Alaska Teaser

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Eagle Battle at Tracy Arm

I know this one is way overdue and I've had all the time in the world to put up some of the Alaska pictures, but a lot has happened since July of 2008. At any rate, here is a teaser. Tracy Arm (a glacial fjord) is located along Stephens Passage, just around the corner from the strange little capitol city of Juneau in "Big Southeast" (which would be better called "Big SouthWet"). You can find it on a map, but don't Google it for driving directions or you might get something like, "...drive onto float plane." Juneau has plenty of roads, but they don't go anywhere and no roads lead to Juneau unless you're coming from Skagway. How you get to Skagway is via Juneau.

Not that I recommend flying in, either. Small aircraft attempting to find the Juneau airstrip have to come in at fairly high altitude and dive for the deck in the seam between two towering mountain ranges...if, that is, they can find a patch of air not totally obscured by fog, drenched in rain, and caught in the vortex formed by howling winds coming up from the ocean confronting screeching winds coming down from the mountains. If they handle all of that, they have to bull's-eye a patch of asphalt that's always slippery and wet except in winter, when it's slippery and frozen. I read somewhere that one out of four planes attempting the Juneau Dive Bomb Maneuver end up being waved off to go back where they came from. Small wonder.

Allow me to suggest taking a boat. Tracy Arm is a little tight for the big Nordic Cruisers, but not for a 42 foot Grand Banks named Inside Passage, especially with Captain Bean at the helm. Amidst the floating chunks of ice, the heavy mist, and the standing-in-front-of-an-open-freezer chill that tells you you're nearing a tidewater glacier, a rather careless seagull decided to raid an eagle nest while mommy and daddy eagle were nearby. I had a particularly good piece of equipment on loan from Matt: Camera-san. Does it take good pictures? Dude.

What followed I can only call surreal. Like when sitting in the crowd at The Angola Prison Rodeo when you get to the part where thirty convicts gather in the ring to try and take a poker chip off the head of an angry bull. You begin to doubt what your eyes are telling you. You have to look around and verify that you're not the only one seeing this. You exchange glances that say, "We're watching a movie. This isn't reality, this is Discovery Channel. This stuff doesn't really happen."

But it does happen, and this time I'll just let the pictures do the talking.

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Photos

Eagle Battle 1
Gentlemen, this is hop 4. Multiple aircraft. Multiple Bogeys. There are no points for second place.

Eagle Battle 3
"He's too close for missles. I'm switching to guns."

Eagle Battle 4
"Ice. Fire or clear."

Eagle Battle 5
"That's it. You're outta there, kid."

Eagle Battle 6
Jester's dead.

Tracy Arm
In case I forgot to mention it, it's a beautiful place.

Gratuitous Whale Photo
Not relavent, but hey.