Lake Eva Trail, Hanus Bay, Baranof Island, Southeastern Alaska
A gray morning to start our day! But the area around Hanus Bay was a lovely forest composed of Western Hemlock and Sitka Spruce mostly, surrounded at the oceanside by Sitka Alder. This part of the island has been selectively logged, though the area we had our morning hikes was an old-growth forest. Near the oceanside some special trees, such as Western Redcedar and Alaska Yellow Cedar, have been logged many years ago! And so we landed at the head of the trail at an extremely low tide after breakfast, and commenced our hikes in three different groups, into the forest, along a river that, during the running season, is the delight of salmon fishermen.
The path runs through a lovely forest, with an understory of blueberry bushes, as well as many other smaller plants, such as False Lily-of-the-Valley, a few orchid species, ferns, bunchberries and many different species of mosses. If not careful during a slip in the mud, one can get quite a few spines in the hand with the Devil's Club! After a lovely stroll through the forest, we arrived to a pert of the river where we saw the first few salmon of a run that professes to be quite bountiful this season. Others of us went all the way to Eva Lake, a hour-and-a-half hike, with quite delightful mud! Others, preferred to kayak in the small bays and coves of the seaside, enjoying quite a bit of wild birds species, such as gulls, marbled murrelets, and especially the bald eagles. Zodiak tours along the oceanside were also offered. At the end of the morning the wind had picked up, but we were all aboard just before lunch, and proceeded to our afternoon destination: Basket Bay and The Grotto. Also at this time, we picked up two researchers of the Alaska Whale Foundation, which Lindblad Expeditions supports, and they partook in our lunch and almost immediately after gave us a very interesting slide presentation on their research work with the local humpback whales. The principal researcher, Dr.Fred Sharp, has been in this area for a number of years, watching the whales during their feeding instances, and they have discovered the complex relationships between the different individuals, as they "bubble-net feed" only in this small part of the world. With us was Mr. Andy Szabo, who is studying calf-mother feeding relationships.
During lunch and part of the mid-afternoon we moved to Basket Bay, where we anchored and had a series of Zodiac tours to a grotto at the end of this small body of water. The grotto is a small covered part of the river, with lovely vegetation on its sides. Here, limestone is the rock that forms this grotto. David Brew, our geologist, informed us that in the area, fossils have been found in the rocks in the vicinity. A lovely evening!
A gray morning to start our day! But the area around Hanus Bay was a lovely forest composed of Western Hemlock and Sitka Spruce mostly, surrounded at the oceanside by Sitka Alder. This part of the island has been selectively logged, though the area we had our morning hikes was an old-growth forest. Near the oceanside some special trees, such as Western Redcedar and Alaska Yellow Cedar, have been logged many years ago! And so we landed at the head of the trail at an extremely low tide after breakfast, and commenced our hikes in three different groups, into the forest, along a river that, during the running season, is the delight of salmon fishermen.
The path runs through a lovely forest, with an understory of blueberry bushes, as well as many other smaller plants, such as False Lily-of-the-Valley, a few orchid species, ferns, bunchberries and many different species of mosses. If not careful during a slip in the mud, one can get quite a few spines in the hand with the Devil's Club! After a lovely stroll through the forest, we arrived to a pert of the river where we saw the first few salmon of a run that professes to be quite bountiful this season. Others of us went all the way to Eva Lake, a hour-and-a-half hike, with quite delightful mud! Others, preferred to kayak in the small bays and coves of the seaside, enjoying quite a bit of wild birds species, such as gulls, marbled murrelets, and especially the bald eagles. Zodiak tours along the oceanside were also offered. At the end of the morning the wind had picked up, but we were all aboard just before lunch, and proceeded to our afternoon destination: Basket Bay and The Grotto. Also at this time, we picked up two researchers of the Alaska Whale Foundation, which Lindblad Expeditions supports, and they partook in our lunch and almost immediately after gave us a very interesting slide presentation on their research work with the local humpback whales. The principal researcher, Dr.Fred Sharp, has been in this area for a number of years, watching the whales during their feeding instances, and they have discovered the complex relationships between the different individuals, as they "bubble-net feed" only in this small part of the world. With us was Mr. Andy Szabo, who is studying calf-mother feeding relationships.
During lunch and part of the mid-afternoon we moved to Basket Bay, where we anchored and had a series of Zodiac tours to a grotto at the end of this small body of water. The grotto is a small covered part of the river, with lovely vegetation on its sides. Here, limestone is the rock that forms this grotto. David Brew, our geologist, informed us that in the area, fossils have been found in the rocks in the vicinity. A lovely evening!
