When you want to see the stars, find someplace dark
Ice dots the water across the entry, large bergs lie beached near the shore stranded between tides. We pick are way carefully though the crowd, many of the chunks larger that our vessel. The bar across the entry to Tracy Arm is betrayed by a long line of icebergs grounded to reveal the shallow water beneath. Here the history of a thousand winters lies shattered about the landscape like broken glass.
A store from another time… A clapboard sided box just above the harbor. A small room with shelves crammed with everything you could need… Baking soda, potato chips, paper towels, beer and engine oil just over from fishing tackle and charcoal. The cash register is a 1920’s model ordered new from a catalog and shipped across a continent. The front window displays the work of local artists and a rack of postcards for the visitors that wander through in the summer. A hand written sign in the window warns of a bear seen in town a few nights previous. …A store from another time.
The U.S. Coast Guard is tasked with maintaining the many critical navigational aids throughout the waterways of Alaska. Tracy Arm is entered across a narrow gap in a large bar, probably on old glacial moraine across the mouth of the fjord. The channel is marked by two buoys, one had been missing for a few days, ripped from its mooring by the impressive tides that surge across the bar. The buoy was back in place when we arrived, replaced by the crew of the USCG Anthony Petit, a Coast Guard buoy tender.
Just a few crabs in the trap this morning! Tonight’s dinner will be crab cakes with a crab louie salad. We didn’t scrimp on the amount either, the cakes have twice as much crab as the recipe calls for. No problem… there is no better crab in the world than dungeness!
A young black bear, well known to the staff of the Mendenhall Glacier visitor center, is attempting to catch salmon in Steep Creek, just below the visitor center parking lot. He was not too good at it, lots of splashing and no fish to show for the effort. The fish were there, bright red sockeye salmon busy spawning in the stream bed. This was this bear’s first year on his own, still learning the skills of survival.
Yes, I was really this close to the bear, this was a shot with a standard lens, no telephoto. Fortunately there was a small bridge over the creek to provide a slightly safer vantage point. The bear showed no interest in the gathering crowd of sightseers on the bridge, concentrating on the salmon.
Standing in the rain watching the fish. If you do not move for a few moments the salmon seem to ignore you and begin crowding the shore in an attempt to get up the creek. The mass of fish fills the mouth of the stream as each attempts to take the barrier of the first cascade under the highway bridge.
Those that have already spawned, or for whom the effort proved too much litter the gravel bar beyond where we stand, dead fish at the end of their life cycle become the nourishment that will enable other life to flourish. The nutrients of the deep ocean delivered to a gravel bar in Alaska to feed ravens, eagles, bears and more.
In a scene lifted from innumerable nature films, a small creek jammed with fish. So many salmon fill the stream that it seems there is more fish than water. Large fish, some up to three feet long, scales and fins turning a dull green as they lose the silvery sheen of life. To see this spectacle in person lends an immediacy and an awe of nature that strikes deep in one’s thoughts. Here life completes the cycle, salmon coming to spawn after years at sea. Returning to the same stream that gave them birth.
Evolution is a powerful force, driven by the irresistible instinct to spawn the next generation, to reproduce so that the species might survive, Even if it means dying in the process. The species goes on in the eggs and sperm deposited in the stream bed.
There is a way to leave Sitka without entering the open ocean, a sheltered waterway that leads to Juneau and the rest of Alaska. The passage from Sitka to the open waters of Chatham Straight is in places very narrow, a series of passes and straights that lead inland, the last section found on the charts as Peril Straight. The passage is plied by dozens of vessels daily including the Alaskan State Ferry.
In a narrow passage just north of Sitka, a place called Neva Straight lies the wreck of a tugboat, a vessel that failed to make the journey. A rusted reminder to be careful in navigating these waters.
Tracy Arm is one of the must see places near Juneau. If you are not traveling in your own boat you can jump on one of the fast excursion boats that make the run from Juneau each day. A classic fjord with walls that tower thousands of feet above, waterfalls everywhere, and icebergs to make navigation interesting as you make your way up the glacially carved canyon. The terrain beneath the water is just as dramatic, not unusual to be a few hundred feet from shore with a thousand feet of water below the keel. In some places the depth finder can not find bottom, over 1,200 ft or more down.
At the top there is Sawyer Glacier, a tidewater glacier that drops those icebergs into the water as you watch. There are actually two glaciers, in twin arms of the fjord that separate near the end of the trip. Sit among the ice flows watching the seals and ice crashing from the cliff-like face. If you can time your arrival for high tide it is far more likely to see a really big calving, with hundreds or thousands of tons of ices breaking free from the face to crash into the water and create waves that rock the boat.
It is customary to scoop up some of that glacial ice floating around to fill your coolers. Crystal clear and very dense, the ice from the bottom of the glacier is interesting stuff. We break it up and make cocktails out of it to enjoy as we cruise back down the fjord.
