Maree's parents are in the Auxiliary Coast Guard. They have a boat called Arctic LunaSea, and they regularly patrol the western portion of Prince William Sound during the summer months. They always invite us out on the boat, which has plenty of room at 38 feet of length. Unfortunately for me, because i work weekends i can almost never go. This year though, Fourth of July was on a Friday, so i took advantage of a rare weekend off to spend a few nights on the boat.
We got to the docks at Whittier on Thursday evening, and were treated to a rare kind of fireworks display at midnight. Considering only 200 people live in Whittier year round, they had a very long show. Due to the the fact that Whittier is situated in a steep fjord with several high mountain valleys joining in on the sides, the fireworks created some insane sounds. The explosions would echo up a valley, then 8 seconds later make their way back across to the walls on the other side, at a lower pitch, and so on, until the sound was completely garbled. When the show was in full force it sounded like slow moving avalanches falling down the mountains all around. The sound was more entertaining to me than the fireworks.
I put this one up here big so you could see the birds flying along the shore. The Billings Glacier is the first you see as you leave Whittier.
The next day, we awoke to a dreary, almost foggy day. Pretty typical for Whittier, and in this case, typical of our ENTIRE SUMMER. It was the cloudiest summer ever, literally, as far as i know, and i did virtually nothing because of it. Alaska still looked pretty cool that morning in the harbor.
It had been years since i'd been out in Prince William Sound, and i was looking forward to going someplace new. I'd heard some disheartening rumors about conditions in the area, and was about to verify that they were true. At the end of April we had this insane blizzard that TRIPLED the record for the whole month. That was in Anchorage, and was the first sign that our summer was going to suck. Anchorage though, was just on the very edge of that monster, and it was Prince William Sound that bore the brunt of the storm. Now it was July, and as we made our way through the archipelago, i was stunned to see snow all the way down to sea level in some areas. Again, it was JULY. I've never seen anything like that. There was no way all the snow was going to melt before winter returned.
There was way too much snow around for July. Did i mention that although New Zealand is really cool, Alaska blows it away when it comes to mountains, glaciers and scale? New Zealand has an infinitely better trail system.
We headed east, then south, through Cullrose Passage, across Port Nellie Juan, and into Blue Fjord, where we pulled into a small sheltered bay for the evening. It's funny how things work out in the sound. Although it seems like you are in remote Alaskan wilderness, everyone in the area darts into a bay at a certain time of day. We had been anchored for less than half an hour before two other boats showed up just because they saw us there.
The Arctic LunaSea anchors in for the day. Not a bad spot to spend the night.
One of the boats was a fishing boat from Cordova, quite some distance away. The other was a sailboat with three people in it who had been stuck in that thing for over 3 months. They had sailed up from Hawaii and were making their way to Seattle. Each one of them, taking turns, went over to the shore to walk around and be alone for a short time, then returning, gave one of the others their turn at momentary seclusion. I think i'd go nuts in that situation.
ROW WOMAN! ROW! Maree likes to row, for reasons i don't understand. I rowed on the way back.
A nifty low-tide-only waterfall.
Maree and I went to shore to explore. I thought we were on an island, but we actually were on the mainland in an area that is cut off from the rest of Alaska by the Sargent Icefields. I'd wanted to see the Sargent Icefields for years and even though it was cloudy with intermittent rain i was able to catch a few glimpses of it's edge late in the day. The Sargent Icefield is huge, around 500 square miles, and virtually no information about it is available online.
It was the lowest tide of the month, and it revealed all kinds of neat stuff.
Thick braids of algae thrived where fresh water streams flowed into the sea.
We'd been on exactly the same kind of terrain a few years ago on Cullrose Island. The shoreline was heavily vegetated, but just past that it opened up into weird spongy fairyland type of meadows, or maybe a very soggy golf course. There were shallow little pools all over the place, sometimes the ground squished, and on steep slopes you had to look out for the ground giving out under your shoes and sliding away.
The snow had literally just melted on the low parts of the land. New plants and grass were sprouting up out of the soggy soil.
Maree took some pictures of the flora.
A neighboring bay.
Me rummaging through my pack.
The next day was much rainier. We went to an place called Greystone. It's a granite half dome in a bay with a white sand beach. I'd been able to see it from a distance the previous night but today it was hidden in clouds. The whole place was very nice looking, and apparently there are some outfitters who will drop you off to kayak and camp for a day or two and then come pick you up and drop you off somewhere else. We headed back to Whittier, making one stop at a shipwreck, and the weather gradually improved.
Maree took this picture of a white sand beach. This granite mountain rose up into a Yosemite style half dome, unfortunately obscured by clouds, but visible the previous evening.
The Sierra Nevada like slopes on the back of the half dome.
There were a million of these.
