On the road to Valdez: Kayaking Prince William Sound

        
          by Wendy Johnson

The small, sleek float plane taxied away from the shoreline and headed into the swift current of the glacial Yentna River. The pilot revved the engines, and in a seemingly impossibly short distance, we lifted off the surface of the water and were soon borne only by the cold, thin air that lifted us away from earth.

The meandering rivers and silt-edged autumn foliage of the Alaskan wilderness sprawled below us as we pulled away from Wilderness Place Lodge – our home for the past five days as we visited son Jason during the closing days of his season there.

The silver salmon fillets we’d caught to bring home with us were chilled on ice and stashed into the storage areas in one of the plane’s floats, and as we headed back toward Anchorage, we thought happily of the days behind us – experiencing the peace and renewal that comes with being 80 miles away from the nearest road!

Though reluctant to leave, we felt a buzz of excitement. Ten glorious days still lay ahead of us as we prepared to explore new corners of Alaska in a rented truck camper. We departed Anchorage the next morning with our camper stashed full of food and supplies as we headed down the Glenn Highway. The steep hills soon gave way to foliage-covered mountains, and then the mountains turned into bare-boned peaks. The wildness of Alaska engulfed us. We camped that night at King Mountain on the Matanuska River. We were the only ones in the campground (an advantage of exploring Alaska in the fall!), and the sound of the rushing river lulled us to sleep at night through our open window.

The open window may have been a mistake, however. As I rolled over the next morning, I realized that sometime during the night, Ken had donned a polar fleece jacket and stocking cap, and the window was covered in frost! Fall comes early and suddenly to this far-north land, with very little margin to adapt to the change. It’s a land of extremes in all things, and part of its fascination lies in the fact that everything’s colder, higher or more dangerous than anything you could encounter anywhere else in the country....

After a hasty breakfast, we headed east and then south on the Richardson Highway – toward the renowned seaport and oil pipeline hub of Valdez. Despite frequent “Caribou Crossing” signs, we saw none because the hunting season was in full swing and they’d headed toward the haven of the mountains. The ground cover of Alaska is, if anything, brighter than the hillsides in autumn, startlingly punctuated with the scarlet of high bush cranberry and blueberry bushes. Numerous tiny blue lakes cropped up frequently along the roadside, lending a bright sapphire to the stunning countryside.

We spent the night at Blueberry Lake, tucked into an alpine setting between the tall mountain peaks of the Chugach range. The lake was filled with migrating waterfowl, and Ken discovered the rainbows and grayling were ripe for the catching as he tossed in the line of his fly rod while I cooked dinner.

Almost as soon as we hit the road again toward Valdez, we began descending a steep, eight-mile grade as the road plummeted down toward the legendary Keystone Canyon, slicing through the sheer perpendicular rock walls once navigated by the early gold miners in their lust for riches.

We were frequently startled by lavish waterfalls with fanciful names such as Bridal Veil and Horsetail, and we were stunned that those early travelers could traverse such an extreme and unforgiving land. At one point, we spotted the remains of an old horse and sled trail used in the early days. It was carved out of the rock high above where the road now runs and was just wide enough for two horses to travel abreast – which created a wooziness in the pit of my stomach just thinking about it! And even more incredibly, some 200 hundred feet above that is an old “goat trail” used by travelers to traverse the mountains up until as recently as 1945! The remains of an old railroad tunnel further incited our amazement at the determination of those early pioneers. It was cut into the solid rock of Keystone Canyon as the early railroad companies fought to take advantage of a shorter route from the coast to the copper country. Reportedly, however, a feud interrupted the progress of the railroad, a gun battle was fought – and the tunnel was never finished!

Just reading about the early history as we traveled those same footsteps made time come alive – and we could hardly wait to see what was around the next bend. Little did we know that by the next night, we’d be sleeping on the rugged moraine of a glacier....

      

Part II

Driving downhill into Valdez, Alaska, is a little like driving down Thompson Hill into Duluth – multiplied times 10! As Ken and I headed south down the Richardson Highway, the breathtaking squeeze between the sheer rock walls of Keystone Canyon gave way to a winding grade through snow-covered peaks and steep, dramatic hillsides. And the small seaside village of Valdez, perched on the rim of Prince William Sound, was the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

Prince William Sound – unlike the wilder, stormier coasts that outline the other vast stretches of Alaska – is marked by meandering, densely forested shorelines and beneficent waters that make it a tourist’s dream – and a sailor’s delight.

As we arrived at the edge of the Sound, we pulled off onto Allison Point, a spit of land situated directly across the inlet from Valdez. It was still fairly early in the day, and the local salmon fleet was methodically working the bay with large seining nets held aloft by a series of floating buoys.

The fishermen were after the salmon before they headed up the river to spawn, and they wore bright orange slickers to keep them dry as they diligently worked their nets, drawing them in ever-narrowing circles. Since the only “way out” for the fish was under the boat, one fisherman was assigned solely to the duty of slapping the water with a long pole to keep the fish away from the boat and prevent them from escaping.

With the boats’ graceful masts and sails and the fishermen’s bright slickers reflected in the mirror-like, early morning water of the Sound, the scene looked like a scene out of a Homer Winslow painting.... At times, however, nature almost seemed to be at odds with civilization. At one point, we spotted a gull flying over with a treble hook and spinner bait hooked on its beak. And for a time, a sea otter was trapped inside the captive circle of one of the fisherman’s nets before finally managing to escape....

Ken decided to try a little shore fishing from the Point, and as he scrambled down the steep shoreline, his foot slipped and he nearly plummeted headlong into the deep waters of the Sound! It seems that frost had settled on the rocks during the night, and the early morning sun had not yet warmed them sufficiently to melt the layer of “black ice” that coated them.

We finally decided to work our way over to Valdez proper, and once there, we parked our camper and walked along the busy marina to examine the boats firsthand, reeling off their colorful names such as Island Girl, Cache Flow and Arctic Princess. The town originally stood virtually in the shadow of the Valdez Glacier, but it was completely devastated by a powerful earthquake centered in Prince William Sound in 1964, and the entire town had to be relocated to a site four miles down the shoreline.

After spending so many days in the wilderness, it almost seemed unnatural to be playing tourist once again! We stopped at a downtown RV park, took hot showers, called home and checked our e-mail at a little Internet cafe colorfully dubbed, “Bad Ass Coffee.”

It seemed the world had gotten by quite handily without us, however, so we headed back out into the wilderness, following one of the local roads to its very end and camping right on the rocky moraine of the Valdez Glacier. Its massive field of ice draped ponderously over the cut in the mountain, sporting the characteristic bluish tint, and a small river of frigid water gushed out from its base, disappearing into the gravel of the moraine where we parked our camper.

A persistent squall settled over the land for much of the evening – the first we’d experienced since we’d arrived in Alaska the week before – no doubt having moved in off the Sound.

There was little question of having a campfire that night, so we instead opted for a long evening under the covers, reading our books by flashlight in the fast-encroaching twilight. It doesn’t take much to knock you out in the wildness and stillness of this vast country. Sleep comes easily and naturally – especially when you’re lulled by the ancient music of the glaciers.

      

Part III

My heart was pounding before I even opened my eyes. This was the day that my husband Ken and I were going kayaking at the Shoup Glacier near Valdez, Alaska. We had booked the trip the day before, and that was when the fluttering began building inside my chest. With only limited kayaking experience – and none at all in ocean waters – it was hard to tell if what I was feeling was excitement – or fear!

One thing was certain, however. This was to be an adventure unlike any we had had before. After gathering up enough clothing for every conceivable turn of the weather (September in Alaska can be extremely unpredictable), we met our guide at 10:30 that morning at Anadyr Adventures, located on the waterfront of Prince William Sound. Our guide, Josh, was a young man from Madison, Wisconsin – like so many other transplanted Midwesterners who have yielded to the heady siren’s song of the Alaskan wilderness.

He outfitted us with tall rubber boots, life vests and spray skirts, and we stowed our lunches and extra clothing in dry sacks to tuck into the toe of our kayaks. Then we headed to the marina for our “shakedown” run through on dry land. With the kayaks sitting atop the wharf, his instructions on how to get into and out of them seemed almost ridiculously simple. I could feel my confidence building with every minute, and I could hardly wait to hit the “big water.”

We climbed aboard a small ocean-going runabout as Josh and the captain of the boat strapped the kayaks to either side of the boat. Before long, we were headed out onto the scenic waters of Prince William Sound. Gone were the salmon fishing boats of the morning before. We weren’t sure if it was because it was Sunday – or because the sky had grown the deep gray shade of putty and what looked suspiciously like storm clouds were swirling around the tops of the surrounding Chugach mountain range. The sea spray felt good against our faces, and there was an exhilarating feeling of being under way at last. A half hour or so later, the captain navigated the boat into the mouth of Shoup Bay and shut the motors down to idle.

This was it. The next eight hours loomed ahead of us – like the mammoth Shoup Glacier in the distance – and we were eager to get going. The captain and our guide set about unstrapping the kayaks from the boat, lowering the double one that Ken and I would be using into the water first. It was then that all we learned from our lessons on the dock seemed to evaporate into thin air. For one thing, we discovered were expected to drop down into the bobbing kayak some four or five feet over the side of the boat. For the other, we knew the glacially carved basin of Shoup Bay is hundreds of feet deep, stirring up mind-numbing thoughts of an unexpected spill into its icy waters....

Since I was elected to sit in the front, I went first. Shakily, I slipped one leg over the side of the boat and into the kayak, which, in the rising wind, seemed to have taken on a life of its own. As I clung to the boat with both hands, I brought the other leg up and over, steadied the dancing kayak, and lowered myself into a sitting position on the back of the seat, just as we’d been told. Slowly, I scooted down into the hatch and wedged my boot-clad feet straight out in front of me into the toe of the kayak. Only then did I realize that I’d been holding my breath the entire time! I slowly exhaled – and grinned victoriously up at Ken, who had yet to lower himself down into the kayak behind me.

He, too, proceeded with caution, breathing easily only after having successfully completing the maneuver. Feeling relieved, I confidently asked Josh, “Say, have you ever had anyone tip over in one of these things?” “Only the time the whale came up....” he answered offhandedly. “WHAT?” I cried. “Oh, a couple of months ago I was guiding a group, and a hump-backed whale came up right under one of the kayaks and tipped it over,” he replied. “What happened?” I gasped. “We guides are trained to get anyone who capsizes back into their kayak within two minutes or less,” he explained, “and that’s just what I did. Then I took them to shore, built a fire, warmed them up a little bit – and we finished out the day.” It all sounded so simple. In any case, we were soon ready to paddle our way down the bay, through the narrows, and into the inlet at the foot of the mighty Shoup Glacier. The kayak expeditions are carefully timed to coincide with the rise and fall of the tides, so we worked our way easily in during low tide. As we had discovered during some preliminary kayaking on our little lake at home, paddling a kayak is a lot like flying – it has that nearly effortless, gliding sensation to it that’s much less like work than even canoeing. And with two of us in the same kayak, it was even more so. (Of course, since I was in the front, I had to assume that Ken was doing his share of the paddling as well!).

As we worked our way down the bay, we began to relax and marvel at the amazing wildness around us. The tip of the glacier perched lazily in the gap between the mountains (though Josh explained it stretched another 10 miles back into the hills). Several rushing rivers gushed from its base, tumbling in and out of a series of ice caves before emerging into the bay.

We were constantly weaving our kayaks between what looked like small, floating chunks of ice. Josh explained that any iceberg smaller than 15 feet across is referred to as a “growler” and cautioned us to steer around them because there was much more to them below the water’s surface than meets the eye, and if we rammed our kayak up on one of them it could capsize us.

To our delight, we found ourselves frequently accompanied by a bevy of playful sea otters and a pair of curious sea lions who seemed to be almost amused by our presence. When we pulled up on shore to the right of the glacier, Josh told us we had to pull our kayaks 30 or 40 feet up on shore. He explained that when the glacier “calves” (or breaks off chunks of it surface), a tidal wave effect often results that washes over the shoreline and can take an unattended kayak right out to sea with it. He added that it’s also a good reason not to paddle a kayak too close to the glacier itself....

We ate our lunch, hiked several miles on the glacial moraine, and took picture after picture in our unabandoned enthusiasm for what we were seeing and experiencing. We were amazed at how fast those eight hours flew by. By the time the tide was right and we were ready to head back out into the big bay, we were feeling like accomplished kayakers (whales not withstanding!). We wished lingeringly that we had had the foresight to book one of the small Forest Service public use cabins tucked back into the wilderness not far from the glacier so we could have spent the night there.

But the boat was bobbing in the waves at the mouth of the bay when we got there, and we loaded ourselves and our gear back onto it and headed back into Valdez. What promised to be the adventure of a lifetime lived up to that promise, and then some. We felt reluctant to see it end – except for the anticipation of spending the next night in a ghost town....

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-Wendy Johnson is the chief manager and columnist for the Cloquet Pine Journal located in Cloquet, Minnesota. To submit feedback on this article she may be contacted at wjohnson@pinejournal.com

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