Travel with Indigo

Passing out of the frequently rough seas of the Gulf of Alaska into the table flat waters of the Inside Passage brings with it dramatic topographic contrast. Along the Gulf’s shore, as we have seen, stand wildly exuberant expressions of Nature at its finest, a visual wonderland that awes even the most jaded of travelers. In the Passage, by contrast, Nature’s expressions are subdued, softened by thick forests of spruce, larch and alder and by lower, rounded mountains and gentle hills. Unlike the coast, refuges from the storms that plague Alaska in fall and winter and towns with fuel, supplies and people are plentiful. It is something like the contrast between, say, the Canadian Rockies and the Appalachians, one sparsely settled and rugged the other densely populated and restrained, both pleasing to behold each in its own way.

Just at the northernmost entry into the Inside Passage, directly across Cross Sound from the Cape Spencer light, is our first stop. If your vocation is bank robbery and, as a result, you are now and then in need of a place to hide from the cops, you could do no better than the elfin village of Elfin Cove. Reached only by boat (or well-aimed parachute drop), its keyhole narrow harbor is out of sight behind a cluster of spruce covered islets. A dense forest shields its rustic, neglected buildings from the sun’s rays and from prying eyes. There is about it the air of a den where you would expect to find pirates and their wenches holed up. Having a longtime affection for pirates, their wenches and dens, I liked Elfin Cove.

On this, my third visit there, we entered the outer harbor, tied up to the lone town dock– on which an outhouse is perched indiscreetly, hanging precariously over the cold water just so—and went for a stroll. Its houses and shops, reached by a narrow boardwalk or by open staircases projecting uphill from it, are wood frame, most in need of paint and repair. In its storm proof miniature inner harbor are a few houseboats, likewise scruffy, some fishing boats and a few small pleasure craft. Built along its shore are modest cabins, most of them the summer retreats of sport anglers, and several sportsman lodges.

During the summer season, the village population is 32 and including transients rises to around 60. Just eight hardy souls, at most, spend their winters here, none engaged in law enforcement. We arrived the week after the season ended and pretty much had the place to ourselves, had we wanted it. None of the shops and restaurants was open, sadly for us not even a bar, and the only grocery store in town, about the size of a large walk-in closet, opened for just one hour, two days a week.
After an hour wandering around the village—you can walk completely around it in 15 minutes at a slow stroll–we departed, wound among the narrow waterways of the Inian Island group and entered Glacier Bay. The last of the cruise ships left here a week ago and there are no other vessels foolish enough to be here this time of year. It was like having our own private national park.

About halfway into the park’s waters, I decided that after all the magnificent scenery of the Gulf coast, the park’s scenery would be anticlimactic, and so we turned and made for Juneau, arriving there late at night in a freezing, gusty downpour. The next morning skim ice covered the foredeck and new snow capped the surrounding peaks above 3,000 feet. Winter is arriving in Alaska faster than we are leaving.

Although this was my third visit there, Juneau has never held much appeal for me. There are some fine, dark bars, a few good bookstores and about all the cutesy shops you could want, but unlike Homer, Cordova and Yakutat, the town lacks a distinctive personality and is largely without charm. As with so many of Alaska’s towns, its role in life is that of a stopover for cruise ships, a supply depot for wilderness adventures and a homeport for its fishing fleet. It is also the state capital, another reason not to go there unless you are a bureaucrat or lobbyist.

I chartered a small, single engine floatplane in which Kitty and I took a flight-seeing trip, as it is called, over the Juneau Ice Field, up deep ravines and along meandering creek beds. On the steep slopes below us, we spotted mountain goats, fluffy tufts of white wool easily seen from the air and easily seen from the ground by the predators on whose menu they appear. Goats avoid predators not by natural camouflage but by their agility on craggy rocks, leaping effortlessly from one toehold to another. Although there are few moose, their diminished numbers a consequence of hungry bears and packs of wolves that prowl the area, we did manage to spot a lone bull grazing openly in a meadow.

Emerging from the mountains into open airspace over the northernmost stretch of the Inside Passage, we flew over Skagway, founded during the Klondike Gold Rush and now a touristy cruise ship stopover, and Haines before returning to Juneau.

Skagway and Juneau’s earliest histories were notable for their colorful debauchery. Bars and bawdy houses outnumbered churches by a wide margin and there were few laws to enforce and even fewer cops to enforce them, a libertine’s dream world. Undoubtedly alluring, as these pardonable lapses surely were, other, darker facets of the towns were more troubling. Drafty canvas tents were the preferred housing, streets were insalubrious mud bogs, and hucksters, cardsharps, gunslingers and claim jumpers went about their chosen professions with both zest and impunity. There were, too, the biting cold, gale force wind, sheeting rain and deep snowdrifts, all before Gore-Tex, microfiber and down-filled duvets came along.

For a thoroughly researched book on these inhospitable camp towns and their residents, see The Floor of Heaven by Howard Blum. It relates the engrossing account of three characters from the towns’ clamorous formative years: Soapy Smith, an accomplished scoundrel with a murderous disposition, who was killed in a gunfight; George Carmac, who became fabulously wealthy from gold panned in the Klondike; and Charlie Siringo, an indomitable Pinkerton Detective whose eventual fame spread across the country. A warning, however: the book will dim whatever inclination you may have once had for gold prospecting.

From Juneau, we traveled south to Tracy Arm, another scenic fjord popular with the cruise ships, but arrived at its head just as the sun was setting. It’s extremely narrow, high vertical walls plunge into the depths making anchoring there impossible leaving us with no choice but to return to the Arm’s entrance in the dark, dodging icebergs using the radar, and anchor in a cove there.

The next day dawned spectacular, one of those perfect days that make up for all the dreary ones that preceded it. To gain the most from this brief climatic bliss we toured the length of beautiful Endicott Arm. Near the head of one of its branches is a narrow, shallow waterway through the rocks that takes a sharp turn before opening into another deep fjord. When the tide ebbs, all the seawater that at high tide filled the fjord rushes out, squeezes through the constricted passage and in the process churns up impressive white water rapids. Its name, Ford’s Terror, is both evocative and apt.

PETERSBURG

Among the towns of Southeast Alaska, Petersburg’s defining attribute is its Norwegian heritage, apparent as we approached its marina. A prominent building at the waterfront is the meeting place of the Sons of Norway, a fraternal organization begun by the town’s founders. The design and construction of the marina reveal the skilled engineering, high quality materials and attention to the smallest detail for which Scandinavians are famed. Its tidy homes, well-tended gardens and spotless streets, too, suggest Nordic heritage.

For the well-balanced man with a convivial spirit, one night there was enough. Fastidious, everywhere the enemy of festivity, is a trait easily overdone and not all that appealing in the first place. So after a few scrupulously tame hours in the local orderly, efficient pub we retired early and moved on the next day. Just as we were about to leave the marina, a small fishing boat pulled into the harbor with an enormous bull moose strung up from its rigging.

WRANGELL

To get from Petersburg to Wrangell a vessel passes through the serpentine strait known descriptively as the Wrangell Narrows, a 25-mile stretch of confined waterway that when the 20-foot tide is out is little more than a ditch bounded by mud flats. Log homes, vacation cottages and a few sportsman resorts line its shores, these reached by boat or floatplane.

All vessels above a minimum tonnage are required to retain the services and have on board for the duration of the Narrows transit an authorized pilot. Our sea pilot, based in nearby Ketchikan, arrived by chartered floatplane at a prearranged rendezvous. The plane’s air pilot pulled up to our stern placing the floats against our swim platform allowing the sea pilot simply to step off the plane onto the boat. He departed the same way.

The town of Wrangell was not an especially memorable stopover. Its citizens, like those of Petersburg, are of Norwegian heritage and, consequently, its harbor front was a beehive of meticulous industry, all related to fishing. Kitty and I walked a mile into town and back from the transient marina where we docked and along the way counted five churches of various denominations and exactly one bar, a ratio that in a properly constituted town is reversed.