Landfall: Alaskan Adventure
Robert John Emmons
06/01/2006

Left photo: Fishing boats on the finger at Petersburg. Middle photo: Ryan Emmons tries his luck in Wrangle Bay. Right photo: A "local" salmon-fishing at Anan Bear Park. (Click images to enlarge)We have hit the mother lode!" yelled first mate Josh Claussen as we suddenly found ourselves surrounded by at least two dozen humpback whales—all breeching, blowing and flashing their tails as we shut down our engines and drifted into the pod. For those of us who live on the California coast with often but distant sightings of one or two whales perhaps a half-mile off, this was extraordinary. They were passing as close as 30 feet from La Marchesa, blowing their spray across our bow and covering the lenses of our cameras. We were in Frederick Sound, south of Tracy Arm, making our way to Prince Rupert in the midst of an Alaskan adventure.

My wife, Christine, and I decided to make the voyage to Alaska two years ago, moving La Marchesa from Fort Lauderdale to San Diego in preparation for our trip north. The 100-foot (30.5-meter) Hargrave yacht left San Diego in June with Captain Todd Likins at the helm for its 2,000-mile-plus journey to Alaska. La Marchesa arrived in Juneau, Alaska, on July 22, 2005, and took on provisions for our family’s arrival a week later.

(L to R) Seb and Ian Keneally, and Christine, Ryan and Robert Emmons, found plenty to fill the "tall tails" they would tell later. (Click image to enlarge)

Juneau is an old gold-mining town named after Joe Juneau, a miner of some stature in this once lawless frontier. Juneau has since become much more respectable and serves as the capital of Alaska, despite being accessible only by air or sea. It is also the home of the Mendenhall Glacier, one of Alaska’s most famous, renowned for the diversity of its glacier field. (Click image to enlarge)

In order to better understand the scope of the glacier phenomena, we decided to charter a helicopter from Temco’s fleet of 11 A-Stars for a tour by air. Little were we prepared for what unfolded: glacier after glacier, snowy ice caps, quarter-mile-deep blue-ice crevices and snowpacks that were still knee-deep despite the fact it was August.

Helicopter was the best way to get to Herbert Glacier for a family walking tour. (Click image to enlarge)

Our pilot, Simon, dropped us down on Herbert Glacier and, with ice cleats in place, we walked the glacier and watched our 15-year-old son, Ryan, leap across some of the narrower ice crevices. Next, we landed on the snowy cap of the Juneau Icefield. The temptation being too great, we soon found ourselves in the midst of a ferocious snowball fight that will long be remembered. Flying through the canyons with their clinging herds of mountain goats on our return to base ranks as one of the most breathtaking views of nature we could imagine.

Top photo: Captain Todd Likins at the helm, earning his keep in hazardous waters. Bottom photo: La Marchesa handled the challenges of the North admirably. (Click images to enlarge)

The following day, we made our way north on a 100-mile trip to Glacier Bay, home of the Grand Pacific, Johns Hopkins, Muir and Margerie glaciers. Glacier Bay encompasses an area of 3.3 million acres and is home to abundant wildlife, including bears, wolves, moose and mountain goats, as well as humpback whales, orcas, seals and sea lions. One of the highlights of our three-day visit was a "polar bear swim" among the icebergs with the face of the Grand Pacific Glacier dominating in the background.

Most of the glaciers have been retreating in recent times, with some having pulled back as much as a quarter-mile during the past 50 years. Many scientists think that global warming represents a significant threat to the long-term existence of the glaciers in their present forms.We returned to Juneau to drop off Ryan’s friends, the Keneally brothers, and then set off for Tracy Arm, which lies three hours south of Juneau and is one of the most spectacular fjords in North America. Nearly 25 miles long, it is most often a river of icebergs that are calved from the glacier on an almost daily basis. One has to navigate slowly and with considerable care to visit the magnificent South Sawyer Glacier. More than a mile wide, it rises majestically 2,500 feet into the wispy white clouds hanging along its crown. Large cruise ships have difficulty navigating the narrow fjord, so it is almost exclusively the domain of private yachts. On our return, Ryan and his friend Nick Fletcher rode a large, flat iceberg for a quarter-mile downriver. When we drew out into the bay, we all agreed that the Tracy Arm experience ranked with the best of our more than 30 years of yachting.

Top photo: Ketchikan’s Creek Street. Bottom photo: Totems are a reminder of local traditions that venerate wildlife and the environment. (Click images to enlarge)

Traveling south to Wrangle and the Anan Wildlife Observatory, we thought of all the wildlife we had observed, but wondered where were Alaska’s bears? We were soon to find out at Anan, 35 miles south of Wrangle, where thousands of spawning salmon draw brown bears, black bears and other wildlife to feed in the lagoon. Sighting more bears than we could count, we saw old black bears, young brown bears and cubs watching their mothers in the rapids catching their noon meals—all seemingly oblivious to the human intruders. The park rangers were very helpful in seeing to our safety, and we carried our air horn and bear Mace as added precautions.

After saying goodbye to Anan and its remarkable bears, we headed south to Ketchikan where we were joined by our good friends Mike and Jan Joyce of Hargrave Yachts. A visit to Creek Street, with its tales of the Alaskan Gold Rush and the ladies who "entertained" the miners there, brought to life the hardships and rugged life of the last frontier.

Left photo: Fishing boats on the finger at Petersburg. Middle photo: Ryan Emmons tries his luck in Wrangle Bay. Right photo: A "local" salmon-fishing at Anan Bear Park. (Click images to enlarge)

As we left Ketchikan to continue our voyage south to Vancouver and beautiful British Columbia, it was difficult to believe that anything could possibly top the Alaska we had grown to love and admire in a few short weeks.