Misty Fjords

 Misty Fjords

Wikipedia reports that Misty Fjords National Monument is a wilderness area administered by the US Forest Service as part of the Tongass National Forest. The national monument was originally proclaimed by President Jimmy Carter in December 1978. By the way, Jimmy is 97 and Rosalynn the ripe old age of 94. Jimmy’s hoping people will finally forget that he gave the Panama Canal back to the Panamanians and, hence, no longer under US control. The two of them are expected to live into their 120s and continue doing volunteer work until….until they fall over, I guess.

Anyway, on to Misty Fjords. We left Klu Bay and traveled north around the top of the Loop of Revillegegido Island. It was beautiful country with mountains all around, a light breeze rippling the water here and there and our second bear sighting. But increasingly, pollen was everywhere, on the boat, in the water, all over everything. It was like rivers of yellow gunk flowing across the water. It would pool in little silver dollar sized sticky globs by the thousands, millions actually. I steered out of the way to avoid some of the big pools of the stuff. Finally, the water just turned a yellowish green. It was enough to make you sneeze just looking at it. I’ve never seen anything like it.

With all the massive logging that’s been done in this part of the world there have been consequences to removing the timber on steep slopes. With all the rain, snow, and freezing in the winter the ground gives way on an area that has been recently logged and an avalanche occurs. Everything comes crashing down and leaves a blight on the side of the mountain and a big twisted log mess at the bottom. Sometimes, the slide area is unable to recover.  At other times there is enough soil left to re-establish new growth and its on the way to recovery. 

Tides are a big item up here. For instance, on June 16^th, a day with a full moon, the difference in the tidal exchange is 22 feet in Ketchikan.  Low tide is a -4.1 and the high tide is 18.6. In comparison, the tides in Anacortes on the same day are a low of 3.7 (one of the lowest for the year) and 9.0 for a high, an exchange of water totaling 12.7 feet. This is important when anchoring in this part of the world because dropping the anchor in 25-30 feet of water could find the boat bouncing off the bottom at low tide. If there are any rocks along the bottom, that’s additional problem.  So, we always take into consideration what the tides are doing and anchor accordingly. Then, we won’t be startled from a dead sleep in the middle of the night wondering what the crunching noise is coming from the hull.  

Now we enter Walker Cove. 

After wandering into Walker Cove, we decided that this was probably our favorite place as far as raw unusual beauty. It has 3 separate bays, each with a stream running into it, gigantic glacially carved vertical granite walls, plenty of waterfalls with their low rumble as they cascaded down the cliffs. What could be better than this? Ruthie Jeanne rounded the corner to the bay to find the buoy vacant and ready for our lines. This would be our luck lately, to nab the only buoy in a bay. And then there was the bear! We watched the bear rummage through the beach looking for something to eat each afternoon and early eve. 

  

   

Some of the waterfalls in Walker Cove would drop 1000 feet into the water, some with a splash, others just trickled down the rock wall. 

Leaving Walker Cove. If we ever return here to this magical place, it would be a delight.

We headed back to Ketchikan and called the Ketchikan Yacht Club Marina for a slip because the other marinas were full. In what has been our good fortune lately, we were able to pull into the only slip that was available on the yacht club dock.  I was beginning to feel like the purchase of a lotto ticket would be my next move.  

We returned here to pick up Scott and friend Shelly. They’ll be with us for the next 10 days. That trip will culminate in a tour to the Le Conte Glacier and hopefully we’ll see the glacier calving into the bay. This is the time of year we'll probably see many sea pups born not too long ago. 

It’s been raining and windy, which has delayed our trip. We won’t head out when there is a forecast of Small Craft Warnings and gale force winds, but we'll leave soon. 

More pictures, less words today. Hope all is well with you.

Ed out.