What do you write about when your days are full of good food, sandy beaches, thick books and gorgeous sunsets? ...the beach sand was a little gritty on my bare feet this morning... the sun screen seems to be working... I am particularly fond of the banana and papaya smoothies... it is so dark in my room that it is a real trial to get up before 10 am... my shirts all need to be washed so I've stopped wearing them... the streets are paved with bumpy rocks and my rented bike is short on shocks... the buses have laid back [View Full Entry]

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Last night I watched several gray-haired grandmotherly types ride a donkey onto the dance floor of a packed bar. Flashing lights and music from the early 60´s pumping, folks dancing and whoopin. But I was wondering where they kept the defibrillators. It was a scene from an Annette Funicello beach party movie slow forwarded 50 years with all the actors in place, fresh out of their last retirement seminar and all the boys with jumbo prescriptions of Viagra in their pocket... Go Daddy Go!!! Down a couple blocks I passed the Canucks Bar... everyone staring at the big screen TV watching, [View Full Entry]

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The pelicans seem to own the harbor. Hundreds of them. It's a wildlife moment, they circle close then dive straight in, wing folded back, egrets and comorants all around. Really close. In fact the commorants and the pelicans are pretty much adapted to folks walking right next to where they roost. The boat owners must spend a lot of time grinding their teeth over the pelicans, their boats look like guano collection boxes. The one nice boat that came into the harbor while I was there was immediately put on a trailer and hauled away. Out past the harbor flocks of [View Full Entry]

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Freezing Fog? Whatever. Bottom line is the planes didn't take off or land. Little planes as well as the jets in Juneau. So day one of this Mexico vacation starts and ends, at home in Alaska. Which is OK, although I missed dinner with a friend. I was going over to Juneau a day early, just in case there were weather issues - a common strategy here this time of year. The jet south is tomorrow afternoon, maybe. What will it be in the morning... more freezing fog? To the airport this morning I was struck by the clear roads and [View Full Entry]

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We camped in the woods behind the beach. While it seems appealing to camp in the upper intertidal meadows next to the ocean they are often frequented by brown bears, so we go inland a bit and sleep a little better. In the morning we started uphill, through the rainforest. It was wet with fog, dew and light rain so we hiked in our raingear through huge spruce and hemlock, then through open muskeg, then more rainforest. Eventually we reached the ponds that signaled the end of the uphill. On the outer coast the fog often stops just a little ways [View Full Entry]

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After the float plane left we tried to paddle to the head of Lituya Bay. I learned this: never try to paddle into an outburst flood. Seems ridiculous that we even tried, but it was easy, for a while. The tide was with us and the wind at our back, we made good progress. Then we hit a wall of small icebergs where the outburst flood waters met the incoming tide. We got through them into a semi-open water but the wind, tide and currents were no longer in our favor. Eventually Nate tactfully pointed out that we were paddling a [View Full Entry]

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"He says Lituya Bay is full of ice and we won't be able to land." I sat in the copilot's seat in shock. The float plane was over Lake Crillon and we would reach Lituya Bay in minutes, expecting to land and begin a week of wilderness adventure. Seems the adventure was already in full swing. "I'm on the radio with another pilot and he says it was clear yesterday but today it is full of ice." I mumbled into the headset microphone, "He's pulling your leg Cable." Where could that much ice come from? We'd walked the faces of both [View Full Entry]

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Excursion Ridge, it looks so close. On a clear day you can see individual trees quite well from Gustavus. “Let's go there! How hard could it be?” Turns out it can be quite hard. Getting to the top of Excursion has a local history of colorful tales of slow uphill struggle and overnight bivouacs on steep wet slopes. There's no trail but there's nothing technical. It is more like bushwhacking at the edge of “Why are we doing this???” Imagine standing on a steep wet slope, reaching your arm straight out and your fingertips just touch the soil that is the [View Full Entry]

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Mud, and plenty of it. It is not so easy, getting to the Brady Glacier... The Taylor Bay intertidal is a place to tread lightly, very lightly. Craig and I learned this a couple years ago when we tried to paddle up the eastern tributary at low tide. Quicksand, more accurately 'quickmud' is alive and waiting for you in the low intertidal. When our kayak 'grounded' out we tested the bottom by probing with the paddle shaft. It just kept going down, slowly, into the watery mud. We managed to back up and reach shore but hiking upstream and pack-rafting across [View Full Entry]

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This morning I put on my dry suit to go skiing. My kayak buddy wrote on his Facebook status line last night that he was digging his kayak out of the snow. This morning we had to use hot water to liberate the pump, bungeed to the kayak and held fast to the frozen ground. But the ocean was flat calm. We kayaked over to Pleasant Island and skied 5 blue sky sunny hours through the open muskeg to the base of the Knob, and back. Yesterday I skied north along stream meadows and connecting woods. As I popped out from [View Full Entry]

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