The Marge of Lake Laberge. Yukon Territory, Canada.
Tim Troll & I found many hidden beauties and many blind allies that required backtracking in our 10-day wandering road trip on a 2700-mile exploration of the Yukon Territory and Alaska (Spetember 24-October 10)
Lake Laberge is a mysterious lovely lake, the scene for Robert Service’s poem:
The northern lights have seen queer sights, But the queerest they ever did see, Was that night on the marge of Lake Labarge I cremated Sam McGee…
Typical conversation:
Bill: “Stop here for a photo!” (screeching tires). “Where do you want to go now?”
“How about down the fork to the left?”
“Where does it go?”
“No idea, but it looks like the road heads toward the river.”
“Yeah, that sounds good… is there food? Never mind, we’ve got what we need.”
Brother-in-law Tim is an excellent voyaging companion.
And then, of course, there’s the chance that a raven will help point to the right path. (maybe?? or is it a trick?)
Lakes and rock formations of the Tormented Valley in Yukon Territory, Canada.
The road from Skagway, AK to Carcross, YT runs through many landscapes.
But none stranger or more potent than Tormented Valley with its brilliant green lakes.
Bedrock here is encrusted with lichens or many colors and textures.
Add a cold wind, and this can be a forbidding place.
Tormented Valley-Yukon Terr
But today the shining gold aspen trees against dark green spruce and pine made Tormented Valley seem more like open-air vault for landscape riches. See tomorrow’s post for golden hillsides.Wild autumn colors: Quaking Aspen trees. Whitehorse, Yukon Territory, Canada.
Quaking Aspen-Whitehorse BC
Quaking Aspen (Populus tremuloides) leaves flutter in the wind, an adaptation that helps them withstand strong winds—giving in rather than fighting against the breeze.
These thickets of trees are colonies that all sprout from the same roots.
The individual trees don’t live much more than 100 years, but some aspen root colonies are believed to live many thousands of years, perhaps as much as 80,000 years.
Also may be the largest organism on earth, spreading over many miles, although not verified.
For now, I’m thrilled to see their golden quaking leaves on every mountain and roadside as we travel through the Yukon Territory.
On the road with brother in law, Tim Troll, my adventure pal.
Apricot Sunrise Reflections – Keku Islands. Kake, Alaska.
Serene, yet expectant, a sunrise of high promise.
The sea remains calm, but seen from above, the rocky Keku Islands streak across the surface of Keku Strait as if racing in blurred speed.
I want to return to this landscape rich with seals, humpback whales, marbled murrelets, and salmon.
Bright Silver Salmon. Juneau, Alaska. August brings Coho Salmon, aka Silver Salmon, flooding back to the streams of Southeast Alaska. Glistening, powerful fish, I love wading out to fly fish or spin fish in the saltwater channels.
Follow the lives and deaths of salmon if you want to trace the paths of nutrients & energy in Alaska ecosystems. Salmon feed everyone-humans, bears, gulls, eagles, shorebirds, other fish, insects, crabs. EVERYTHING.
And salmon die in the streams after spawning, bringing nutrients to forests and other streamside plant communities.
I thank the salmon when they give their lives to me. Eating these salmon unites me with their lives and the endless circle of my generations and theirs. The salmon and I are one with the landscape.
Auke Lake (Áak’w in Tlingit, literally ‘little lake’). Juneau, Alaska. Beyond the lake low black line of hills, the Coast Range mountains rise above Mendenhall Glacier.
This one day of mirrors and mountains and water remains one of my best memories of Juneau.
Willow and Ice-Walker Glacier. Alsek-Tatshenshini Raft Trip in Wilderness.
Willow reflection with ice of retreating Walker Glacier. Alsek River watershed, Alaska. As wild and pristine a place as I’ve found.
Glaciers are strange beasts—grinding rock from the landscape to create the black streak of rubble-covered ice in the background. Yet the white ice & green water reflect colors of purity, heavy with fine flour from the glacier mill, but with almost no organic carbon yet.
Willows are one of the earliest plants to grow on bare silty gravel uncovered after thousands of years under ice. They add nitrogen to the soil, favoring other plants.
Climate change is accelerating changes in this pristine landscape. This lake didn’t exist in 1984. Walker Glacier was a few meters from the Alsek River. By 2013, the glacier had retreated 800 meters. The new lake was 750m wide and 1800 m long.
11-day rafting trip on the Tatshenshini & Alsek Rivers with 10 friends through 3 Canadian and USA national parks that combine into largest designated wilderness in world.
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.
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.
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.
Steller’s Jay 14-day-old chicks in nest near our window today. Juneau, Alaska.
Eyes wide open. Thick gray down. Feathers showing on wings.
Jostling each other for food & space.
Still 4 chicks in the nest.
Fed by both male & female, the chicks spend a lot of time alone while both adults forage.
See my previous posts for newly-hatched chicks & other updates.
Just a brief update as Kate and I are home for a few hours between two UnCruise Advenures wilderness cruises (7-days each) as Insider Hosts. Home again in 1 week.
