When you want to see the stars, find someplace dark
Summer in Alaska the local flora explodes extravagantly. Taking advantage if the long days and short growing season the plants grown and bloom with a richness not often seen further south. A walk along a trail in the Alaskan forests and meadows offers plenty of opportunities to use a camera to capture the scene. Something I hope to be doing, stopping and photographing the flowers…
The Alaskan rain forest is as rich in life as any tropical rain forest. A vibrant palette of life is visible wherever you look. Water in plenty means that everything grows, at least during the summer. All the plants seem to be in a rush to accomplish the tasks of life before winter comes again.
Salmon fishing is real work, baiting the lines, setting up and dropping the downriggers, constant vigilance as you troll up and down the shore. Kelp and other flotsam gets fouled in the lines, the hooks need re-baiting often, up and down again with the downriggers with their heavy lead balls.
Halibut fishing is more my style, find a likely place, drop the anchor, drop in the pole, sit back and crack a drink and enjoy the scenery while you wait for the fish to bite. Given the choice of eating halibut or salmon I will take the halibut! Nothing against salmon, it is pretty good, just that halibut is better.
The plan is to catch halibut. This involves sending heavy hooked and baited line to the bottom, weighted with a heavy lead ball. When bottom is felt the line is brought back up a few feet to hang just above the seabed waiting for halibut to take the bait. There are a number of other fish that inhabit the bottom and will also go for the bait. Some of these fish are desirable catches, pacific cod, rockfish or golden eye are all good eating.
There are a couple you don’t want, starry flounder or the sculpins! Flounder are not much of a problem, but the sculpins are something else entirely. We caught a couple of these really ugly fish that day. All mouth and head, big eyes and no body, all spines and teeth. Not easy to get off the line, the hook is in that impressive mouth!
Take a plane or helicopter above the high ridge that rises above the city and you find ice, thousands of cubic kilometers of ice. The Juneau Ice Field is 140km (86miles) north to south and stretches almost 90km (55miles) into Canada. In places it is over 1400m (4600ft) thick, a sheet of ice that remains from a time when the world was colder.
When visiting Juneau it is worth the time to see this place. An air tour from town climbs over the ridge an into another world. Once over the ice the scenery is dramatically stark, ice everywhere, with bare rock and rugged mountain peaks punctuating the white. You would think you are over Antarctica, indeed the Juneau Ice Field has stood in for the south pole in a few movies.
A massive river of ice flowing down from the high ice fields above the city. When visiting Juneau go visit the glacier, only a few minutes drive from the airport and worth the visit. if you have the time and can make the arrangements take an air tour of the ice field. An fantastic flight, cross the ridge above the city and you are over the Juneau Ice Field, an enormous expanse of ice punctuated by spires of rock. From below there are only hints of the ice, from the air it becomes an unworldly experience.
As we approached the city the pilot announced that another flight was in the way and we would have to wait before landing. As a result we circled a couple times over the entrance to Icy Straight and Swanson Harbor. I sat at the window enjoying the view as Deb slept on my shoulder. The water below looks wonderful, it is going to be tough to wait a day until we leave harbor.
A wall of ice, hundreds of feet high, towering above the water with jagged teeth waiting to crush any hapless vessel below under blocks of ice the size of minivans. The stuff of adventure novels and endless nature documentaries. Such places do exist, where the power of nature is seen raw and in full glory. Witnessing such a spectacle is worth making the effort to get to one of these remote places, where rivers of ice meet the sea.
The show is generally best on a rising tide, as the sea level increases the face of the glacier is lifted and the most unstable pillars of ice come crashing down. Watching from a safe distance gives a chance to see the process in action. No guarantee of a large collapse, no way to predict what will fall on any given day. One can only try to time their visit with high tide to allow the best chance of seeing ice collapses.
When one of the towering seracs does collapse it generally gives warning, small ice falls around it increase in frequency. Something that large does not move fast, but collapses with a slow motion slide into the water. A photographer with a ready camera will have ample opportunity to grab a few frames as the avalanche of ice comes down. The collapse will create a large wave that threatens any nearby vessels, wise to stay well back. Even half a mile away the waves created by the ice will rock any vessels in the fjord.