Remote wilderness, wonderful people and astonishing animals
Being very thankful to everyone who I met here (see end of chapter) and especially to Jason I will write this blog post in English, while the next ones are going to be in German again. Just before I head out to the trip, I’ll write something about my last day in Girdwood where I visited a Goldmine at crow creek. Just like the rest of Girdwood and its festival, it was a complete disappointment. Anyone who has seen a one hundred year old house, has seen (likely even more) what I saw in those 6 little houses at crow creek mine. The place was jammed with old rusty stuff without description or any kind of love for detail. As I was already there I decided to learn how to pan for gold. It’s a very easy process that simply relies on the higher density of gold compared to normal rock. You basically shake the pan (tilted slightly) so that the gold will sink to the bottom and then remove the dirt until hopefully something shiny is found on the bottom. They provided me with some test sand which had a few gold flakes hidden inside. It was very easy to pan them out. Anyone knowing me, knows by now that the gold fever hit me faster than lightning. Off to the river… after two hours (in wonderful sunshine) of paning I had found myself a remarkably sore arm, lots of dirt and wet shoes. Wasn’t really working for me. The only nice thing about the place was a very nice garden with some beautiful flowers.
From Girdwood I was picked up by Jason’s wife (Victory) and daughter (Alissa). I met all three of them at the Sheep Mountain lodge (place with the Volvo graveyard and colorful mountains). We had only been talking for some minutes when Jason brought up the idea of fleeing from home when Victory had invited her family to come over for a charity run for breast cancer in about 10 days (I still don’t quite understand why he wanted to run away from that in the first place). Anyway, they told me about this remote cabin of theirs down in Juneau that he would visit and take me to if I was interested (oh yeah). So here we were in Anchorage packing our bags and hitting the airport the same evening, flying with Alaskan Airlines for free (Victory works for Alaskan) 1.5h to Juneau. There we stayed at a hotel (I will not write about the side story of the police officer catching us with flashing lights walking on the highway after we had climbed a fence to get to Fred Myers, I just want to spare you the trouble Jason). The next morning we took the ferry for 7h to Angoon. Even the ferry tour was a great experience. Thinking about the tiny spots of ancient forest we have in Europe, this 7h ride showed how wide and vast Alaska is.
Basically all I saw for 7h was untouched wilderness and ancient forests. It is wonderful to see that it still exists. It got even more special for me when I spotted the marine mammals all over the place. There was a sequence where I saw an animal in the water every 5 minutes. Sometimes I just saw the exhale of a humpback whale, sometimes some porpoises (type of dolphin), sometimes a fluke and eventually a series of humpbacks breaching. Although very far away (did I mention yet that I could cry thinking about my big lense sitting at home) it was special to me.
Just after half way we made a short stop at the little town of Tenakee in the middle of nowhere. It was a nice place where time has seemed to stop sometime in the past. The arrival of the ferry was a big event as for many that is the only connection to the outside world.
We arrived in Angoon at 3pm. Angoon is a town on Admiralty island which was/is inhabited by the Tlingit tribe Kootznoowoo Tlingit. Kootznoowoo means fortress of the bears, meaning lots of bears! The history of the tribe (as most) was a very sad one. After a US company had set up a whaling station and employed many natives, the shaman of the tribe died during a whale bombing of an US whaling ship. The Tlingit reacted strongly and longed for compensation of their loss (200 blankets), forcing it in the end by taking white hostages. A US naval ship made it to the island and the intimidation put a quick end to the demands of the tribe. But that was not enough. Now the commander of the naval ship demanded 400 blankets in return and once he received only 81, he bombed the whole town to the ground. I personally would love to hear the Tlingit version of the story, as I can imagine a lot more horrible wrong doing by the white men must have been the cause for this escalation. We tied all our backpacks onto the small two men packraft Jason had brought and paddled across to Killisnoo island. That island formerly was a whaling station and served as the first commercial fishing station for herring in 1882. I must admit that I found the packraft tour with all our gear on a little bizarre. It felt like we were on a 15$ boy toy with all our luggage.
But I was wrong as Jason explained the high quality of our little floater and he packaged and strapped everything on nice and tight (well except for the pack that shifted and started working as a rudder, but we solved that half way). After one hour of paddling we arrived at the wood carver cove. What a wonderful place this is.
There is actually one road on the island but it stops about a mile (including zick zacking through the forest) from the cabin. Very soon we discovered some neighbors that Jason hadn’t seen before. About 200m from the cabin was an eagles nest and two eagles were giving us a loud welcome, shrieking while flying over our heads. They didn’t like it but I lay low beneath their nest trying to get some nice shots.
After the first good night sleep we headed out to the main island (Admiralty) and to the long peninsula of Angoon with the packraft and hiked what was supposed to be a newly established hiking trail. It turned out to be more of a Quad trail connecting several graveyards along the coast with absolutely no views. The people living in Angoon are 95% natives and they don’t seem to be very active (supported by the the hiking trail ending up as a gravel road so people can drive to the graveyards).
It was very quiet and the only people we saw were driving around on the 4km road connecting the town and the ferry terminal for no obvious reasons. The town of Angoon (about 450 inhabitants) is not in a good shape, as many building are deserted or old and brittle. The government must have provided a grant recently because the shoreline street was in strong disconnect with the rest of the town being new and well planned.
As the graveyard trail ended we kept on hiking through the ancient forest to reach the end of the peninsula were we discovered many bear dens. Jason described it as a bear condominium, as there were so many spots, a or likely multiple bears had just cleaned and slept in. Not necessary to say our shouting got a little louder and more frequent.
Far away we also spotted some seals playing around with a buoy and some whales far out in the sea. The rest of the day (it was around 6pm when we got back) we stayed close to the cabin. I felt like a 6 year old boy running around the shore, spotting many animals on low tide.
listening to our shrieking neighbors
and exploring the beauty of the ancient forest.
I even took the time to take a picture of myself as I got many questions why I never upload pictures of myself. I am the photographer and I don’t and never will own a selfie stick. Here is the best shot I could come up with.
On our last day we almost missed our flight out, because we were caught throwing rocks through the windows of the touristic fishing company situated across the harbor on Killisnoo island. Those guys had been very unfriendly over the last years to Jason, had blocked the access to the water on our arrival day with a huge float just after we had packed out the packraft and never greeted us when we walked by. The police officer was a nice guy though letting us run for the plane after we bribed him with some beautiful stones I had collected on the shore the day before.
I hope you didn’t believe the last part of the story (although the people working at the fishing company are really as described). We had met Bryon the day before and he was so nice to pick us up at the ferry terminal and drive us to the float plane. It must be an interesting job to be the only police officer in a 450 soul town far away from anything. Great guy though. We flew out with a float plane which gave me another chance of taking wonderful pictures of the little island Killisnoo (cabin island)
and the larger Admiralty island which goes all the way to across the bay from Juneau.
Even on the plane from Juneau to Anchorage the views were nice, as only the highest mountains peaked out of the clouds.
Jason took me back to Girdwood were we stayed at his other cabin for the night. The next day we said goodbye and I hitchhiked to Seward with a little stop at the Alaska Wildlife conservation center. The center gives shelter to animals which have somehow not made it in the wilderness. It could be bears that lost their mother being cubs, or eagles who lost one of their wings. Unfortunately all or most of these tragedies were man made and injuries came from fire arms. It was really nice to see the animals of Alaska from a very short distance, with the most remarkable encounter being with the 450kg brown bear JB stopping around 30cm in front of my camera which I had stretched forward to get a close shot and looking at me. Face to face with about 50cm seperating our noses. It was so unexpected that in that moment I forgot to take a picture and just stared back at him.
Unfortunately that center also showed the most sad traits of the Americans. It was possible to drive around the shelters of the animals and more than half of the people visiting used that possibility instead of walking. Some never even got out of the buses and took pictures through the window. It would not have bothered me too much, but I had to cover my eyes and camera every time one of those trucks rattled by on that gravel road. The worst happened when I was leaving the bison area where a man jumped out of a bus not walking towards the fence to take a closer look at those wonderful creatures but to ask the lady standing next to me if she happened to know, where they could buy the best bison burgers around here. Oh lord, he is a lucky man he didn’t ask me that question as I would have told him to shove his fat American butt back into his shitty truck. How ignorant can you be (him and also myself for theoretically very likely exploding in his face) But I don’t want the only English blog entry end with this story, because actually the people living here in Alaska are the most friendly people I have ever met in my life. Starting with Jim, the man who sat next to me on my flight to Anchorage and then drove me around for two days and is still sending me messages from time to time to check if I am still on track; the travel nurses who kept me safe at Talkeetna lake and I have met again when I was in Anchorage; Chad and his wife who I spent a night with at the glacier and I might visit at the end of my trip in Homer; Delvis who I met hiking yesterday who drove me around and I ended up having dinner with yesterday in Seward (next chapter); the glacier guides owner in Kennicott who recommended to me to take a different booking to be on my own with a guide (probably loosing money on that); and all the people picking me up hitchhiking including the taxi driver who drove me 1h to Seward for free as he was on his way back taking people to Anchorage from Seward and giving me the recommendations where to find thousands of salmon (also next chapter); a friend of Jim, Matt who will put me on a 175$ cruise tomorrow for no money just because I said hi to him from Jim and ofcourse Jason and Victory taking me to Juneau for almost no money to their beautiful cabin and offering that to me after we spoke for about 15 minutes. All of these people I leave very thankful for their heart warming welcome and support. I hope you read this English blog entry and understand that these actions fuel me to keep helping and supporting other people.