#25 - ALASKA FANTASTIC

"I wanted freedom, open air and adventure. I found it on the sea."
- Alaine Gerbault

M/V Europa

59’ 14” N

135’ 26” W

8/19/01

15:35 ship time (GMT-9)

“Alaska is the largest town in the north” as the saying goes, and we’ve been experiencing that notion in a profound way.  A stay of any length in one of these southeast villages results in small acquaintances, conversations with particular folks, interesting connections, and then you run into the same folks later in the day, in another context. Heddy, the rental car lady in Skagway comes by the boat in Haines “Saw your boat and thought it must be you guys!”; the bike & hiking store guy runs into you at the bar that night. Maybe it’s that people remember your new face when there are only 700 of them in the town, but any anonymity one banks on is a fantasy.  We have been socializing in the upper towns of Skagway and Haines for the past few days.  Jess, our waitress yells “Hello Dave & Dave, how was the hike?” to us from the restaurant’s porch overlooking the docks as we straggle back to the boat.  We had just biked 10 miles out the the start of the Chilkoot Trail, a Historical National Park due to it’s significance in the Klondike gold rush.  Most of the Klondikers passed through Skagway in 1898 & ’99 and

hiked through a miserably steep, wet and rugged pass to the gold fields in the upper Yukon.  The town of Skagway grew from 1,000 to 30,000 and back to 1,000 all in 3 years.  The goldrush was rather short lived and the participants were not well equipped or knowledgeable for what they were getting into.  The trail is an interesting hike where one can still see the remnants of the original Klondikers dumping their possessions as they climbed in elevation.  Canned goods, leather shoes, crates, and other artifacts still line the trail where they found them to heavy to carry.  Our hiking experience was of a different nature.  We finally had our Alaskan Bear Experience.

The local government entities do a good job of educating visitors to the dangers and cautionary practices of hiking in bear country.  We all know to hike with bells on our belts, talk in loud voices and carry pepper spray to ward off the rare and unusual attack.  They also provide the useful information of how to tell the different species of bears such as if it climbs up the tree after you, it’s a black bear.  The brown bears (grizzly’s) knock the tree down before they eat you.  We are also now familiar with the heaping piles of steaming scat.  The black bear’s scat contains berries, while the brown bear’s scat contains berries, small bells and smells like pepper.

We had momentarily paused in our loud conversation as we rounded a small bend in the trail alongside a river.  The loud snort and the spin of the bear 30 feet ahead transferred it’s surprise and fear on to us in an effective manner as we all three needed to change our shorts at that moment.  While the big bear retreated 30 more feet down the trail, it’s initial fear was replaced with an unnerving curiosity as it stopped, and wavered from side to side.  It may have been my imagination, but I think I made eye contact with him and the message I clearly received was his indecision about his hunger level and if we were worth the trouble of eating.  We had our arms up and our voices in what was seeming like at the moment, a futile attempt to make ourselves look big and ominous.  My arms were looking pretty skinny to me at the time and my voice had a pronounced squeak that I didn’t recognize. Even though there were two of us, I would have put all my money on the bear.  But the bear’s intellect came back into play and I guess he realized the paperwork involved with messing with hikers in the National Parks and he backed off into the woods.  We were left with the interesting questions of “do bears set ambushes?”  We made it back to our bikes complete with our authentic Alaskan bear experience and headed back to town.

The prior day, we had rented a car and drove to Whitehorse, Yukon Territory.  Bright blue sky and cloudless views.  (SE Alaska has had the least amount of rainfall this August than

any year since 1949)  Up White Pass and into the tundra. At the top of the pass, at 3500’, you are already out of the tundra and into bare rocks and ice.  Back down into Canada and into a magical world of rocks, heather & blueberries, highland lakes, stunted spruce forests, whitewater rivers and immense mountains and valleys till you are spilled out into flatter land near Whitehorse.  We stopped for a hitchhiker in the middle of the woods and he turned out to be a German youth who had migrated to the Yukon after reading Jack London.  He was working for room and board at a sled dog kennel.  (Ah, to be young again!)  He fed us with facts till we hit the city limits and then gave us a short tour of the highlights.  The Yukon is roughly the size of Germany which contains 82 million folks while 18,000 of the Yukon’s 20,000 residents live in Whitehorse!   The landscape was so reminiscent of my summer north of Fairbanks in ’78 that I had quite a few flashbacks of those endless summer days, flying in helicopters into the absolute wilderness, hiking and doing the science work, inventorying resources by performing vegetation, soil and timber & wildlife surveys. 

I’m surprised at how much this trip has brought up about my old times in these parts, 20+ years ago.  So much is familiar, the vegetation, the dramatic mountainscapes, the endless stretches of forested fjords, gray clouds/gray water, the swirling muted earth tones of greens, browns, grays and clouds, the whales, the salmon, and the eagles. The towns, though, have changed tremendously. National franchises are present in some of the larger cities and  Skagway is now accessible by road.  The advent of the cruise ship industry is the most significant change.  Now, thousands of people flood many of these town, pouring out

of the floating hotels, into the many tour operators, bus tours, boat tours, helicopter, kayaks, fishing, biking, hiking, etc. You name it and someone is around to facilitate your desire.  500,000/yr tour Skagway, a town of 883.  Many of the towns have a personality transformation of sleepy little village with shops closed and the townfolk leisurely talking over coffee on the days w/o cruise boats, then a Disneyland quality on cruise boat days, with locals in period costumes of turn of the century pioneers, prospectors, saloon girls and the streets packed with older retirees and tourists from all over the world videotaping their time in the Alaskan wilds.  Without the transient gray haired Carnival Line contingent, the average Skagway female age is 26 while the average male age is 32.

Thankfully, one thing that has not changed is the friendly, intimate, small town flavor of the locals.  We’ve been especially fortunate the last two days of visiting a friend of DH’s in Haines.  Zbigniew Rozbicki (Ned) runs a kayak tour company (www.seakayaks.com) and DH went out on a several day trip last year, they hit it off and Ned invited him back up if he was in the area. 

So typical of Alaska, upon our arrival, Ned loans us a mountain bike, they invite us to a BBQ (in these parts it’s redundant to say salmon BBQ) and generally open the town to us.  Haines is the town that the TV series “Northern Exposure” is based on so if you are familiar with the show, you already know Haines.  Moose do wander through town, there is a wealthy Californian, various locals do keep the one radio station (NPR) going with eclectic and funky programming and most of all, there is the wonderful variety of characters and the

inescapable small town tension from the differences.  We bike down the beach road to Ned and Elizabeth’s wonderful owner designed/built craftsman style house (straight out of Fine Homebuilding) immediately take a jug of the local micro brewed stout across the road to pick raspberries, and gab with the kayak guides who begin to mosey up.  Their wedding will give you an idea of what Ned and Elizabeth are like. They invited everyone to Crete, Greece on a particular day and told them to spend the first night in this hotel but be ready to move to an undetermined place the next day for the wedding.  They arrived 4 days prior with absolutely no plans, searched the island for an appropriate beach, hired a 4 person Crete folk band, and made a list of chores for everyone to do the day of the wedding. They were married barefoot, in the water, in tux and beautiful formal wedding dress with enormous train.  Kinda adventurous folks, ya might say.  Ned is now running the kayak company, building a retail and tour building next door to his home, buying and clearing the land next to him to park his buses and trucks and store his tour equipment (many kayaks).  Everything is self-designed, self-built, all independent Alaskan innovation.  Elizabeth runs the mental health clinic for the surrounding Lynn Canal, 4 towns and outlining areas, staff of 1, herself.  Ambitious, energetic, articulate and wonderful people.  No wonder they have endless sun up here. They would never be able to fit what they get done in 12-14 hrs of daylight.  So we have a sumptuous feast of corn on the cob, garden salad, fresh salmon, topped with ice cream and the product of our picking efforts, raspberries.  Wonderful lively dinner conversations with the 20 something guides of kayak trips in Baja, Mountain biking in Utah, climbing in Colorado and everyone’s love of Alaska.   

So today, we head back out into the green on yet another land based bike ride straying from the deep dark blue for one more day.   A casual venture into a gift shop, “The Wild Iris”, turns into a 2 hour visit with Fred & Madeleine Shields, Fred who can connect you with someone else he has met within 3 relationships, has taught himself woodworking, created beautiful cabinets and furniture, remodeled the house, Madeleine who was canning raspberry jam, and peas from the most wonderful garden you can imagine.  

Upon hearing DH’s business with importing the Mercedes-Benz G-wagon, Fred casually picks the phone up and calls a neighbor who owns one of these rare vehicles.  Mark comes over and we talk little of cars, but rather everyone’s journey to Haines 22 years ago and how Fred & Madeleine camped next to Mark on each of their first nights in Haines, went rappelling the next day and have been friends ever since.  Fred and Madeleine learn of our destination to Elfin Cove next on our itinerary and co-ops us into an espionage mission of spying on their 16 yr old son who has just gone to visit a “friend” there for a week or two.   A tour of their house, entertaining characters, just one more typical Alaskan interaction.

As one of the local’s mantras go… “If you’re not living on the edge, you’re taking up too much space…”

More later…