Surprise – George Island, Southeast Alaska – Part 1

 

George Island looking southwest to Cross Sound
Cross Sound seen from the cliffs of George Island.

What a surprise to discover George Island hiding at the intersection between Icy Strait and Cross Sound!

I had never heard of  George Island, even though I’d passed it a number of times on the M/V Curlew, the USFWS research vessel that hauled people and equipment to Icy Bay farther west along the Gulf of Alaska.

 

 

 

Icy Strait: Glacier Bay is in top right corner. Cross Sound is bottom left.
Icy Strait: Glacier Bay is in top right corner. Cross Sound is bottom left.

Cross Sound funnels the Pacific Ocean into Icy Strait. Icy Strait provides passage to the northern end of Southeast Alaska.

It’s only 118 km (73 miles) as the raven flies from Juneau. Of course, it’s much farther by boat: 194 km (119 miles), following the saltwater jigsaw puzzle of SE Alaska islands & channels.

I’ll cover various cool SE AK (Southeast Alaska) destinations and adventures in future posts. For now, it’s enough to know that George Island was one of the stops as Guest Hosts on our second 1-week cruise, UnCruise’s Northern Passages & Glacier Bay itinerary.

On the evening before we headed to George Island, I thanked Capt. Don Johnson for showing me yet another new place in Southeast Alaska.

“We’ll see how the weather is in the morning,” he answered.

He didn’t say this lightly. In December 1943, Lt. Schwamm of the U.S. Navy requested a seaworthy vessel to supply his base on George Island because his boats couldn’t handle the seas that were “so violent and the water so rough in Cross Sound, South Inian Pass, and Icy Straights”.

The tides are predictable. Winds, waves, rain, often change rapidly in this high energy ecosystem. The currents in Inian Pass are faster than any other place in Southeast Alaska. This energy mixes the saltwater, bringing food into the water column, a rich feeding “ground” for marine organisms ranging from the barnacles on the rocks to the 40-ton humpback whales feeding on krill and herring. Sea birds are everywhere. Sea otters float on their backs like slightly potbellied very hairy youngsters floating on inflatable matresses with their toes in the air and constantly grooming to be sure that their hair is mussed up perfectly. I feel like sea otters with money could be one of the biggest markets for mirrors worldwide… and for selfie sticks.

We had a rare, very calm-water day at this point where the Pacific Ocean funnels down to the narrow Inian Passage & Icy Strait. If you draw a line straight west across the curving surface of the Earth along George Island’s latitude of 58 degrees 13 minutes North, it will cross Kodiak Island & Bristol Bay in Alaska, then see nothing but open ocean until it reaches the Kamchatka Peninsula in Russia.

This is pretty close to the same track on which storms born in the Aleutian Islands travel as they spin their way across the Gulf of Alaska to make landfall on the west coast of North America, including Southeast Alaska.

My thanks to Capt. Don Johnson & the excellent folks of @UnCruise Adventures vessel, M/V Wilderness Explorer, for teaching me a new lost place.
A great joy for me.

Stay tuned for more posts of the brilliantly colored tidepools, rocky pillars & white-foam waves from this nearly-impossible-to-get-to-place, along with its fascinating history as a Naval gun emplacement to protect the U.S. from attacks in World War II.

Don’t confuse this George Island with famous St. George Island in the Pribilofs of the Bering Sea.

 

 

 

 

UnCruise: Misty Fiords National Monument

Waterfall in Rudyerd Bay. Misty Fjords National Monument. Ketchikan, Alaska.
First stop on cruise from Ketchikan to Juneau with @Uncruise.
We anchored overnight, then launched kayaks in this spectacular fjord with soaring rock walls and beautiful waterfalls
A fantastic start for our adventure as guest hosts.
No internet or cellular coverage most of the time
Posting this from Wrangell, Alaska on day 4.

Kayaking among granite walls above saltwater, Rudyerd Bay. Misty Fjords National Monument. Ketchikan, Alaska.
To kayak here is to get a sore neck as I follow the ridgeline with my gaze.
Glacially carved and polished, the walls continue to plunge down xxx meters (xx feet), testimony to the powerful ice that once flowed down this flooded valley.
Named for John Rudyerd, engineer who designed a lighthouse for England’s New Eddystone Rock in 1703. (Info from Patricia Roppel’s book: Misty Fiords National Monument, Alaska, Farwest Research, Wrangell, AK.)
Rudyerd Bay is the most visited fjord in Misty Fjords, but since we had anchored overnight, we were alone.
We departed and turned north toward Walker Cove and the Chickamin & Unuk Rivers before any day cruisers from Ketchikan arrived.

Guest Hosting Uncruise Alaska Fjords & Glaciers Tour

Kate and I are excited to join Uncruise (click the image to go to the Uncruise website) tours for a couple of weeks in May as guest hosts. We’ll provide inside looks into life in Southeast Alaska, this place we love where we’ve raised our family.

Footloose at Handtroller Cove

Footloose anchored at Handtroller Cove-Southeast Alaska. Chilkat Range in background.
CLICK FOR VIDEO: Footloose anchored at Handtroller Cove-Southeast Alaska. Chilkat Range in background.

The sun sets behind the Chilkat Range of mountains as my 18-foot (5.5 meter) skiff named “Footloose” floats at Handtroller Cove, Southeast Alaska. Click the picture for my video taken from Shelter Island, our base for camping and kayaking. The dark low island beyond the skiff is Lincoln Island.

The Chilkat Range in the distance is inaccessible wilderness once you get past the narrow shoreline. Westward, the vast sharp mountains and glaciers give way to Glacier Bay. Fly beyond Glacier Bay, and you’re looking at the Alsek River watershed, the largest continuous designated wilderness in the world. Browse my blog to find a variety of posts about reefs and ecology of the Handtroller Cover area, and also about the spectacular beauty of the Alsek River.

Handtroller Cove is a dimple of an indentation on Favorite Channel, but the junction of Chatham Strait and Lynn Canal, two of the largest channels in Southeast Alaska, must be crossed to reach the Chilkat Mountains from here.

All of the major sea channels in Southeast Alaska follow geological fault lines that run from the southeast to the northwest. The channels have been carved by glaciers during the ice ages, giving them steep shorelines and surprising depths.

The water under the boat is only 6 ft (1.8 m) deep. But between the boat the Chilkat Mountains in the distance, the depth reaches 1,900 ft (579 m). If you imagine what the landscape would look like if there was no water, you would be standing on top of a mountain with steep slopes leading down into a 1900 ft (579 m) valley!

Southeast Alaska’s Gastineau Channel: Can you see the cruise ship?

Can you see a cruise ship, sandbar, navigational aid, and a research vessel?
Can you see a cruise ship, sandbar, navigational aid, and a research vessel? Juneau, Alaska

In the photo above, I stood on the left shoreline, the edge of the North American continent. The shore and mountains of Douglas Island form the right shoreline. Gray mountains at the far end are on Admiralty Island, 12-14 miles away.

Good eyesight? Can you see a cruise ship, sandbar, navigational aid, and a research vessel in in the saltwater of Gastineau Channel? Try it and then zoom in (if using phone). When boating, I constantly search the water ahead for other vessels, navigation markers, and hazards like logs or rocks. I scan the water for any shapes, spots, or projections from the water’s surface, starting closest to me, and gradually sliding my view look down channel until I reach the horizon.

Searching the water along the left shoreline, look for rocks, sand bars, and a navigational marker on pilings. In the channel, you’ll the small research vessel operated by NOAA (National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration) heading away from us. You’ll also see a cruise ship coming toward us that must pass between the navigation aid and Douglas Island to avoid the sand bar the extends from the left shore.

Bonaparte's Gull & Fly fisher check each other out
Bonaparte’s Gull & Fly fisher check each other out. Fishing alone is communion. Click to go to Instagram.

Today’s reflections of a September sky, near Juneau, Alaska show an amazingly different view from my previous Instagram Post of a fly fisher in fog, taken 2 days ago a few miles down the left shoreline. 

 

Alaska Halibut Fishing Welcomes Me Home

Bill Hanson with 50-pound Halibut 2016
Bill Hanson with 50-pound Halibut 2016.

Just home from a six weeks away from my home in Southeast Alaska. Although I had half a day of freshwater boating on Keuka Lake in western New York, and a short saltwater kayak trip in the Atlantic,

I’ve been craving my weekly time on the fjords and channels, the network that separates the islands of the Alexander Archipelago.

A Gift halibut Trip from a Friend

So I am grateful to my friend Bob for inviting me on a halibut trip today, one of the most beautiful days of 2017: sunshine, light breezes, and easy water.

Alaska Halibut Fishing with Nathan and Eleanor
Alaska Halibut Fishing with Nathan and Eleanor

A happy day with Bob, his son Nathan, and friend Eleanor. In 7 or 8 hours of fishing, we caught a few halibut (although none as big as my 50 lb. first halibut of 2016) with a smorgasbord of octopus, herring, and pink salmon heads, so a successful freezer-filling day. See the pictures of Eleanor and Bob for examples of our big saltwater reels.

Channels and Currents Offer Food for Salmon and Halibut

My friend Bob knew that I needed time on the water
My friend Bob knew that I needed time on the water

More importantly to me, we anchored where currents from multiple channels mix and flow as the tide changes (a new high or low every 6 hours). These are my favorite saltwater places in Southeast Alaska. With the flood tide bringing in a moderate high tide of 14.6 feet in the morning, and then dropping down to about +3 feet, the currents were strong enough to drag our anchor several times. Look at the textures in the surface of the water in Photo 3: at least a half-dozen different smooth and riffled edges, tiny white-capped waves, the underlying small waves. This place can be extremely crazy in rough weather.

Chatham Strait with the Chilkat Range in background. Mixing zones have ever-changing textures and waves.
Chatham Strait with the Chilkat Range in background. Mixing zones have ever-changing textures and waves.

With a bottom that is mixed rocks and sand, shallow near points of land that separate different bodies of water, down to more than 1000 feet deep in Chatham, the lower and upper layers of water mix, making food available for salmon and halibut. I could have taken a new picture every 15 minutes with completely different surface conditions.

I love the spectacular view of the Chilkat Range of mountains on the Chilkat Peninsula that separates Chatham Strait from Glacier Bay. Other than the shoreline, these mountains are rarely penetrated by humans.

Ahhh … sharing special places with friends, the never ending ebb and flow of tides and life, saltwater and wilderness… home…