Haines and preping for the Chilkoot Trail

Haines, AK - Aug 8-10

We’ve spent the last couple of days in Haines, Ak  After arriving on Monday, we found this really cool spot along the Chilkoot River that bears like to frequent.  In addition to the bears, it is just plain beautiful here.  Chilkoot Lake is a snowmelt and glacier melt lake that feeds the river and right now the salmon are running by the thousands therefore the bears are also frequenting the river.  The fishermen are after the trout since salmon don’t feed once they hit fresh water. Alaskan citizens can dip net for salmon, meaning that they can just stick a big, really big net into the water and pull out salmon.  Think pulling fish out of an aquarium with a net, but only on a much bigger scale.

Haines is a nice, quiet little town that is the 1^st stop on the Alaskan marine highway where one can actually get to the Alaskan highway and into mainland Alaska.  There is also a cruise ship stop here on Wednesdays.  It isn’t a typical cruise ship town in that they don’t have all of the jewelry stores, souvenir shops, etc.  I have enjoyed the past couple of days, just chilling and getting our packs ready for the Chilkoot Trail that we start tomorrow morning.  Honestly, I am terrified!  I am not in the kind of shape I need to be to do this hike; my boots aren’t broken in enough, my pack weighs way too much, but it is now or never.  At the very least I can try and fail or not try and never known if I could actually do it.  There really isn’t anything that I can eliminate from my pack to lighten my load since the nighttime temps will be dipping down into the 30’s and we are pretty much guaranteed rain.  At least some of my food will be gone by day 3 which will be the most challenging of the 5 days.  Much of the hike on day 3 is at a 45-degree angle through a boulder field.  The 8.5 miles typically takes 10-12 hours. I am thinking it will be probably the biggest physical challenge that I have ever attempted.  Thursday will be about 8.5 miles, Friday about 4.5 miles, Saturday (please pray for me day) 8.5 miles, Sunday 8 miles, and Monday 4 miles.  At the end of the trail at Bennett Lake, the White Pass & Yukon Railroad has a depot and we will have a big lunch there and take the train back to Skagway.  Hopefully the weather will be good because they make the backpackers ride in an outdoor car. I can totally understand this!  If I were a tourist I don’t think I would want to sit near me after 5 days on the trail either.  Once back in Skagway and after a long hot shower, a couple of beers and a good night’s sleep we will begin the long trip home.

From Skagway, we will go back into Canada and drive the Cassier Highway south through British Columbia, then head east on the Yellow Head highway into Alberta to Jasper and Banff, then time allowing down to Glacier before crossing the border in Montana and booking it home through ND, MN, WI to arrive back in Ann Arbor on August 27 with plenty of time (2 days) to get ready to go back to work.

For more information on Chilkoot Trail and the Goldrush National Historic Site, see http://www.nps.gov/klgo/index.htm.  

 Hey! What happened to that fisherman?

The Golden Staircase on the Chilkoot Trail (day 3) during the goldrush

Close encounter of the BEAR kind!!

August 8...  Happy 22nd birthday Hanna!  I miss you!!

Yesterday we drove from Fairbanks to Haines Junction, Yukon.  Haines Junction is the gateway to the Kluane National Park of Canada.  It is an awesome area and is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.  It backs up to Wrangell-St ELias National Park in the US (our largest national park).  I liked Haines Junction except for not having any cell service.  We had a trail head into Kluane NP right in our campground :-).

Today we drove down to Haines, AK, making yet another US-Canada border crossing.  It was a beautiful drive even with overcast skies.  The border patrol guy was really nice and had Tom fill out some extra paperwork so the halibut that he caught in Homer wouldn't be confiscated when we cross the border into Montana in a couple of weeks.  Much different from the border agents on the bridge to WIndsor!

Haines is a great little town and very friendly.  We are in a nice little water front campground, the owner lady is very sweet and is a gem at directing people backing up campers, BLESS HER HEART!!  I love the smell of the ocean and watching the fishing boats come in with their catch.  An added bonus today is that the salmon are running on the Chilkoot River just a few miles down from the campground and the bears were out feeding.  I was able to get some shots of a sow with her twin cubs that are in their 2nd summer.  After watching them for awhile, they came right up on the road, I kid you not, they were 5 feet from Tom's truck.  Wow to watch people scatter!  There was an Alaska Parks Ranger there and when the bears started coming close to shore, the ranger asked everyone to move back and let the bears pass.  I was IN the truck by that point!  There is a short section in the road where people are not allowed to walk or stop their vehicles so the bears can walk up the road to the fish wier.  A fish wier can be different things but is used to block the passage of fish, in this case it is a fence of wooden slats meant to slow the progress of salmon going out to the ocean so the Alaska Dept of Fish and Wildlife can get an estimate of how many salmon will return to to the river to spawn in 5 - 7 years.  The bears love it since they can hang out by the fence and easily catch fish.  But when we saw them they were out in the open river actively catching fish.  The wier does come down before the salmon run in the fall when the the mature salmon are returning from the ocean to spawn.

To top off a very good day, we went to the outskirts of town (ok, so Haines is really a mini skirt so we didn't have to go very far) to a place called Dalton City to visit Haines Brewery.  Dalton City was built as the set for the movie White Fang and it has since been taken over by small businesses from Haines.  There was the brewery, the Klondike Restaurant, a knitting shop, a massage therapist and a couple of other places.  Speaking of movies and tv, as we were coming into town, we saw the area where part of the show Gold Rush was filmed, Porcupine Creek...  All very cool.

Tomorrow we're on standby to go on a fjord trip to Juneau for the day, 90 nautical miles.  I'm guessing that we're not going to get on the trip so we'll have to find something else exciting to do.  Wednesday evening we're taking the Alaska Marine Ferry from Haines to Skagway.  It's only 15 miles but will save us about a 350 mile drive around the mountains.  On Thursday, we start our 5 day backpacking trip on the Chilkoot Trail out of Skagway.  Then we will begin the trip back to Michigan...

Kate

 Sow and her yearling cubs fishing the Chilkoot River

 Alaska Range between Fairbanks and the Yukon border

 Glacier on the way into Haines, Ak

 Cub waiting for salmon

 Momma bear

 Cubbies

 Chilkoot Lake

Dalton City from the set of White Fang

Bears Bears and more Bears!!! Katmai National Park

Day 19… Katmai National Park bear viewing trip J

Today we took a puddle jumper, and this was a serious puddle jumper to Katmai National Park.  It took very little water to take off and land.  After our orientation to where we were going in Katmai NP; the far northern region of the park/preserve, we geared up in hip boots and rain pants as well as layers of clothing for a day on the tundra.

Our flight over lasted about an hour and a half with Bald Mountain Air and was totally smooth sailing across Cook Inlet, past St Augustine Volcano and over Katmai.  We could see Kodiak Island off in the distance.  Very cool flight!  The area in the park where we were headed was primarily tundra and permafrost.  If you’ve never walked on permafrost, it’s like walking on spongy peat moss with a thick layer of moss on top.  It is very springy but also very uneven.  From a distance it is very bland looking but when looked at up close it is actually very pretty. 

We hiked a bit to get down to Moraine Creek and once there we hiked around a bit more but for the most part we sat on the riverbank and just watched the bears.  We stayed as a group and the bears pretty much ignored us and went about their business of getting fattened up for winter.  Once in awhile when one of them was bringing a salmon out of the stream, they would look at us and think… no way this is my fish and I’m going back in the bush to eat it, but others would walk right in front of us and eat it. When a bear would walk within 10-20 feet of us, Gary our guide called them Alaskan drive-bys. The bears pretty much only eat the eyeballs, the brain, and a fat pad near the tail, then they would strip the skin and eat the fat under the skin and leave the meat of the fish for the sea gulls.  The bears were predictable just like our guide said they would be.  We were in a remote area, unlike Brooks River Falls that has viewing platforms, etc.  We hiked and just parked ourselves on the riverbank and waited for the bears to come to us.  They walk and swim up and down the river all day looking for salmon.  It’s interesting that all of the bear have different techniques for catching fish, some swim under water and come up with one, others jump at them and still others paw at them.

We got to watch the bears for almost 5 hours then hiked back to the plane for the flight back to Homer.  I’m exhausted, very wind-burned but what an adventure!!!

The photos are all taken with my little instamatic camera since my good camera bit the dust last week.

 Our plane

 Big boy eating his salmon

 OK, so I always thought a bear $h!t in the woods!!!

 Sow and her cubbies

 I call these guys Cinnamon and Sugar

 Mt St Augustine

The Homer Spit snaking out into Cook Inlet