PRINCE WILLIAM SOUND, ALASKA
ESCAPE Magazine
Launching myself off the rail of a fishing boat, I free-fall ten feet toward the icy waters of Alaska 's Prince William Sound . "This is ridiculous," I think as I splash down. The water hits my face like a blast of liquid nitrogen. I paddle over to an iceberg and haul myself out, looking like a plump red seal in my thick neoprene survival suit. From up on my icy perch I watch several other fat red seals bobbing in the frigid sea, swimming among the ‘bergs several hundred yards from the base of a towering turquoise glacier. "These people are insane." I tell myself as I lie back on the ice and relax in the sunshine, hoping a hungry killer whale doesn't show now looking for a little snack.
Flanked on the west by the Kenai Mountains and on the north and east by the Chugach Range , Prince William Sound is a 15,000-square-mile arm of the Pacific Ocean jutting up into the belly of the forty-ninth state. It's a vast watery wilderness bordered by soaring snow-capped peaks sweeping down through dense northern rainforests to the sea. A maze of islands and long open reaches, the sound claims the largest collection of tidewater glaciers on the planet and is home to abundant wildlife, including whales, seals, otters, Dall sheep, mountain goats, and both black and grizzly bears.
The indomitable Captain James Cook named the sound in 1778 during a futile quest for the Northwest Passage . Though he missed the shortcut to the Orient, he discovered a region rich in natural resources, especially timber, fish, and sea otter furs. Whittier, the tiny fishing village where we began our trip, was historically a stopover for native and Russian fur traders. Miners later hiked nearby Portage Pass to reach the Iditarod Trail leading to the goldfields of Nome .
Named after the poet John Greenleaf Whittier, the modern port was built during and shortly after World War Two as a military fuel storage center, and the dominant features of the town are a fuel tank farm and a giant concrete, Soviet-style high-rise apartment building where most of Whittier lives. In many ways the high-rise is Whittier , for it houses a store, the town hall, the post office, schools, and other municipal functions. You can live in Whittier , surrounded by some of the planet's supreme wilderness scenery, and never leave the tower. Indeed, according to local kayaker Perry Solomonson, some people never do. He knows people who have not left the building in over ten years.
Yesterday morning my wife Perry, Mary, and I lashed our kayaks to the roof of The Whittier Express , a motor launch that shuttles kayakers into the far reaches of Prince William Sound. Outward bound in a moderate chop, the shallow draft hull slammed into each wave with a tooth-jarring concussion that made a circus act of my morning coffee ritual. Passing the mouth of Passage Canal , a deep fjord surrounded by gleaming summits riven by dozens of waterfalls cascading through the lush forests of the lower slopes in an almost tropical vision of paradise, we looked to the mountains off to the north, where a small plane had crashed in the storm the day before. There was the plane, about a thousand feet above us, clinging to the steep slope like a squashed fly on a wall. As is often the case in Alaska , nobody was hurt, and the pilot and passenger hiked back down to town.
Sometime later our captain, Pete Heddell, guided the Express down Culross Passage, a narrow, protected reach between Culross Island and the mainland. Pete motored right up to shore and we unloaded the kayaks in the rain. Soon, the sound of the engine was swallowed by the distance, and we were alone in the quiet, dripping wilderness. A bald eagle launched slowly from a nearby snag and flapped heavily away, weighed down by the fish in his belly. We stood quietly for a moment in the awesome silence and watched, then packed the kayaks, a tandem and a solo, and got under way.
It was good to be moving under our own power, to feel the familiar initial unsteadiness of the sleek narrow craft, and soon our muscles warmed to the task. In a sea kayak you sit low in the water, like a loon. Sometimes, in rough seas, big waves splash over the deck and you find yourself up to your armpits in the water. In a kayak you feel like a part of your surroundings, like a wild water-creature, half human, half cormorant, and less like a visitor.
Our boats glided swift as arrows across the aquamarine waters and the miles flew by. Rounding a point, we headed towards a waterfall cascading out of the thick wet forest. We paddled up to the foot of the falls, into a stream chock full of spawning pink salmon. We could see the fish a foot or so below us in the clear water, thrashing in the shallows. Some, totally spent, fluttered their tails weakly and languished, drifting in circles, dying. A river otter swam by with a salmon in his mouth. He was so busy with all that food we barely rated a quick glance. And then, as we sat silent and still in our kayaks, we watched a large black bear amble out of the woods just yards away. He waded into the stream and snatched a large salmon. Oblivious to us, he gripped the fish in his jaws and vanished back into the forest.
At the head of Long Bay , a rapid river full of still-vigorous, jumping salmon rushed out of the uplands. The river banks were lined with bushes heavily laden with luscious ripe salmonberries. There was enough food here to last us for weeks, an incredible display of nature's bounty in an area undisturbed by humans. We put ashore to add to our freeze-dried, store-bought fare. Perry put his rod together and quickly hooked a large male pink salmon, called a "humpy" because of the large hump that grows on his back when he returns to his native waters to spawn. We picked berries for our cereal and took turns with the rod, catching a fish or getting a strong hit on nearly every cast.
A couple of hours later, as we threaded our way through a passage between two islands, we discovered a “pom-pom”, a floating mop used to connect oil spill booms. Perry reached over the side of his kayak and retrieved it, a brightly colored souvenir of the Exxon Valdez oil spill.
Like many other Alaskans, Perry spent the months following the spill working feverishly to save the sound. He piloted a boat shuttling clean-up crews day and night to wherever they were needed most. “I became so exhausted,” he told me, “there were times when I would literally fall asleep standing up at the wheel after dropping off a crew.”
No one knew what to do when the Valdez sheared her hull on Bligh Reef on March 24, 1989, hemorrhaging more than 10 million gallons of North Slope crude into one of the world's most spectacular marine environments. A spill of that magnitude in such a cold and biologically rich ecosystem had never happened before.
It was the worst oil spill in U.S. history, coating hundreds of miles of pristine beaches and killing countless sea birds, salmon, otters, bears, and other animals. Paddling forward again, I brooded over our collective denial about what industrial development means for places like Prince William Sound . As a nation we ignored the inevitability of a major spill, preferring to believe the unthinkable couldn't happen. But when it did, rather than look inward to examine the values system that led to disaster, we pointed fingers and cast blame –at Exxon; at Alyeska, the pipeline company; at Captain Hazelwood; at everyone but ourselves. I looked around at this still recovering wilderness and wondered how we will react when the next spill happens.
The wind picked up as we approached the northern end of Culross Passage. Whitecaps and breakers smashed against the exposed tip of Culross Island . To continue into open water would have been foolish, so we turned around in heaving, frothy four foot swells and beat a hasty retreat through whitecapped seas. We found a protected cove and set up camp in a heavy downpour.
To stay dry, Perry rigged up an elaborate system of waterproof tarps. Following his expert instruction, we raised tarps everywhere, tarps to cook under, tarps to relax under, and tarps over our tents to keep them dry, too. We even rigged tarps over tarps. A little later, with dry clothes, shelter, a roaring stove and a hot drink, we began to feel downright cozy. As I cooked dinner I watched a sea otter doing the backstroke just offshore.
This morning the rain is still pouring from a leaden sky, tapping the tarps like snare drums. I get up and take a look at the water, noting the breakers crashing against the exposed shores of Culross Island across the passage from our camp. Nothing to do but wait. The others, fatalistic, retire to the tents back among the dripping spruce. But I'm anxious to move, so I sit under the tarp by the stove, sip a hot drink, and keep an eye on the wind, water, and sky.
Restless, I wander out into the rain and down through the yellow popweed beds to the waterline. Unlike my home waters in the Gulf of Maine , the tide here doesn't rush in and out like a raging river; it goes quietly up and down. The fjords are so deep, I realize, there are no bottom obstructions, no constraints to create flows. This part of the sound, at least, is like a giant bathtub filled and emptied twice a day. Even though there is a twelve-foot tide, it slips in and out almost without notice.
Looking up from the shoreline to watch a bald eagle flap across the water, I notice the rain has stopped and the wind abated. The breakers across the passage are gone. I shout to the others and relieved, laughing like kids, we break camp and paddle out on glass-calm seas. Miraculously, the sun breaks out and the skies clear, revealing massive snow-draped mountains and gleaming icefields towering above a sun-splashed sea.
We set out across an expanse of sparkling blue several miles wide, aiming our bows at Blackstone Point. The warm sun feels like a massage on our cold, stiff necks and shoulders. After miles of sun-soaked kayaking, we hear the roar of powerful engines and are intercepted by a 40-foot trawler manned by Perry's friend Brad, a fisherman out of Whittier , and some of his friends. Brad offers us a lift to Blackstone Bay , a deep fjord bordered by sheer mountain walls rising out of the sea, and soon eight pairs of hands hoist our kayaks aboard.
As Brad pilots the boat across the waters of the bay, we watch a black bear gorging on berries on a steep slope a hundred feet above us. Climbing high up to the crow's nest, I can see thousands of white ice chunks carpet the surface of the opalescent fjord.
From up here I have a startling view of the massive snout of a glacier at the end of the bay. Booming explosions rumble across the water as the great blue river of solid ice calves massive blocks of ice. It's a landscape still under construction, a new world in the making, and we are witnesses at the creation. I think of John Muir, who in the presence of the Alaskan wilderness reflected, “one easily learns that the world, though made, is yet being made.”
Approaching Willard Island , Brad slows the boat and watches the depth finder, explaining that there's a bony reef reaching out from the island. We watch the little screen as it graphs the sea floor rising to meet the hull of the boat. As I wait for the grinding sound of steel hitting rock, Brad coolly inches the boat forward. The bottom rises. We move forward some more. The reef reaches for us. When we have no more room for error, the finder tracks the sea floor falling away. Soon we are breathing normally again, floating in water hundreds of feet deep.
Brad pilots the boat to the edge of the iceberg field, then makes a startling announcement. "Time for a swim," he says, passing out survival suits from the hold. A giddy mood sweeps the crew as we slip into the thick red hooded suits, climb the rail, and leap overboard into the frigid water.
Mary is swimming on her back like a sea otter, tipping over small icebergs and joining the others in an unusual version of "King of the Hill" as they toss each other off the biggest ‘berg. I can't resist. An icy splash of glacier water slaps my face as I take the plunge, but the survival suit, designed to save the lives of fishermen whose boats go down, keeps me perfectly warm. After an hour in the ice we paddle back over to the fishing boat. Brad announces that we have now been appropriately initiated to Prince William Sound , then lowers a bosun's chair and power winches each of us back up onto the deck.
The soft light of an Alaskan summer evening begins to settle over the sound, and we have about eight miles of paddling to our next camp. We lower the kayaks, get in, wave goodbye to our new friends, and paddle off.
The paddling is exquisite as we take our places in a traffic jam of icebergs floating slowly out with the tide toward the mouth of the bay. The kayaks cut swiftly through the reflected greens, whites, and blues of mountains, snowfields, and glaciers. The bay is peaceful, serene, and stunningly beautiful. The miles slip by effortlessly.
Perry heads toward a campsite on a grassy slope with commanding views up and down the fjord. Behind camp, tall snowy peaks stretch for the sky. A rocky stream tumbles cheerily down the grassy slope into the fjord. As we approach, a family of otters studies us, then disappears under the water. A bald eagle stares down at our strange vessels from a tall tree. We rig our ultra-tarp system, but tonight there is no need. The clear weather holds and we stay dry all through the night, cooled by the chilled air sweeping down from the glaciers and snowfields above.
In the morning the waters of Blackstone Bay are once again glass-calm. We dodge bits of ice that hang motionless in the cold teal waters. There isn't a breath of wind stirring the surface. Although the sky is once again high overcast, there is no immediate threat of rain.
Our destination is Shotgun Cove, and after a leisurely day of paddling, with many stops to look around and drink in the beauty and silence, we find a campsite. High on a shingle beach, we have superb views north to the snowy Chugash Range, which rises high above Passage Canal. The next morning, our last in Prince William Sound, the water remains calm as we paddle back to Whittier. Soon we see the familiar sight of the concrete high-rise vying for attention with the glaciers behind the town. And then we are ashore, heading back to Anchorage.
There's a saying up here that “Anchorage is only a half-hour from Alaska,” and as we head toward the city we yearn for the snow-swept peaks and cobalt fjords of the sound. But as we round Beluga Point near Girdwood, our pangs for wilderness lost fade when we see two dozen or more beluga whales. The white whales blow and spout and play in the sun dappled waters of Turnagain Arm.
