Seward to Juneau
Hi Everyone!
This is the fourth installment of Ed and Kenneth's trip to Alaska and back. This one is really long. You may not want to read the whole thing at once!
At the end of the last letter, we were in Seward on Prince William Sound. From there we drove back toward Anchorage, stopping to see Exit Glacier, one of the most visited places in Alaska. You can walk right up to the terminus of the glacier and touch it, but I wouldn't hang around too long as pieces fall off every now & then. The ice was deep blue in many places with the usual crevasses and snow bridges. Our next stop was the Russian River where we had the opportunity to see salmon returning to their birth stream to spawn. This was a truly amazing sight. We sat at the base of the Russian River Falls and watched hundreds of salmon struggle to swim upsteam, then jump several feet at a time up the waterfall, pausing in pools along the river's edge only to keep trying again and again until they made it upstream. The fish were deep red or silver and they looked pretty worn out, and you would be too if you had swam thousands of miles in the ocean, then hundreds of miles upstream just for the one chance to spawn.
After a couple days of driving and logistics, such as replacing a seal in the Explorer's front differential and buying a new cooler (the old one started leaking) and lantern (the old one just quit working), we headed out of Anchorage northbound toward our next destination, Valdez. We stayed in Palmer, known for its huge vegetables owing to the long hours of daylight. Unfortunately, they had received alot more rain than usual and the veggies were big, but not huge as advertised. The next morning we awoke to a... are you ready for this?... a bright sunny day! So we took our chances and arranged a sightseeing flight out of Talkeetna to fly over Denali and around Mt. McKinley. We arrived at the airport in Talkeetna to find the place buzzing with activity, both sightseeing flights and climbers flying to base camps on glaciers for their attempts at summiting the mountain. Many planes had "wheel-skis", skis with wheels poking through the bottom so they could land on both runways and glaciers. We boarded a bright red Cessna 185 with the pilot and three other passengers and taxied out to the runway, then turned around because the radio quit working. Fortunately, they had another (red) Cessna and in just a few minutes we took off in that one for our 1-1/2 hour flight. The sky was mostly clear and the visibility was phenomenal- we could easily see Mt. McKinley, the surrounding glaciers, and countless other peaks, all covered to a great extent with snow. Our pilot brought us all around the mountain, incredible at a height of over 20,000 feet, double our plane's altitude. Even more impressive is the fact that the mountain starts out at about 2000 feet, making it the the highest mountain in the world for its height above the surrounding terrain. We flew through some passes with knife-edge peaks just a few hundred feet away, and everywhere there was snow. And it occurred to me why they paint the planes bright red- easier to locate should you have to let down on a glacier or snow-covered mountain. As we headed back to Talkeetna we all agreed this was an incredible experience and a highlight of any trip to Alaska.
After the flight we headed back to Palmer via the Hatcher Pass Road, which had more potholes than any other road I've ever seen, save perhaps for Mexico. The views were nice as we drove along the Willow River, a green valley with the obligatory snow-capped peaks all around. This took us to the site of the Independence Mine which produced much gold up until WWII when it was eventually shut down. Many gold and silver mines were shut down during the war because they were not deemed to be "strategic industries," and they often never started up again because the price of gold did not keep pace with the costs incurred extracting the gold.
Our next stop was Wrangell-St. Elias Nat'l Park. The park is incredibly mountainous, dominated by several peaks over 16,000 feet, numerous glaciers, and a huge icefield. Access to the park is limited and most people only see the area from the air, unless they are stupid enough to drive the Edgerton Highway to the towns of McCarthy and Kennicott, as we were. Oh, not that it isn't a scenic drive, but you see, the road includes a 60 mile stretch of really poor dirt sporting potholes, washboard, and since the road is on an old railroad bed, buried (or worse, half buried) railroad spikes. Fortunately, we didn't encounter any spikes, but perhaps the $108 per person it would have cost to fly in would have been well-spent considering the scenery from the air and the wear and tear on the vehicle. However, once we got to McCarthy we enjoyed ourselves, checking out the scenery and local history. The final mile to McCarthy has to be made on foot as there is only a footbridge across the Kennicott River. The footbridge replaced a hand-pulled tram only this year; this would have been fun to ride, but it was an inefficient way to get the growing number of tourists across the river. The town was the home for the families of the miners who worked the Kennicott copper mine, five miles away. It also had the saloons and other, ah, other necessary businesses one would expect for a mining town in the early 1900's. Most of the buildings are the original wood structures and are in remarkably good condition. We then took a bus over to the Kennicott mine. (How do they get cars there if there's only a footbridge? They drive them across the river in the winter when it freezes over, of course.) The mining village is a collection of wood structures in various stages of disrepair, but interesting nonetheless. Some people actually live there year-round. In the winter they use snowmobiles and an awuful lot of firewood. We hiked a couple miles and set up camp along side Root Glacier. We then took a day hike along the lateral morraine of the glacier over to a gorgeous view of Stairway Icefall where the glacier drops over a mile in elevation. Back at camp we made a fire and listened to the glacier creak and groan- a truly excellent campsite.
In Valdez we stayed one night in a B & B owned by a friendly couple who let us unplug their phone and connect the laptop so we could download and send email. (This was where we sent the last email so you can see we got just a tad behind in the newsletter.) We took a tour of the Alyeska Pipeline Terminal, the terminus of the 800 mile pipeline starting in Prudhoe Bay on the Arctic Ocean. The terminal is a sprawling complex with miles of pipe, numerous storage tanks, buildings, and four berths for tankers. The oil storage capacity is amazing- they can store the entire capacity of the pipeline at the complex- yet this can all be loaded on tankers in just a few days. The following day we took a cruise on Prince William Sound. Most people recognize the names of Valdez and Prince William Sound because of the Exxon Valdez oil spill in 1989. However, it's truly a beautiful place with incredible fjords, glaciers, rocky islands, and all sorts of sealife. We passed through the Valdez Narrows which is only a mile wide, not much room for a thousand foot tanker, then by Bligh Reef where the Exxon Valdez ran aground. The tankers are now required to be escorted by two tugboats all the way out of the sound, which probably would have prevented the oil spill. We saw the usual selection of sea otters, sea lions, and puffins as we headed west to Columbia Glacier. The glacier is huge, about 4-1/2 miles wide, and there are thousands of icebergs floating around its face. There is a submerged terminal morraine in front of the glacier which marks the end of one of its advances, and this underwater rock wall stops the icebergs from floating out into the sound until they have melted sufficiently to clear the morraine. This results in an eerie scene of icebergs of all shapes and sizes with the looming face of the glacier as a backdrop. Unlike our tour of Northwestern Fjord, the captain was not able to stop the engines and let us view the glacier in silence because he had to continuously avoid the icebergs, which, I am happy to report, he did successfully.
From Valdez we boarded an Alaska ferry for the first time. We left the truck in Valdez and just took our packs for a couple days in the quaint town of Cordova, accessible only by sea and air. The ferry left the dock at 11:45 PM and arrived in Cordova at 5:30 AM, so we put our sleeping bags in one of the lounges and got some sleep. Upon our arrival, we got some hot drinks at a liquor store/cafe while we waited for the restaurant to open. Upon hearing that we intended to hike in the area, the owner asked if we were going to carry a gun. Seems there were a lot of bear in the area and a guy had been attacked a couple weeks before. (Of course, we weren't carrying a gun, silly us.) When the resaurant opened we had breakfast and again we were asked (twice) if we were going to carry a gun. Now, realistically, the chances of a bear attack are small, especially considering how loud we talk- it's a wonder we see any wildlife at all. So we decided to hike without exercising our second amendment rights, rather un-Alaskan, I guess, but we didn't have a gun and who wants to lug one around with the weight of granola bars and freeze-dried lasagna we were carrying anyway. We went to the forest service office just to see how the trail conditions were, and we were very glad we did. Turns out a creek decided to make the road its home and we were told the "best" way to start the 3 day hike was to rent knee-high rubber boots and slog through the creek for over a mile just to get to the trailhead. So we looked around for another hike. We picked a hike up to Crater Lake which was supposed to be quite beautiful. The hike started at the local ski hill where we walked uphill to some great views of Cordova and Prince William Sound. On the trail we met several women from a cruise ship we could see moored out in the bay. So we jokingly asked if the cruise ship was all women, and the reply was yes. So my initial, and automatic, response to this was, "gee, can I come along?" This was met by a surprisingly cool response, and this is the point where we notice that all of these women have close-cropped hair and really, they didn't exactly look all that feminine. Just our luck, we were sharing Cordova with an entire cruise ship full of women, but they were all lesbians.
Anyway, we climbed up over a ridge and down to Crater Lake. The lake is surrounded by mountains and has a blue-green color- quite beautiful. We decided to hike to a higher ridge and camp in a shelter on the mountain. After a steep climb and some scrambling we reached a peak that afforded us an incredible 360 degree view. Every angle had stunning scenery- mountains with snow patches, the fjords of Prince William Sound, islands, and the broad Copper River Delta. It was breathtaking, and we of course took out our lawn chairs and sat there and admired the scenery for a while. At this point we decided that the hike to the shelter would take us several more hours and it really wasn't a wise idea to try to make it there that day. So instead we hiked back down to Crater Lake and set up camp by the beach. We had dinner with a great view of the lake on one side and the sound on the other. The next morning we awoke to rain, our good luck with the weather having run out, I guess. We looked up toward the ridge that we would have been on had we continued on the to shelter the day before and saw that it was completely socked in. The walk down would have been wet, windy, and dangerous so we were glad we decided to simply camp by the lake. We then broke camp and hiked down to the road that runs into Cordova. While we were walking down the main road we noticed that the shoulder was really wide, like 50 feet wide. Just as we were discussing this fact, several airplanes and hangers came into view and our question was answered- we weere hiking on the municipal airport runway! The next thing we saw was no less surprising. Behind a tree there appeared to be a pickup truck, actually, just the cab portion. The really strange thing was that the back end of the cab had no visible means of support, there was only one set of wheels and that was on the front. Well, behind the tree we saw what was really going on. They had attached a dolly to the front of the truck and used the setup as an airplane tug. Strange.
The next day we toured a small cannery where they can salmon for specialty shops and individuals. You can actually bring in one fish and they will smoke, cook, and can it. The owner gave us the whole tour and he was very cordial, a real Alaskan fisherman type. The salmon are doing well in the sound, so well, in fact, that the canneries can't handle all the fish and the department of fish & game has placed a 25,000 pound/day limit on each boat. The fishermen actually have to try to catch less fish by netting only a part of a school of salmon so they don't go over the limit. After the tour we went back to our hotel room (the fourth night we've spent in a hotel on the trip), which was actually a room above the liquor store. There we found that our bus for a trip we planned out to the Copper River had left without us since the ferry had come in early and the driver didn't want to make everybody wait. Of course, we had scheduled a pickup time and they had every intention on getting us on the bus, that is, by having another person drive us in a pickup at 70 MPH down a dirt road to meet up with the group. So, after an excitng drive of about an hour we met up with the bus, and it was well worth the trip. There we saw Childes Glacier across the Copper River, and it looked big. It looked maybe 75 feet high and a few hundred feet across the river. That was deceiving, however, because the visibility was so good. As we watched huge pieces of ice fall into the river, which was cutting off the glacier's advance, the roar if the ice took at least a second to get to us, and the waves took what seemed like a long time as well. Actually, the glacier was a quarter mile away and it stood 300 feet high! After we gawked at this sight for a while we got in the bus and went over to the "Million Dollar Bridge" which crosses the Copper River. The bridge was originally a railroad bridge that connected the towns of Cordova and Kennicott. Unfortunately, the 1964 earthquake caused one end of one of the spans to fall, ending its use as a railroad bridge, but not as a car bridge. They simply added a bit of roadway to fill the gap and now you can drive over the bridge, if you are willing to drive on a bridge that is half wrecked. We all walked out onto the bridge to check it out, then headed back towards the bus. Ken & I decided to see the view from the observation deck as well, about 100 feet away. While we were on the observation deck we heard the driver start the engine, and we were still on the observation deck as, you guessed it, the bus drove away. We figured they'd be back for us in either a few minutes if they quickly discovered our absence, or at worst, an hour and a half later when the driver found our backpacks. Well, about 15 minutes later we decided they weren't coming back anytime soon. So we checked around for any cars in the parking lot (none) and then waited for someone to come along, since if we waited for the bus to get all the way into town before they came back for us we would miss our ferry and the next ferry wasn't for 3 more days. Soon thereafter a pickup truck came by and picked us up. The driver was a huge guy named Erwin, he looked like a linebacker, and he had been out in the woods across the bridge looking for moose. He was an interesting guy. One moment he is explaining how he uses a thermos bottle and some fishing line to make a moose call, the next he's discussing the composition of the Brazilian stock index. So we head back toward town and coming in the opposite direction is a pickup truck, and as it passes us at about 100 miles an hour we see that it's the girl who had driven us out to the glacier, intent on picking us up and now well past us. So we get into town with plenty of time to spare and Erwin lets us out, and no sooner than he does this, the bus pulls up and stops in the middle of the street (it's a small town) and the driver expresses both relief that we're back and won't miss our ferry, and utter exasperation that of all the people to pick us up it has to be the town eccentric and now everybody's going to find out she left us and, she feared, it would probably make the local paper. So we hop in the bus and we get to the ferry with plenty of time to spare.
The next couple of days we drove from Valdez back up to join the Alcan to make our way to Skagway for the ferry trip along the inside passage. We had great views of the snow-capped Wrangell Mountains in Kluane (pronounced clue-ah-knee) Nat'l Park. We stopped at Sheep Mountain and indeed there were dozens of Dall Sheep clinging to the mountainside. We stopped in Haines Junction in the Yukon, which is not much more than a gas stop on the highway. It does have an incredibly ugly statue made of plastic or something, of maybe a simulated mountain festooned with animals, if you can bring yourself to look at it. Locally, it's called the Muffin because it looks like a huge muffin with animals sticking out all over it. The good thing about the town is its nightlife. Not the bars, but the Northern Lights. We got up at 2 AM and the sky was lit up with waves and curtains of green light, an incredible sight. The temperature dropped down to about 35 degrees that night but we didn't mind because the light show was so fabulous. We are really impressed by the provincial campgrounds in Canada, especially in the Yukon. They have nice secluded campsites, drinking water, picnic shelters, and dry split firewood, all for about $5 US a night Since we are both terminally frugal, this forces us to lower the temperature at which we will break down and get a motel room, although this is also a factor of rain, wind, and laziness.
The next day we drove down along the Chilkat River to Haines (not to be confused with Haines Junction) on the ocean. Unfortunately, it was quite rainy and foggy so we couldn't see much. This area is known as the Valley of the Eagles as over 3000 bald eagles converge here from November through January to feed on the late run of salmon in one of the few rivers that remain ice-free all year. We toured the Sheldon Museum which had many displays on Tlingit (pronounced Tling-kit) indian culture. These indians make some nice handicrafts like fine baskets and beautiful blankets that can take over 2 years to weave. We then visited the Bald Eagle Foundation where they take care of injured and sick raptors. They also have a very comprehensive wildlife display of birds and mammals, including the usual grizzly bear with the "Do Not Touch the Bear" sign.
In Haines we also did laundry, which is guaranteed to bring out the sun, even if there are storm clouds everywhere on the horizon. So immediately after laundry we jumped on a water taxi and motored over to Skagway just for the scenery, even though we were going to drive there in the next couple of days. This took us up the Lynn Canal, which is really a beautiful fjord with sheer tree-covered banks, a plethora of waterfalls, and numerous bald eagles. Back in Haines we attended a native Tlingit dance which appeared to be a faithful rendition of how the natives eased money out of the pocketbooks of early tourists like Vitus Bering and James Cook. They had a narrator who would tell a story for a few minutes about some Tlingit fable, such as how the Raven people killed the big monster. Then, some dancers (mostly reluctant kids) would give a really weak pantomine which lasted about 20 seconds. They claimed the troupe had won some international native dance contest, but if so, I don't think I need to see the competition.
The next day we drove back up to Haines Junction on our way to Skagway. We stayed there 2 nights and took advantage of a rare fine day to take a day canoe paddle on the Dezadeash (pronounced Dez-dee-ash) River. The aspen were changing color (at the end of August!) and the riverbanks and mountainsides had splashes of gold here and there. We could see the St. Elias Mountains in the distance and the views were better than in any of the postcards. The only drawback was that the wind was blowing hard directly up the river and, at times, we had to paddle like crazy just to keep from going backwards. There was also a forest fire burning a few miles out of town. Fortunately, the wind was blowing away from the town. When we began our canoe trip we could see small columns of smoke from the fire across the valley, but by afternoon, there was a huge mushroom cloud dominating the entire eastern horizon. We saw several helicopters with buckets of retardant hanging under them flying back and forth. There is so much timber up in the Yukon and so few people to fight fires that I imagine this sort of fire is quite frequent.
The day after our canoe trip, we headed down the highway toward Skagway. The weather grew progressively worse as we drove, until we could barely see more than a few hundred feet. As we drove the steep winding road over the White Pass and across the US border, we could tell only that the scenery would certainly be spectacular on a better day. We arrived in Skagway in the pouring rain and everything seemed to be closed. We pulled into an RV park to stay for the night, but the office was closed. There was no one on the street, either. We finally found someone staffing the Klondike Gold Rush Nat'l Historic Park building. He pointed us to the auditorium where a guy named Buckwheat was going to give a free hour long performance of Robert Service poems. We had seen a very good Robert Service presentation in Dawson City, so we had dinner and then headed back for the performance. Buckwheat turned out to be a rotund man with a bushy grey beard wearing suspenders (which he continually adjusted). Buckwheat REALLY likes Robert Service. He recited "The Shooting of Dan McGrew" and several other poems and ballads while running around the stage acting out the poems. This included lunging at the audience, grabbing people around the neck and performing scissor kicks. He also told some stories of his own including a recounting of a long night in a blues bar in Seattle. He was approached by some rough looking characters, who noticed that he was the only white guy in the place. They "asked" him if they could read some poetry by Malcom X and proceeded to recite a long poem which was very unflattering to whites. In the awkward moment after they finished, Buckwheat asked if he could recite a poem to them and launched into "The Cremation of Sam McGee". They loved it. The night turned into a poetry fest with everyone pulling poems they knew out of the woodwork and asking for more Robert Service poems from Buckwheat. It ended only when the bartender kicked them all out. After Buckwheat's performance, we went back to our campground, which was still unstaffed, and went to bed.
When we got up the next morning there was still no one there, but the door to the men's room was locked, so with more motivation than usual, we packed up the car and headed over to a local park with public restrooms. We had breakfast in the park and set out to explore the town. The town is really very quaint for a tourist town. The sidewalks are all boardwalks, as they were in gold rush days. Many of the buildings are authentic and those that aren't have been built using blueprints supplied by the park service for the buildings that stood there in the 1890's. We took a great walking tour led by a very interesting park ranger. Among other things we found that only 1 year after it was founded in 1897, the town had electric lights, telephones and their own newspaper. For a year during the gold rush stampede, the town was run by a con man named "Soapy" Smith. He operated many rackets whiile outwardly sponsoring several worthy civic causes. His most famous con was the operation of a telegraph office with a telegraph line that stretched only a few hundred feet into the woods. Prospectors would send telegraphs to loved ones back home only to recieve a reply the next day saying that the family was is dire straits and needed money wired immediately. He was killed in a shootout with the town manager on the city dock.
The manager, who was also killed in the gunfight, became the town hero and is buried in the cemetary under a huge monument. Soapy was buried in a simple plot just outside the cemetary walls. We took a ride on the White Pass and Yukon Railroad that afternoon. This is a narrow-gauge railway built in 1900 to take miners to the gold fields. It connected Skagway and Whitehorse in the Yukon. Only the first 20 miles of track are still in use. The scenery was great and the train takes the same route up the White Pass that many of the gold rush miners walked in 1898. This was called the Dead Horse Trail because, of the 3000 pack horses used to haul miners' goods over the pass, only 30 horses actually made it to the top. This was the alternative route to the Chilcoot Trail where people had to walk carrying all their goods on their backs. The White Pass trail is still visible at several places from the train.
The next day, the weather was actually fairly good, so we drove up to an overlook on a hill over the town and got a good view. We spent the rest of the morning at the National Park visitor center and shopping until it was time to board our first car ferry for the trip to Juneau. Alaska's ferry system is quite nice with a partially covered open area on the top deck for sight seeing, an indoor observation lounge in the front for the 9 out of 10 days that it rains, a cafeteria, bar and plenty of cabins for those staying on overnight. There is usually a National Forest Ranger on board who gives live presentations on various aspects of the inside passage and helps everyone spot whales, porpoises and sea otters. The ferry trips can get long, though, at 8 to 12 hours per trip. Our ride to Juneau was quite nice with mostly sunny skies, steep mountains on both sides of the ferry with glaciers and spectacular waterfalls coming off the steep slopes. By the time we arrived it was rainy again.
This is the fourth installment of Ed and Kenneth's trip to Alaska and back. This one is really long. You may not want to read the whole thing at once!
At the end of the last letter, we were in Seward on Prince William Sound. From there we drove back toward Anchorage, stopping to see Exit Glacier, one of the most visited places in Alaska. You can walk right up to the terminus of the glacier and touch it, but I wouldn't hang around too long as pieces fall off every now & then. The ice was deep blue in many places with the usual crevasses and snow bridges. Our next stop was the Russian River where we had the opportunity to see salmon returning to their birth stream to spawn. This was a truly amazing sight. We sat at the base of the Russian River Falls and watched hundreds of salmon struggle to swim upsteam, then jump several feet at a time up the waterfall, pausing in pools along the river's edge only to keep trying again and again until they made it upstream. The fish were deep red or silver and they looked pretty worn out, and you would be too if you had swam thousands of miles in the ocean, then hundreds of miles upstream just for the one chance to spawn.
After a couple days of driving and logistics, such as replacing a seal in the Explorer's front differential and buying a new cooler (the old one started leaking) and lantern (the old one just quit working), we headed out of Anchorage northbound toward our next destination, Valdez. We stayed in Palmer, known for its huge vegetables owing to the long hours of daylight. Unfortunately, they had received alot more rain than usual and the veggies were big, but not huge as advertised. The next morning we awoke to a... are you ready for this?... a bright sunny day! So we took our chances and arranged a sightseeing flight out of Talkeetna to fly over Denali and around Mt. McKinley. We arrived at the airport in Talkeetna to find the place buzzing with activity, both sightseeing flights and climbers flying to base camps on glaciers for their attempts at summiting the mountain. Many planes had "wheel-skis", skis with wheels poking through the bottom so they could land on both runways and glaciers. We boarded a bright red Cessna 185 with the pilot and three other passengers and taxied out to the runway, then turned around because the radio quit working. Fortunately, they had another (red) Cessna and in just a few minutes we took off in that one for our 1-1/2 hour flight. The sky was mostly clear and the visibility was phenomenal- we could easily see Mt. McKinley, the surrounding glaciers, and countless other peaks, all covered to a great extent with snow. Our pilot brought us all around the mountain, incredible at a height of over 20,000 feet, double our plane's altitude. Even more impressive is the fact that the mountain starts out at about 2000 feet, making it the the highest mountain in the world for its height above the surrounding terrain. We flew through some passes with knife-edge peaks just a few hundred feet away, and everywhere there was snow. And it occurred to me why they paint the planes bright red- easier to locate should you have to let down on a glacier or snow-covered mountain. As we headed back to Talkeetna we all agreed this was an incredible experience and a highlight of any trip to Alaska.
After the flight we headed back to Palmer via the Hatcher Pass Road, which had more potholes than any other road I've ever seen, save perhaps for Mexico. The views were nice as we drove along the Willow River, a green valley with the obligatory snow-capped peaks all around. This took us to the site of the Independence Mine which produced much gold up until WWII when it was eventually shut down. Many gold and silver mines were shut down during the war because they were not deemed to be "strategic industries," and they often never started up again because the price of gold did not keep pace with the costs incurred extracting the gold.
Our next stop was Wrangell-St. Elias Nat'l Park. The park is incredibly mountainous, dominated by several peaks over 16,000 feet, numerous glaciers, and a huge icefield. Access to the park is limited and most people only see the area from the air, unless they are stupid enough to drive the Edgerton Highway to the towns of McCarthy and Kennicott, as we were. Oh, not that it isn't a scenic drive, but you see, the road includes a 60 mile stretch of really poor dirt sporting potholes, washboard, and since the road is on an old railroad bed, buried (or worse, half buried) railroad spikes. Fortunately, we didn't encounter any spikes, but perhaps the $108 per person it would have cost to fly in would have been well-spent considering the scenery from the air and the wear and tear on the vehicle. However, once we got to McCarthy we enjoyed ourselves, checking out the scenery and local history. The final mile to McCarthy has to be made on foot as there is only a footbridge across the Kennicott River. The footbridge replaced a hand-pulled tram only this year; this would have been fun to ride, but it was an inefficient way to get the growing number of tourists across the river. The town was the home for the families of the miners who worked the Kennicott copper mine, five miles away. It also had the saloons and other, ah, other necessary businesses one would expect for a mining town in the early 1900's. Most of the buildings are the original wood structures and are in remarkably good condition. We then took a bus over to the Kennicott mine. (How do they get cars there if there's only a footbridge? They drive them across the river in the winter when it freezes over, of course.) The mining village is a collection of wood structures in various stages of disrepair, but interesting nonetheless. Some people actually live there year-round. In the winter they use snowmobiles and an awuful lot of firewood. We hiked a couple miles and set up camp along side Root Glacier. We then took a day hike along the lateral morraine of the glacier over to a gorgeous view of Stairway Icefall where the glacier drops over a mile in elevation. Back at camp we made a fire and listened to the glacier creak and groan- a truly excellent campsite.
In Valdez we stayed one night in a B & B owned by a friendly couple who let us unplug their phone and connect the laptop so we could download and send email. (This was where we sent the last email so you can see we got just a tad behind in the newsletter.) We took a tour of the Alyeska Pipeline Terminal, the terminus of the 800 mile pipeline starting in Prudhoe Bay on the Arctic Ocean. The terminal is a sprawling complex with miles of pipe, numerous storage tanks, buildings, and four berths for tankers. The oil storage capacity is amazing- they can store the entire capacity of the pipeline at the complex- yet this can all be loaded on tankers in just a few days. The following day we took a cruise on Prince William Sound. Most people recognize the names of Valdez and Prince William Sound because of the Exxon Valdez oil spill in 1989. However, it's truly a beautiful place with incredible fjords, glaciers, rocky islands, and all sorts of sealife. We passed through the Valdez Narrows which is only a mile wide, not much room for a thousand foot tanker, then by Bligh Reef where the Exxon Valdez ran aground. The tankers are now required to be escorted by two tugboats all the way out of the sound, which probably would have prevented the oil spill. We saw the usual selection of sea otters, sea lions, and puffins as we headed west to Columbia Glacier. The glacier is huge, about 4-1/2 miles wide, and there are thousands of icebergs floating around its face. There is a submerged terminal morraine in front of the glacier which marks the end of one of its advances, and this underwater rock wall stops the icebergs from floating out into the sound until they have melted sufficiently to clear the morraine. This results in an eerie scene of icebergs of all shapes and sizes with the looming face of the glacier as a backdrop. Unlike our tour of Northwestern Fjord, the captain was not able to stop the engines and let us view the glacier in silence because he had to continuously avoid the icebergs, which, I am happy to report, he did successfully.
From Valdez we boarded an Alaska ferry for the first time. We left the truck in Valdez and just took our packs for a couple days in the quaint town of Cordova, accessible only by sea and air. The ferry left the dock at 11:45 PM and arrived in Cordova at 5:30 AM, so we put our sleeping bags in one of the lounges and got some sleep. Upon our arrival, we got some hot drinks at a liquor store/cafe while we waited for the restaurant to open. Upon hearing that we intended to hike in the area, the owner asked if we were going to carry a gun. Seems there were a lot of bear in the area and a guy had been attacked a couple weeks before. (Of course, we weren't carrying a gun, silly us.) When the resaurant opened we had breakfast and again we were asked (twice) if we were going to carry a gun. Now, realistically, the chances of a bear attack are small, especially considering how loud we talk- it's a wonder we see any wildlife at all. So we decided to hike without exercising our second amendment rights, rather un-Alaskan, I guess, but we didn't have a gun and who wants to lug one around with the weight of granola bars and freeze-dried lasagna we were carrying anyway. We went to the forest service office just to see how the trail conditions were, and we were very glad we did. Turns out a creek decided to make the road its home and we were told the "best" way to start the 3 day hike was to rent knee-high rubber boots and slog through the creek for over a mile just to get to the trailhead. So we looked around for another hike. We picked a hike up to Crater Lake which was supposed to be quite beautiful. The hike started at the local ski hill where we walked uphill to some great views of Cordova and Prince William Sound. On the trail we met several women from a cruise ship we could see moored out in the bay. So we jokingly asked if the cruise ship was all women, and the reply was yes. So my initial, and automatic, response to this was, "gee, can I come along?" This was met by a surprisingly cool response, and this is the point where we notice that all of these women have close-cropped hair and really, they didn't exactly look all that feminine. Just our luck, we were sharing Cordova with an entire cruise ship full of women, but they were all lesbians.
Anyway, we climbed up over a ridge and down to Crater Lake. The lake is surrounded by mountains and has a blue-green color- quite beautiful. We decided to hike to a higher ridge and camp in a shelter on the mountain. After a steep climb and some scrambling we reached a peak that afforded us an incredible 360 degree view. Every angle had stunning scenery- mountains with snow patches, the fjords of Prince William Sound, islands, and the broad Copper River Delta. It was breathtaking, and we of course took out our lawn chairs and sat there and admired the scenery for a while. At this point we decided that the hike to the shelter would take us several more hours and it really wasn't a wise idea to try to make it there that day. So instead we hiked back down to Crater Lake and set up camp by the beach. We had dinner with a great view of the lake on one side and the sound on the other. The next morning we awoke to rain, our good luck with the weather having run out, I guess. We looked up toward the ridge that we would have been on had we continued on the to shelter the day before and saw that it was completely socked in. The walk down would have been wet, windy, and dangerous so we were glad we decided to simply camp by the lake. We then broke camp and hiked down to the road that runs into Cordova. While we were walking down the main road we noticed that the shoulder was really wide, like 50 feet wide. Just as we were discussing this fact, several airplanes and hangers came into view and our question was answered- we weere hiking on the municipal airport runway! The next thing we saw was no less surprising. Behind a tree there appeared to be a pickup truck, actually, just the cab portion. The really strange thing was that the back end of the cab had no visible means of support, there was only one set of wheels and that was on the front. Well, behind the tree we saw what was really going on. They had attached a dolly to the front of the truck and used the setup as an airplane tug. Strange.
The next day we toured a small cannery where they can salmon for specialty shops and individuals. You can actually bring in one fish and they will smoke, cook, and can it. The owner gave us the whole tour and he was very cordial, a real Alaskan fisherman type. The salmon are doing well in the sound, so well, in fact, that the canneries can't handle all the fish and the department of fish & game has placed a 25,000 pound/day limit on each boat. The fishermen actually have to try to catch less fish by netting only a part of a school of salmon so they don't go over the limit. After the tour we went back to our hotel room (the fourth night we've spent in a hotel on the trip), which was actually a room above the liquor store. There we found that our bus for a trip we planned out to the Copper River had left without us since the ferry had come in early and the driver didn't want to make everybody wait. Of course, we had scheduled a pickup time and they had every intention on getting us on the bus, that is, by having another person drive us in a pickup at 70 MPH down a dirt road to meet up with the group. So, after an excitng drive of about an hour we met up with the bus, and it was well worth the trip. There we saw Childes Glacier across the Copper River, and it looked big. It looked maybe 75 feet high and a few hundred feet across the river. That was deceiving, however, because the visibility was so good. As we watched huge pieces of ice fall into the river, which was cutting off the glacier's advance, the roar if the ice took at least a second to get to us, and the waves took what seemed like a long time as well. Actually, the glacier was a quarter mile away and it stood 300 feet high! After we gawked at this sight for a while we got in the bus and went over to the "Million Dollar Bridge" which crosses the Copper River. The bridge was originally a railroad bridge that connected the towns of Cordova and Kennicott. Unfortunately, the 1964 earthquake caused one end of one of the spans to fall, ending its use as a railroad bridge, but not as a car bridge. They simply added a bit of roadway to fill the gap and now you can drive over the bridge, if you are willing to drive on a bridge that is half wrecked. We all walked out onto the bridge to check it out, then headed back towards the bus. Ken & I decided to see the view from the observation deck as well, about 100 feet away. While we were on the observation deck we heard the driver start the engine, and we were still on the observation deck as, you guessed it, the bus drove away. We figured they'd be back for us in either a few minutes if they quickly discovered our absence, or at worst, an hour and a half later when the driver found our backpacks. Well, about 15 minutes later we decided they weren't coming back anytime soon. So we checked around for any cars in the parking lot (none) and then waited for someone to come along, since if we waited for the bus to get all the way into town before they came back for us we would miss our ferry and the next ferry wasn't for 3 more days. Soon thereafter a pickup truck came by and picked us up. The driver was a huge guy named Erwin, he looked like a linebacker, and he had been out in the woods across the bridge looking for moose. He was an interesting guy. One moment he is explaining how he uses a thermos bottle and some fishing line to make a moose call, the next he's discussing the composition of the Brazilian stock index. So we head back toward town and coming in the opposite direction is a pickup truck, and as it passes us at about 100 miles an hour we see that it's the girl who had driven us out to the glacier, intent on picking us up and now well past us. So we get into town with plenty of time to spare and Erwin lets us out, and no sooner than he does this, the bus pulls up and stops in the middle of the street (it's a small town) and the driver expresses both relief that we're back and won't miss our ferry, and utter exasperation that of all the people to pick us up it has to be the town eccentric and now everybody's going to find out she left us and, she feared, it would probably make the local paper. So we hop in the bus and we get to the ferry with plenty of time to spare.
The next couple of days we drove from Valdez back up to join the Alcan to make our way to Skagway for the ferry trip along the inside passage. We had great views of the snow-capped Wrangell Mountains in Kluane (pronounced clue-ah-knee) Nat'l Park. We stopped at Sheep Mountain and indeed there were dozens of Dall Sheep clinging to the mountainside. We stopped in Haines Junction in the Yukon, which is not much more than a gas stop on the highway. It does have an incredibly ugly statue made of plastic or something, of maybe a simulated mountain festooned with animals, if you can bring yourself to look at it. Locally, it's called the Muffin because it looks like a huge muffin with animals sticking out all over it. The good thing about the town is its nightlife. Not the bars, but the Northern Lights. We got up at 2 AM and the sky was lit up with waves and curtains of green light, an incredible sight. The temperature dropped down to about 35 degrees that night but we didn't mind because the light show was so fabulous. We are really impressed by the provincial campgrounds in Canada, especially in the Yukon. They have nice secluded campsites, drinking water, picnic shelters, and dry split firewood, all for about $5 US a night Since we are both terminally frugal, this forces us to lower the temperature at which we will break down and get a motel room, although this is also a factor of rain, wind, and laziness.
The next day we drove down along the Chilkat River to Haines (not to be confused with Haines Junction) on the ocean. Unfortunately, it was quite rainy and foggy so we couldn't see much. This area is known as the Valley of the Eagles as over 3000 bald eagles converge here from November through January to feed on the late run of salmon in one of the few rivers that remain ice-free all year. We toured the Sheldon Museum which had many displays on Tlingit (pronounced Tling-kit) indian culture. These indians make some nice handicrafts like fine baskets and beautiful blankets that can take over 2 years to weave. We then visited the Bald Eagle Foundation where they take care of injured and sick raptors. They also have a very comprehensive wildlife display of birds and mammals, including the usual grizzly bear with the "Do Not Touch the Bear" sign.
In Haines we also did laundry, which is guaranteed to bring out the sun, even if there are storm clouds everywhere on the horizon. So immediately after laundry we jumped on a water taxi and motored over to Skagway just for the scenery, even though we were going to drive there in the next couple of days. This took us up the Lynn Canal, which is really a beautiful fjord with sheer tree-covered banks, a plethora of waterfalls, and numerous bald eagles. Back in Haines we attended a native Tlingit dance which appeared to be a faithful rendition of how the natives eased money out of the pocketbooks of early tourists like Vitus Bering and James Cook. They had a narrator who would tell a story for a few minutes about some Tlingit fable, such as how the Raven people killed the big monster. Then, some dancers (mostly reluctant kids) would give a really weak pantomine which lasted about 20 seconds. They claimed the troupe had won some international native dance contest, but if so, I don't think I need to see the competition.
The next day we drove back up to Haines Junction on our way to Skagway. We stayed there 2 nights and took advantage of a rare fine day to take a day canoe paddle on the Dezadeash (pronounced Dez-dee-ash) River. The aspen were changing color (at the end of August!) and the riverbanks and mountainsides had splashes of gold here and there. We could see the St. Elias Mountains in the distance and the views were better than in any of the postcards. The only drawback was that the wind was blowing hard directly up the river and, at times, we had to paddle like crazy just to keep from going backwards. There was also a forest fire burning a few miles out of town. Fortunately, the wind was blowing away from the town. When we began our canoe trip we could see small columns of smoke from the fire across the valley, but by afternoon, there was a huge mushroom cloud dominating the entire eastern horizon. We saw several helicopters with buckets of retardant hanging under them flying back and forth. There is so much timber up in the Yukon and so few people to fight fires that I imagine this sort of fire is quite frequent.
The day after our canoe trip, we headed down the highway toward Skagway. The weather grew progressively worse as we drove, until we could barely see more than a few hundred feet. As we drove the steep winding road over the White Pass and across the US border, we could tell only that the scenery would certainly be spectacular on a better day. We arrived in Skagway in the pouring rain and everything seemed to be closed. We pulled into an RV park to stay for the night, but the office was closed. There was no one on the street, either. We finally found someone staffing the Klondike Gold Rush Nat'l Historic Park building. He pointed us to the auditorium where a guy named Buckwheat was going to give a free hour long performance of Robert Service poems. We had seen a very good Robert Service presentation in Dawson City, so we had dinner and then headed back for the performance. Buckwheat turned out to be a rotund man with a bushy grey beard wearing suspenders (which he continually adjusted). Buckwheat REALLY likes Robert Service. He recited "The Shooting of Dan McGrew" and several other poems and ballads while running around the stage acting out the poems. This included lunging at the audience, grabbing people around the neck and performing scissor kicks. He also told some stories of his own including a recounting of a long night in a blues bar in Seattle. He was approached by some rough looking characters, who noticed that he was the only white guy in the place. They "asked" him if they could read some poetry by Malcom X and proceeded to recite a long poem which was very unflattering to whites. In the awkward moment after they finished, Buckwheat asked if he could recite a poem to them and launched into "The Cremation of Sam McGee". They loved it. The night turned into a poetry fest with everyone pulling poems they knew out of the woodwork and asking for more Robert Service poems from Buckwheat. It ended only when the bartender kicked them all out. After Buckwheat's performance, we went back to our campground, which was still unstaffed, and went to bed.
When we got up the next morning there was still no one there, but the door to the men's room was locked, so with more motivation than usual, we packed up the car and headed over to a local park with public restrooms. We had breakfast in the park and set out to explore the town. The town is really very quaint for a tourist town. The sidewalks are all boardwalks, as they were in gold rush days. Many of the buildings are authentic and those that aren't have been built using blueprints supplied by the park service for the buildings that stood there in the 1890's. We took a great walking tour led by a very interesting park ranger. Among other things we found that only 1 year after it was founded in 1897, the town had electric lights, telephones and their own newspaper. For a year during the gold rush stampede, the town was run by a con man named "Soapy" Smith. He operated many rackets whiile outwardly sponsoring several worthy civic causes. His most famous con was the operation of a telegraph office with a telegraph line that stretched only a few hundred feet into the woods. Prospectors would send telegraphs to loved ones back home only to recieve a reply the next day saying that the family was is dire straits and needed money wired immediately. He was killed in a shootout with the town manager on the city dock.
The manager, who was also killed in the gunfight, became the town hero and is buried in the cemetary under a huge monument. Soapy was buried in a simple plot just outside the cemetary walls. We took a ride on the White Pass and Yukon Railroad that afternoon. This is a narrow-gauge railway built in 1900 to take miners to the gold fields. It connected Skagway and Whitehorse in the Yukon. Only the first 20 miles of track are still in use. The scenery was great and the train takes the same route up the White Pass that many of the gold rush miners walked in 1898. This was called the Dead Horse Trail because, of the 3000 pack horses used to haul miners' goods over the pass, only 30 horses actually made it to the top. This was the alternative route to the Chilcoot Trail where people had to walk carrying all their goods on their backs. The White Pass trail is still visible at several places from the train.
The next day, the weather was actually fairly good, so we drove up to an overlook on a hill over the town and got a good view. We spent the rest of the morning at the National Park visitor center and shopping until it was time to board our first car ferry for the trip to Juneau. Alaska's ferry system is quite nice with a partially covered open area on the top deck for sight seeing, an indoor observation lounge in the front for the 9 out of 10 days that it rains, a cafeteria, bar and plenty of cabins for those staying on overnight. There is usually a National Forest Ranger on board who gives live presentations on various aspects of the inside passage and helps everyone spot whales, porpoises and sea otters. The ferry trips can get long, though, at 8 to 12 hours per trip. Our ride to Juneau was quite nice with mostly sunny skies, steep mountains on both sides of the ferry with glaciers and spectacular waterfalls coming off the steep slopes. By the time we arrived it was rainy again.
