We take on the Wrangell Narrows and on to Wrangell just in time for the Anan Bear Bay.
8/21/2023
Today was our read refit day - which has truly become an art of efficiency at this point. Kicking everything off at 8a, we wrapped up laundry, hardware store trip, and groceries with everything procured and stowed by 10a. The Wrangell Narrows (today’s adventure) requires that we leave at a specific time so that we reach the midpoint (South Flats) at high water slack tide. If we do it right, the flood tide will carry us to South Flats and then the begining of the ebb will carry us out the other side.
But before that, we went on a walk out to Sandy Cove. We read in one of the city guides that there were some 2000+ y/o fish traps located here and we were on a mission to find them. We wondered around the tidal flats for 30 minutes looking for the heart shaped rock formations. Eventually Angela did some online research (cell signal is amazing) and found out that they are only visible for 3-4 hours a month at low-low tide. Bummer. We did however find out that there are fish traps at Funter bay as well - sounds like they are present in a bunch of places all over Alaska. Fortunately, while Angela/I were off on our wild goose chase, Sara met a new friend in the playground and they were having a grand old time.
After a quick lunch, we were off at around 2:30p. We grabbed some fuel from the fuel dock and after a terrible docking (the current was terrible) that resulted in a small chip in our gell coat, we were fully fueled and on our way. High water slack was at 5p and we actually had to slow down a bit to make the 9 nm in an hour and a half instead of one hour - but better too early than too late. We pass south flats right on time and 30 min later we had a 3 knt current at our back flushing us through.
Wrangell narrows is an interesting place. There are these small fishing skiffs everywhere and they are clearly part of the huge fishing lodges that run all up and down both sides of the narrows. It seems like an odd place to put a fishing lodge - I don’t think there is much fishing in the narrows so they must have to go out to either Frederick Sound or Sumner Strait to fish. Seems like a big waste of time/fuel to run out of the narrows to fish everyday, but there must be some reason for it I suppose.
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We pulled into Deception Point Cove at around 7p and Sara/Oakely/I went ashore to explore the beach for a while. We found a skeleton which I think must have been a sea otter and we saw a bunch of matted grass were a large animal must have laid down earlier today. We saw several porcipines (which Oakely still has not found sufficient fear of) but not much else.
I’m sure she has picked it up from us, but Sara has gotten to reprimanding Oakely for bad behaviour. Porcupine curiosity being one of them. Again, just the link here - I’ll imbed once we have internet again. Sorry, audio is not good.
I grilled up some chicken back at the boat to go with some Cous-couse and asparagus that Angela whipped up. I guess we took too long on shore because Angela had already eaten by the time we got back. Bummer. It had been a magical day and Sara/I watched the sunset over dinner in the cockpit. Beautiful.
We are all very excited to be off to Wrangell tomorrow and Anan Bear Bay after that!
8/22/2023
It was another lazy morning this morning - 10a departure to catch the flood through Sumner strait to Wrangell. We all slept in, but Angela more than the rest of us. Sara and I went ashore at around 8:30a and walked along the beach for about 30 min before we found another porcipine. At this point, I have decided that Oakley need be on a leash given her performance the last two times - but this porcipine was only a few feet away when Oakley spotted him. Thankfully, she did not lunge for him this time - she just watched as he trundled away.
The sound of the engine starting at 10a eventually roused Angela to life. It was an amazing day - sun shining and calm seas. We even got a little sailing in - 5-7 knots on a beam reach for a few hours after we made the turn onto Sumner Strait.
We made short work of the trip (timing the tides had worked) and were approaching Wrangell a little before 2p. About 30 min out, you could see a line in the water - on the outside was almost tropical water (primarily glacial silt) and on the inside was muddy brown. The Stikine river dumps out here and this is where the river water bumps against the tide. The fish, apparently, love it.
I gave the harbormaster a call and he basically told us we were on our own. There may be space here, if not check here. Helpful, but nothing like Petersburg. We found space on the first dock - which was also the closest one to downtown. Awesome.
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My first impression of Wrangell is that it was much more spread out than it looks on the map. It’s tucked into the corner of Wrangell island and it seems like they would be limited for space. We picked up a copy of the visitors guide and they had a great history of Wrangell included - did you know that Wrangell is the only city in the US to have been ruled by 4 nations? Neither did I. Tginkit, UK, Russia, and US. The town also features the Wild-West style buildings - which I enjoy.
From the visitors guide, we find out there is a petroglyph beach about a mile south of town with apparently quite a few petroglyph present on rocks on the beach. It was a pleasant walk and their are over 40 petroglyphs on the beach to find. We arrived at high tide, so most were covered but we still found 4-5. Apparently, Angela read that there is some debate as to whether these petroglyphs are really “thousands of years old” as noted in the signs - There’s no good way to date them since they don’t grow lichen and they can’t be carbon dated. They might well only be hundreds of years old or only decades old. I guess we will never know.
Right next to the harbor is the Tlingit longhouse called “Shakes House” after Cheif Shake who lived here in the late 1800s and early 1900s. It’s on a small island (technically a tombolo since it’s no longer an island at low tide) and we walked around the outside of it. Unfortunately, it was not open and the harbormaster informed us that it only opens for the big tour boats coming throuh - bummer. The outside was cool to see though - and now that we know how much work goes into just texturing the outside walls, it was all the more impressive. The Tglinkit who we talked to about building the Glacier Bay longhouse was the grandson of Cheif Shakes, so it’s all tied together. It looked as though they were refurbing a totem in the back of the house and we found a memorial headstone on the island as well.
We had a very filling dinner at one of the restraunts in town and curled up to dream about bears.
8/23/2023
It’s bear day! We don’t get picked up for our tour until 1p, so we have a morning to kill. I would like to go to the museum which opens at 10a but Angela is all museumed out and wants to go to the library for a while. Sara is undecided. Oakley doesn’t know there is a choice.
But first, we take a walk up to the top of Mt Dewey. It’s a quick hike - half a mile - but strenuous. Basically a staircase all the way up. We are rewarded at the top with a pretty fun view. The was the site of John Muir’s famous Mt Dewey fire (look it up) - so it was exciting to know that we were standing exactly where he was a hundred years ago.
After the hike, we split up - I headed off to the museum by myself while Angela and Sara went to the library. The decision came down to dinosaurs - the museum didn’t have them and the library might, so that’s where Sara went.
The museum was cool, although not the most amazing in the world. I did discover that the boy scouts own a small ridge near Wrangell where you can find Garnetts - little crystals imbedded in the rock. The kids can pick them for free - and do, they resell them to people in town - and adults need to purcase a permit. We didn’t have time to do it, but it would have been fun to take Sara there.
After a quick bite of lunch, Bears! We were picked up by jet boat right from our dock. The boats were super cool, they use diesel engines but they suck water in, speet it up, and fire it out the back - so the prop is never exposed. They can go quite fast - we cruised at 38 mph, but the captain said 50-60 mph is doable. They do, however, us a lot more fuel - around 25 gallons per hour. That works out to around a gallon and a half per mile - about 4x our usage.
It took us about an hour to arrive at Anan. We got a briefing from the forest service and assigned a guide - who was required to be both armed and carrying bear spray. Our guide has never used them - other than practice. The bears are simply not interested in us.
We complete the half mile walk to the platform and we see bear trails criss-crossing the human trail the whole way. There are over 100 bears that feed here and different times throughout the year. This is the only place in Alaska where both costal brown bears (same species as grizzles, just different habitat) and black bears will co-exist. Apparently, this has been a light year for Brown bears at Anan and we, unfortunately, didn’t see any on our trip. This has been a really good year for cubs however. Usually there are 3-4 cubs and you might see one up at the falls. This year, there are 13 and we saw 6 of them at different times during our 4 hours here.
The bears were really cool and the platform was very well setup. The bears all sort of hang out in one spot - a constriction in Anan creek between some rocks. Anan has the biggest run of Pink Salmon in Alaska and there is a constriction about 20 feet wide where the bears can eat fish buffet-style. The forest service has built a nice viewing platform here which allows the bears to walk under/around the platform and includes a small photo blind where a small group of people can be just feet away from the feeding bears. It was amazing. Over the course of ~5 hours, I took over 900 photos so trimming it down to just a few highlights for the blog was quite the challenge.
Because of the plentiful fish here, the bears tollerate each others presence - and the tollerate our presence as well. The only exception to the “no quarelling” guideline that these bears follow is the males canibalistic tendency towards cubs. Mommas were protective and always kept themselves between the male and her cubs. There were a few spots where the cubs could shelter behind a rock while the mom fished and could keep an easy eye on them. In other places, the mom just had to keep an eye open while fishing - and growl at any males that got too close. It struck me that these cubs survive only because it’s quite a bit harder to eat them than it is to eat fish - Makes me wonder a bit if that’s the reason we are safe?
We got back to the boat late and rescued Oakley (she had been relegated to the boat for the last 6 hours). We had a quick dinner and off to bed for an early start tomorrow - 5a.