Idaho Inlet, Chichagof Island, Alaska
Our trip through the Inland Passage of Alaska and British Columbia began in smooth water in Icy Strait. That soon changed. Near Point Adolphus the tidal current coming in from the Pacific Ocean meets the water of the Inland Passage, bringing nutrients to the surface and causing a hot-spot of biological productivity. Suddenly the water around the Sea Bird was boiling with activity as schools of small fish rose to the surface. Humpback whales, harbor and Dall porpoise, Steller’s sea lions, gulls, kittiwakes, hordes of bald eagles ... all were there to take advantage of the feeding opportunity.
We turned into Idaho Inlet on Chichagof Island. (In 1884 a certain Captain Carroll took the excursion ship Idaho at full steam down the inlet on a foggy day, on the information that it was a shortcut to Sitka. It wasn’t, and isn’t. That’s a bad way to get your ship’s name on the chart!) At the end of Idaho Inlet, near where the Idaho was lost, we took our first walk in the coastal rainforest of southeastern Alaska, and paused to kayak in the calm waters. The experience of Alaska is giant whales and brown bears, towering mountains, ice fields and glaciers, bald eagles, and huge rainforest trees ... all on a scale of grandeur that defies comparison. Ah, but change the focus and we find an abundance of small and beautiful flowering plants, here shooting stars and buttercups pushing up through the grasses of a coastal meadow. With abundant rainfall, long hours of summer sunlight, and nutrients brought by salmon returning from the sea and distributed into the meadow by brown bears feasting on the salmon, these plants find all that they need to grow in profusion. They offer us an Alaskan experience at a different scale, but no less grand.
Our trip through the Inland Passage of Alaska and British Columbia began in smooth water in Icy Strait. That soon changed. Near Point Adolphus the tidal current coming in from the Pacific Ocean meets the water of the Inland Passage, bringing nutrients to the surface and causing a hot-spot of biological productivity. Suddenly the water around the Sea Bird was boiling with activity as schools of small fish rose to the surface. Humpback whales, harbor and Dall porpoise, Steller’s sea lions, gulls, kittiwakes, hordes of bald eagles ... all were there to take advantage of the feeding opportunity.
We turned into Idaho Inlet on Chichagof Island. (In 1884 a certain Captain Carroll took the excursion ship Idaho at full steam down the inlet on a foggy day, on the information that it was a shortcut to Sitka. It wasn’t, and isn’t. That’s a bad way to get your ship’s name on the chart!) At the end of Idaho Inlet, near where the Idaho was lost, we took our first walk in the coastal rainforest of southeastern Alaska, and paused to kayak in the calm waters. The experience of Alaska is giant whales and brown bears, towering mountains, ice fields and glaciers, bald eagles, and huge rainforest trees ... all on a scale of grandeur that defies comparison. Ah, but change the focus and we find an abundance of small and beautiful flowering plants, here shooting stars and buttercups pushing up through the grasses of a coastal meadow. With abundant rainfall, long hours of summer sunlight, and nutrients brought by salmon returning from the sea and distributed into the meadow by brown bears feasting on the salmon, these plants find all that they need to grow in profusion. They offer us an Alaskan experience at a different scale, but no less grand.
