SNUG COVE TO FORD’S TERROR

Friday, June 12^th

Happy Birthday John! Another trip around the sun and so happy to share it with you!

Well, here we go! Left Snug Cove right on time at 6:45AM for our 5 hour run up to the entrance to Ford’s Terror, where we await the slack for safe passage. When John pulled the anchor up the chain got wrapped around the plow which caused a minor delay, but he was able to reach down and untangle. As we motored out of Snug Cove we saw a Humpback feeding solo right on amongst a group of exposed rocks so very shallow. Couple hours later in the middle of Stephens Passage a pod of dolphins was feeding nearby. A good wildlife day so far. It’s John’s birthday and I am hosting the group tonight for his favorite dinner – steak, baked potatoes, and wedge salad – with German Chocolate Cake for dessert. Forgot to buy ice cream or candles but he made me promise not to make a big fuss about his birthday. I can’t help myself though, I grew up in a family that celebrated everything in a big way. We had another relatively smooth ride up Stephens Passage to the turnoff to Endicott Arm where we made our way down to Ford’s Terror. Endicott Arm is a long channel and large cathedral of tall snowcapped mountains, with the occasional iceberg. The cruise ships come down here to go to Dawes Glacier at the very end of Endicott but as I said we are turning off at Ford’s Terror. The sun was out, blue skies with fluffy white clouds and the most stunning peaks, the cruise today couldn’t have been more beautiful! But wait, there’s more. We hit the narrows at Ford’s Terror at exactly Juneau high slack thinking we’d have to wait for absolute slack in the narrows. After investigating through the binoculars that no white water existed we decided to go for it and motored through without difficulty, maybe a few swirls here and there but nothing dangerous. Over a sandbar and charted rock. The lowest water we had was just under 14’ which for us is 14’ below the lowest part of the boat, so probably more like 19’ of water. Once inside it was frame after frame of more show stopping beauty. Waterfalls everywhere of all shapes and sizes, sheer granite peaks rising 1000s of feet into the air, topped with snow. Glacier bowls which are basically a lazy, concave, bowl with waterfalls tumbling down from many directions above to meet in the middle to form a massive waterfall. It is truly God’s Country here, the most beautiful place I have ever been in our Alaska boating travels, I truly felt emotional seeing this with my own eyes. As we neared the back of the bay where we planned to anchor, I jumped in the tender to do a depth sweep as this is another place where it shoals up quickly. We settled into 140’ of water and set the anchor, the other two boats rafting up to us. In the process John spotted a brown bear on shore so I quietly motored over there to see if I could capture some photos but it was shy and went back in the woods. It did come back later though and I was able to get some pics. I am writing this post on the morning of June 13, and have been trying to come up with the right adjectives to describe this place but no words nor pictures truly do it justice. We are anchored next to one of those glacier bowls with multiple water falls coming down the face. In front of us to the left is another very powerful waterfall coming off another smaller mountain. To the right appears to be the outlet of a stream coming off the other side of the hill. Behind us is an enormous bulbous granite face with an even larger snow covered peak behind it. Giant waterfalls flowing off of both. Our favorite one is a waterfall that gathers in a granite bowl, then spills off the side as though someone were pouring from a pitcher.  We sat outside last night soaking up as much sun as possible because tomorrow the weather will change, and because the peaks surrounding us are so tall the sun will go behind hours before sunset. We had a simple dinner that I described in yesterday’s post, and I made a German chocolate cake for John’s birthday dessert. The frosting in a can barely covered the cake with a thin layer so I decided to whip up some chocolate ganache, which I learned how to make at my Barcelona cooking class! It turned out amazing and I slathered a thick layer over the entire cake then sprinkled with coconut and toasted pecans. Wow was it good. We tried to play 5 Crowns but it was so painfully slow that we bailed on it after a few hands, calling it a night. Fell asleep to the sound of waterfalls, just the best organic white noise one can imagine. Feeling very humbled by nature, and so very fortunate to be here.

Lorraine captured this nice photo of Huntress approaching Endicott Arm

Leaving Snug Cove this morning, Humpback feeding along the shoreline

Beautiful morning looking north out of Snug Cove

Looking back at the fleet

Approaching Endicott, UnforgetAbell and Huntress

Hanging Glacier in Endicott

Birthday Boy in his element!

Met up with a cruise ship on its way out of Endicott Arm

Endicott Arm entrance

Endicott Arm, stunning peaks everywhere!

Bald Eagle perched on a berg

This was such a pretty berg

Cruising up Endicott Arm

Ford's Terror, look at the scale of the granite mountain vs. the fleet behind us

Approaching the narrows at Ford's Terror entrance

Transiting the narrows of Ford's Terror

Looking to the head of the inlet where we will anchor

One of many waterfalls

Another view of the fleet approaching

The rafting process. UnforgetAbell just tying up while Far Niente hovers waiting its turn

All tied up for the night

Looking the other direction

Bear pics are a bit blurry but best we could do. This looks to be a younger bear maybe a few years old.

Soaking up the beautiful surrounds and sounds

Today's Journey

PETERSBURG TO SNUG COVE, GAMBIER BAY

Thursday, June 11^th

Hit the water highway this morning around 8AM for our 6 hour run over to Snug Cove in Gambier Bay. Hard to say goodbye to Petersburg, friendly people and beautiful town. The weather gods were with us today as we entered Frederick Sound and eventually Stephens Passage, just a glassy smooth ride all the way. The other boats had multiple whale sightings but we were last in the lineup and didn’t see anything! We arrived in Snug Cove and I did a recon in the whaler as this is one of those places with a drastic shoal. It goes from 100’ to 7’ in a matter of a few feet, it’s quite something! The first anchor drop resulted in us being a little too close to some 20’ water, and with the tide swings of 17’ we decided to move out a bit to be safe. Because no wind was in the forecast, we all rafted together off our anchor. We had a minor emergency which was that we forgot to fuel up the whaler before leaving Petersburg and it was running on fumes! We tow our tender and the other two boats carry theirs on top of their boats, so ours is more frequently utilized for exploring or fishing. We are headed out for 4 nights on anchor before heading to Juneau June 15^th so it is critical to be fueled up! Luckily Greg and Bill had gas cans onboard and John was able to fill up the whaler with about 15 gallons. Whew, we will make it now. It turned out to be a beautiful sunny afternoon and we decided to have a happy hour gathering, which effectively changed everyone’s dinner plans – we were all full from appetizers! When will we learn? It’s one or the other, not both. We were planning to just eat leftovers anyway so no harm. A beautiful but uneventful day. Tomorrow, our exciting and challenging entry into Ford’s Terror. Am slightly “Terror-fied” as there is said to be a 5 minute window of slack before the current starts running again, so we need to be all queued up and ready to transit without delay. I already mentioned in earlier post that we have to navigate between 2 sandbars and over a charted rock that doesn’t exist, supposedly. The destination is worth the effort we’ve been told by everyone. Excited to see this place!

Anchored in Snug Cove, looking north

Below is the map of today's journey

PETERSBURG ON THE DOCK, SIDE TRIP TO LeCONTE GLACIER    

Wednesday, June 10^th

Today we booked a tour to the LeConte Glacier which is just southeast of Petersburg. We went with SEEK ALASKA tours and we highly recommend! We met them at 10am at the head of the dock and boarded a 30+ foot cabin jet boat with bench seats and tables and best of all a heater and a head! Dan was our captain and Stephanie our deckhand. This was a fast heavy aluminum boat making it possible to quickly get into the far reaches of the inlet where the LeConte Glacier hits the water. It is the southernmost tidewater glacier of the Northern Hemisphere. Dan gave us a thrilling ride as he raced along right next to the shoreline visiting waterfalls and looking for bears (none) on the way up to the glacier. Eventually the icebergs were choking the bay which made maneuvering a bit more challenging as he navigated around the bigger bergs. Seal Moms and Pups were everywhere, they come up to the icebergs to hide from predators so they can safely birth and raise their pups until they are old enough to venture out to more exposed waters. The occasional Eagle was perched on a berg or on shore as well, but mostly we were there to see the magnificent glacier and it did NOT disappoint! Ultimately, Dan had to bring the boat to an idle and snow plow his way very carefully through the bergs and ice bombs to get us closer to the glacier. He cut the power so we could listen to the glacier as it creaks and groan, and we broke out our sack lunches to watch for calving. There were a couple of small chunks that dropped but nothing significant, until Dan started the engines to motor away and then KABOOM a huge chunk from one corner of the glacier came crashing down! So thrilling and we were a safe distance away so it was all good! Finally, it was time to head back and as if it couldn’t get better, as we neared Petersburg we were rewarded with a Humpback show! Got some great tail shots. While at the glacier, Greg and Bill had collected some chunks of glacial ice for our celebratory cocktails which we enjoyed on the back deck of our boat before heading up to pickup our takeout pizza. Just a fantastic day all around!

Big Berg

Close up of the ice patterns, so cool~

Another big BERG

Gorgeous glacier bowl with falls everywhere, the colors!!

Mom and Pup

That Face!!

Choked with Ice

LeConte Glacier, it moves 60' per day!

BRRRR....

Another shot of LeConte

Cocktails with Glacier Ice!

Careys and Abells

All of us with Glacier Cocktails

Bill and Lorraine with their Glacial Cocktails

And us with ours....

WRANGELL TO PETERSBURG

Tuesday, June 9^th

And off we go to Petersburg at 5:30am! It’s a clear and gorgeous day, overnight the temperatures were so moderate that I had to throw covers off in the middle of the night. Had both portholes open and there was no airflow! Dead calm. I have a very first world problem and that is I have a big bowl of crabmeat that I need to do something with. So enroute I made some crab stuffed mushrooms for appetizers tonight, followed by crab cake mixture – I will fry them up tomorrow. It’s my night to host dinner so I have a lot to get done today. Our mutual friends Brad and Leslie are flying up today and staying with Connie and Greg for a week – we are all excited to have them along on our adventures! The trip up to Petersburg was calm and beautiful as we motored over to connect with Wrangell Narrows or Christmas Tree Lane. It’s always so picturesque and so vibrant with life. The fishing boats, big and small, are buzzing up and down the channel next to us, tiny homes dot the shoreline where people live on and off the grid, fishing lodges, and beautiful homes. But our big excitement was a huge tug and barge that pulled in to transit right behind us. We saw him maneuvering outside the entrance to the channel and it was pretty impressive. He was following our path west towards the entrance but just before he turned the corner to go up the channel he took this big ole’ barge on a supercharged 360 to get it lined up correctly to up the channel. I guess you can’t just turn 90 degrees without some sort of drift. Anyway, pretty impressive to watch. Then he hailed us on the radio and said he thought he would be overtaking us so we needed to find a suitable place for him to do that. John assured him we were traveling at the same speed or faster and that we’d be fine, but that we would stand by if things changed. Of course we would yield to a tug and barge if necessary, he can’t stop that barge on a dime after all! We did just fine and stayed ahead of him the entire way. Petersburg is one of the most beautiful little towns in my opinion. I love the harbor activity with all the freshly painted fishing boats getting ready to go out, crews working on the nets and preparing their equipment. The stunning mountain range that frames Petersburg is really magnificent. Leslie and Brad finally arrived around 3:30 injecting a heightened fun factor into our group. We had a lively dinner on our boat and just to take it to the next level, all of a sudden the eagles were swarming in front of our boat, diving into the water for scraps! I guess the fish processing plant has a hose into the channel where they dump the fish guts and pieces. It was quite a fun show with juvenile and mature eagles diving and grabbing bits from the water, interspersed with seagulls all competing for the food fest. So incredible! Another great day in Alaska.

Beautiful skies as we leave Wrangell this morning, 5:30AM

Tug and Barge that followed us up Wrangell Narrows

Flotilla ahead navigating the red and green

Petersburg on the right, not the greatest light but that mountain range!! wow

I take a picture of this stranded old boat every time we come through Petersburg

The crew working on the nets getting ready for opening of fishing

One of the many little homesteads along the Wrangell Narrows

Lastly, a picture of the dinner I made before it went in the oven, Braised Chicken Thighs with Lemon, Oregano, Olives, so good.