how I liked my trip, I was ambivalent in answering.

Frankly, I had mixed feelings about the trip. Southeast is a special country in its own right, I can certainly appreciate it for that. Reamed by a myriad glaciers and blanketed with majestic hemlock and spruce, Alaska’s panhandle rivals Scandinavia for natural drama. On one hand, any solo kayak trip in a place like this that doesn’t go awry is time well spent. On the other, I was pretty sure I wouldn’t be back.