Human Habitation in Coastal Alaska

My attention now turns to human habitation in the remote coastal mountains of southern Alaska and in particular three historic but geographical disconnected places, namely Juneau, Sitka and Ketchigan. Their populations are tiny, access is difficult, and yet all three played an important role in developing this region. Juneau is now Alaska's administrative capital. Sitka was the Russian capital before the Tsar sold the province off to the USA and still has numerous Russian relics, and Ketchikan was a leading commercial centre. The region has virtually no settlements outside of these places, except perhaps for Skagway which was the starting point for the Klondike gold-rush in Canada's Yukon. And the only quick way to get between these places is by flying boat or sea.

And all apart from Juneau are heavily tourism-oriented. Even there, we found a constellation of cruise vessels where we arrived, albeit on a rare sunny day!

Juneau has an interesting cable car system (known locally as a tramway!) that rapidly hauls people high up Mount Roberts with spectacular views at the summit. Given that we spent most of the time ashore at Juneau visiting a local botanical garden and viewing the Mendenhall Glacier, these following pictures of the tramway are all that I have at the city in question. By the way it was a very fast and steep journey in a huge gondola compared with the many Swiss counterparts I have used!

Returning from the Hubbard Glacier, our next port of call was Sitka which had a more beautiful ambience bestowed in particular by remnants of the Russian era. Here we are docking in Sitka, which had a vibrant little port full of pleasure craft of various kinds.

Fortunately, we had a while to wander around town before going whale watching.

This year marks the 150th anniversary of Alaska's purchase from the Russians.

The orthodox cathedral, with a black bear outside one of the many gift shops touting for tourist dollars. And nearby there was a large totem pole.

I imagine that this skin once belonged to a wolf.

One of the 'Russian' buildings and its 'plate'.

A school with a totem pole outside.

And so to Ketchigan, where we had little chance to explore the town before catching a boat to view the nearby spectacular fjords. All these views were taken from our cruise liner on a very cold, misty and wet morning.

These small places are all interesting in their way, but perhaps too touristy for my taste. I'd give first prize to Sitka for its better layout and ambience, historical associations, and more beautiful setting.

AS

Stark Landscapes

As you will have already seen from recent posts to this blog, the pan-handle of Alaska is a truly wild landscape, and this post focuses especially on the mountain scenery that haunts this coastline. The accompanying pictures depict a landscape of high and rugged mountains (some higher than nay in the European Alps), snow and ice, occasional dense vegetation, deep fjord-like waterways, often grey skies with abundant rain and snow, islands dotting the horizon, occasional volcanoes, and so on.

Mount Edgecumbe, shown in the next picture, is a dormant volcano near Sitka and was the subject many years ago of a splendid April fool's joke. Conspirators took some old tyres to the top, set light to them, and when folks woke up on the first of April they thought that an eruption was in progress!

I love this next picture of the 'New' Eddystone rock in the Behm Canal near Ketchikan. It was so named by Vancouver when searching for the fabled Northwest Passage but doesn't look anything like the real Eddystone rock near Plymouth in the UK.

And a little further on the landscape began to resemble a stack of Norwegian fjords as the waters narrowed and the sides of mountains became more vertical, complete with many cascading waterfalls. Appropriately, the weather closed in with many hillsides swathed in mists and rain beginning to fall, creating an unforgettable image of an almost haunted and mysterious - but very beautiful - place.  

I hope these images promote within you an irresistible urge to visit this beautiful and highly remote part of the world. It's highly recommended.

AS

A Wild-life Cornucopia

During our trip up the coast of Alaska we were treated to many encounters with the region's wild-life. Some of observations resulted in good photos, but others were necessarily fleeting and cameras were either not ready for use or the species in question simply sank out of view. For example, seals surfaced rarely and irregularly and despite numerous sightings remained off camera. Once we passed a shoal of Salmon but they mostly remained submerged with only their back-fins momentarily evident. Bald headed eagles were unbelievably common, but swift and irregular in height and direction. Only one remained close-by perched in a tree allowing me to capture it photographically - see below. Squirrels were numerous, but very fleet of foot, but we did see some deer walking through people's gardens in Victoria (BC).

Anyway have a look at what posed for me. We'll start with some bears housed in a disused forestry facility near Sitka. They were tended in captivity by a charitable group that rescued semi-orphaned individuals whose mothers had died and therefore needed protection from fathers who would probably have killed them. There were young brown and black bears who looked healthy and sociable even when the two different species came together. The brown, or grizzly, species shown in the first three photos is rather larger and threatening to humans. The first exhibit had largely moulted, but the others were slowly becoming browner.

And here some black bears were socialising, watched by a flock of friendly-looking crows who were perhaps seeking an easy feed. Bald eagles wheeled above these enclosures but flew so rapidly that I failed to capture one on my photos.

A short while later, we took to the water to cruise the inlets around Sitka and found ourselves close to a very large pod of hump-back whales - perhaps as many as 15-20 individuals. They were not here to give birth to their young, but rather to feed, put on condition, and mate in the arctic summer before heading to warmer water for the northern winter. On seeing us, they would usually dive and swim away fro 5 minutes before they had to resurface after which our boat tried to get near to the whales who promptly dived again often with tails in the air. On several occasions there was a mass breaching of whales to the surface, one of which I managed to capture.

And here we have a family or two of sea otters who seemed rather unconcerned by our presence, though we were not really close to them.

And here's a rather nice and compliant bald eagle!

We were told that many of the wild coastal areas of Alaska were also home to moose, but none revealed itself to us.

AS