Backpacking Alaska - 2008

This is Anchorage. This is also about 7 in the morning after getting into a hostel around midnight and not getting much sleep. At least that is what vacations are for, right? Lots of travel and little sleep?

We headed out early so we could catch the train down to Seward. After hiking for about 8 blocks we finally saw the train station.

And the train getting ready to leave that morning.

Just an interesting picture of an old locomotive outside the train station.

Well it turned out that the train was sold out for the southbound run that morning. So we were kind of stuck. We ended up heading back into town and looking for other means of transportation.

The store with the bear in front. Just an interesting storefront we saw while walking. We eventually found transportation in the form of a bus ride.

Next Up: Riding the bus

This is a wetlands at the edge of the city. Apparently lots of moose and other animals show up here a lot. We didn’t see any.

This is also supposed to be a favorite place of the locals. Schoolkids come here often on fieldtrips to study what they find there, and they actually saved it from becoming Anchorage’s landfill.

Just south of anchorage we started riding along the Cook Inlet.

This picture is one reason I am very glad that we took the bus this morning. The little white specs are Dall Sheep. We were lucky to see them on the trip.

This is a cool view of some low hanging clouds on the mountainside.

We were really lucky to see as much as we did on the trip. This is a natural feature that we were lucky enough to see firsthand. Any guesses as to what it is?

Another view from the backside as we were catching up to it. We are now on the Turnagain Arm of the Cook Inlet.

This is called a bore tide. The sea is to our right and the end of the inlet is to the left. The Turnagain Arm has the highest tidal fluctuation in US at around 30 feet from low tide to high tide. There are tidal cycles every 12 hours. See the next picture for what a bore tide is.

What is really happening here is that the water from further up the arm is finishing heading out to sea as the water from the Cook Inlet starts coming into the arm. The incoming water is coming in much faster and creates a wave when it meets the outgoing water. This wave, called a tidal bore can be up to 6 feet high and move up to 15 miles an hour. There are only about 60 places in the world where the conditions are right for a bore tide to be created. Here the bore tide can go for over 20 miles and the bus driver said that people have been known to kayak and surf the tide the entire distance.

Some of the mountains across the arm.

There were pull offs along the road where you could stop. This was a sign about the tidal bore at one of the stops.

A great view looking up towards the end of the Turnagain Arm.

The water at high tide would be up near the tops of the rocks.

Just another view across the Arm.

Here you can see some more of the mudflats in the Arm. It is not safe to walk out there. Most of the flats are hard packed and are like concrete at low tide, but some act like quicksand and are impossible to climb out of on your own. And since it is about 6 hours from low tide to high tide and the die will rise about 30 feet, if you get stuck in one of these you are pretty much done for. We were told that a specialized boat has to come and pump tons of water into the quicksand to get you out, that is if you are lucky enough to have them get there in time.

TIf you look close in this picture on the left side you can see a bald eagle in one of the trees. We saw dozens of them and I have some better pictures in the kayaking sections.

One of the ghost forests. I will explain about them later.

This was a lake that we passed later on in the trip. The water was perfectly still and made for great pictures.

And another, looking towards the end of the lake.

These were taken as we started to go over some mountain passes on our way south.

A mountainside up in one of the passes. There was still a lot of snow around everywhere up high.

Here is another little lake with some cool reflections in it.

Another view of that lake.

And another, looking back the way we had come.

This is the sign at this end of the Chugatch National Forest, the second largest in the US. We had been it almost from the time we left Anchorage.

This was a really pretty and calm lake near the top of another one of the passes that we went through.

I was able to take some good pictures here, I really like this one.

One of the many many streams and rivers we crossed.

A partial ghost forest with a mountain background.

Next Up:

This was taken from the bus looking up at some of the houses overlooking the road into town. I would hate to ask how much they cost.

Welcome to Seward!

I liked the murals that seemed to be on a lot of the walls in Alaska.

This guy was out in front of one of the stores downtown.

This is the main drag here in Seward. Street-side parking, shops, bars, a few places to eat. That was about it.

Looking out over Resurrection Bay

That is a sealife aquatic center to the left there and some of the hills right behind the town.

Another view out into the bay.

The ocean is to the right here, we could not see it directly because the bay curves a little around to the right.

This was also the original start to the Iditarod dog sled race.

The “beach”

Another marker showing the original start to the race.

An old dog sled near the starting markers for the race.

Just another view along the shoreline.

These next two were a couple of kiosks about Seward and the Iditarod

This one also talks about the gold rush

This mountain was actually something that a lot of the locals mentioned while we were there. It is just outside of downtown and about 3000 feet up. Every year on July 4 there is a race from the center of town to the top of the mountain and back down. The only rules are that you must use your own 2 feet to get down. The record is 43 minutes. That is 35 minutes to get to the top and 8 minutes to come down. They post paramedics every 100 yards or so on the trail down. All of the locals were looking forward to the end of the week to watch the race.

This is the harbor, it used to be closer to downtown but was destroyed in the earthquake in 64, so they moved it here just north of downtown.

There were lots of fishing boats and tour boats here, did not look to be too many pleasure craft.

Some of the shops alongside the harbor.

And here we are at Kayak Adventures the next morning. The kayaks we used on the trip are on the bottom in the picture.

Our gear. It looks disorganized, but that is because we had to pack it into the holds in the kayaks and smaller bags were easier. The round black things are bear cans.

That is Dad doing a bit of last minute packing.

The view down the street from the shop.

This is where we unloaded and waited for the water taxi to come pick us up.

This is another view of the race mountain that I mentioned earlier, now cloud covered.

Next Up: Whale Watching

THere are our kayaks. We had 2 doubles and the single was for our guide, Wolfy.

Time to load up and get moving.

Here is a harbor view from the water.

They did work to protect the harbor a bit more after the 64 quake,as you can see by the rock berm here.

Downtown Seward. You can pay to park your rv or set up your tent along the shore here and stay. I have a feeling that some people stayed there all summer.

This is one of my favorite pictures. I really like the mountaintop poking through the clouds here.

Looking back towards Seward.

A little self-portrait. It was quite chilly, temperatures probably around 50 degrees but in the wind it felt much colder.

Ah, sunlight, I wish you could have stuck around a bit longer.

A neat shot looking back along the bay.

This was taken looking down one of the smaller bays and inlets that were all along the coast.

Some more mountains in the background, but to the right of the far set of mountains is the northern Pacific Ocean.

Another one of my favorite shots from the trip. I was lucky enough to spot a blow from this guy as he was hunting salmon and got the camera up in time to see him dive. He is a humpback whale, not sure how big. It was awesome to watch these guys in the water.

He did come back up for a little bit, you can see his tail but it is not as good of a shot.

The name of this island escapes me at the moment, but this is where the seals and sea lions liked to hang out.

There were also lots of birds around.

Here you can see a bunch of sea lions hanging out above the high tide line.

The next big animal we saw were some orcas. You can see one here checking out the tour boat. Boats are not allowed to drive up tot he whales, but if the whales come up to you then it is no problem.

The orcas in these pictures are all females. You can tell because they all have shorter (1-3 foot) dorsal fins sticking out of the water. Males would have much larger fins, about 6 feet out of the water.

The rock formations were very cool to check out around the islands.

This is Dave, the co-owner of the kayak shop. We were all keeping an eye out for orcas.

This is a neat picture. You can see a large female here. She has come up enough that you can see one of her while spots up near her head. She has just done a blow, you can see the mist directly above her that we were watching for.

We were following this small pod of about 6 orcas. They were all female. Dave and I were able to spot a couple of males over a half mile off on the other side of this bay, but we were not able to get closer to them than that.

Here is a pair of them and one of them has just blown. There is probably a technical term for it but everyone on the boat just said that we were looking for blows. If you don’t know what I am talking about, that is simply the orca breathing. They push a large amount of air through their blowholes on the tops of their heads before taking in a breath.

Here is probably as close as we got. You can see a white spot pretty clear here. All of the orcas have unique spots and can be identified by them.

Next Up: All alone in Bear Cove

The boat dropped us off in Bear Cove. We unloaded all of our food and gear and said bye to everyone on the boat.

This is our pile of gear. Everything we would have for the next 5 days.

We all kind of stood around while the boat prepped to leave, so I snapped a few quick pictures.

Looking down the beach to the left.

And there goes the warm, dry boat.

We were now well on our own.

This was a neat rock formation right next to camp. Take a good look at this. We were dropped off at low tide. Remember this rock feature for later.

Just a closeup of the rock with mountains in the distance.

The water here was very chilly and some of the sea life that thrives in that type of water are starfish. We saw lots of them lef ton the beach from receding tides.

This is the area directly behind our campsite. The yellow bulbs are a type of cabbage if I remember right. They had just started blooming a few days before we got there. Very cool until we were informed that they were considered a delicacy by bears and one of their favorite foods.

And finally we got camp set up. The kitchen was a ways down the beach. We never cooked near our tents to disassociate food with where we were sleeping.

A picture looking out into the cove.

Can you spot what I was taking a picture of here?

The picture here is a better one, if you look closely you can see a big bald eagle in the tall dead tree here. We got to know the sounds of bald eagles pretty quick, they sound like the squeal of a small child. A little while after taking this picture the eagle took off and flew down and caught a fish from the water in the cove, very cool to watch.

Next Up: Its paddle time!

Our first bit of kayaking of the week was to hop in and head out of the cove and a bit south, past three hole point and into paradise cove. The water out in the bay was pretty rough, 2-3 foot swells. That made for some interesting kayaking. By the time I took this picture we were heading into the bay and things had started to calm down.

This picture turned out great. Kyle and Clare are listening to the guide, Wolfy, talk about three hole point. I guess I need to introduce Clare. The poor girl decided to go on a kayak outing for 5 whole days with 3 Wanke males and Wolfy. She is a medical student from Scotland and honestly made the trip a whole lot more fun. We were very glad to have her along.

This is three hole point. There actually were 3 openings in the rock even though you can only see 2 here.

The water had calmed down a lot once we were past the point and out of the wind.

THere you can see the three holes, 2 of them are behind dads paddle. By this time it had started raining, something that we were going to get used to over the next 4 days.

Just a closeup on a couple of the openings.

A great shot showing why this is called three hole point.

We ran into this guy a little later on. He was very curious and followed us around for quite a while.

Another shot of the openings.

I wasn’t sure if this rock fell or was carved out, but it made for a cool picture.

Like I said, the seal followed us for quite a while. A couple of times I tured my head to see him about 10 feet behind out kayak just checking us out. Every time I tried to turn the kayak to get a good shot he would duck under and then pop back up when we started moving.

Here is another shot of him over by the rocks.

There is a pretty long waterfall that comes down out of the mountains here.

And here is Wolfy visiting the bottom of that waterfall to fill up some water bottles for dinner that night.

Next Up: Back to camp

We got back to camp later and settled in for the night and some dinner. One thing we always had to do when stopping at all was to drag the kayaks to a very high point on the beach, and this picture illustrates why very well. If you remember a little bit ago I told you to remember a rock formation near our camp. Well you may recognize the top of the rock formation in this picture. This was taken at or close to high tide. You can see the huge difference in water level. If we didn’t drag our kayaks all the way up past the highest tide lines that we could find then the kayaks could possibly be swept out to sea while we were sleeping.

Looking out over Bear Cove. Once out of the cove the ocean is to the left and deeper into Aialik Bay is to the right.

Dinner time! This was the mess hall. The low tarp made things awkward at first, but when the rains came it was very nice to have a dry place to cook.

You can see here how far up we brought the kayaks, they are right beside our tents. I guess if the water gets that high we have more problems than the kayaks floating away.

This was taken as the tide is heading out. You can see more of the rock formation visible here.

Next Up: Back on the water

So on our second day out we packed up the entire camp, packed everything into the kayaks and headed out. The general plan was to paddle a ways then cross over to the other side of the bay and make camp. There was a front moving in that meant a few things. The first is that swells out in the ocean and out on the area where we had come in on the water taxi were going to be up to 14 feet. That meant no water taxi, effectively stranding us until things calmed down.

The second thing that the front meant was wind here in the bay. luckily our great guide predicted the winds coming from the west and moved us to that side of the bay, shielding us from most of it with the mountains. And it also made for easier paddling.

One of the tooth coves. There are 3 right in a row and fairly identical and all called Tooth Cove.

The water was a bit choppy that day. Not horrible, but choppy, windy and rainy all together made things interesting.

Our first view of Pederson Glacier. We will visit this one up close tomorrow (day 3).

Just relaxing and taking a break for a few minutes. We tried not to paddle for more than 3 or 4 hours at a time without stopping and stretching.

There are 2 glaciers in this picture. Aialik is on the right side and quite a ways away. Pederson is to the left and only a couple of miles across the bay.

It is hard to see, but right in the center of this picture there is a bald eagle. He was flying around checking things out and we stopped to take a few pictures and watch him.

Here you can see him better since he is outlined against the cloudy sky.

Here is a great picture of the crew. Clare, dad, Kyle, myself.

And another from the other side.

I guess it was picture time. Wolfy was hustling around to get shots from every angle.

And finally a closeup.

Say cheese.

Next Up: Lunchtime

This is where we stopped for lunch that day. It was a pretty cool small cove just after a ranger station, still on the east side of the bay.

We got out and pulled up the kayaks and were checking things out when we noticed a large pile of droppings near the clearing where we were. Normally this would not warrant a mention except for 2 facts. First, it was fresh. Like within the past hour or two. Second, there was a lot of it. We showed Wolfy and his first reaction was that it was not black bear droppings. So that means that a rather large brown bear had been by there recently. So we all kept an eye out as we made some lunch.

But fresh bear droppings were not going to deter us from eating a hot lunch.

TIt is amazing to think that the bears can get around these parts at all. Most of the coves are at the bottom of sheer mountainsides. The bears will either walk the beaches, sometimes swim back and forth and they will also find any lower passes that will let them get around.

We had stopped almost directly across the bay from Pederson Glacier and it made for some good pictures.

The opening on the far side is the entrance to the Holgate Arm. We will end up over there at the end of our trip.

We did need to refill our water bottles, so we found this small freshwater pond fed by meltwater and filled up.

A nice shot of the beach and bay and glacier.

Here is Kyle pumping water out of the pond.

If you haven’t noticed, we are pretty bundled up. And there was still snow at the waterline, even in late June.

Next Up: Setting up camp