Alaska: Turnagain Arm & Crow Pass

With a car now purchased (Subaru Forester) and insured, the afternoon became dedicated to going for a drive. South of Anchorage is a coastal drive along the northern side of Turnagain Arm, inside the Cook Inlet. Story goes that Captain Cook sailed up Turnagain Arm expecting passage into Prince William Sound. Instead he had to turn back as it turned out to be a fjord.

Turnagain Arm is remarkable for one other thing; it has a bore tide. As the tide comes in, the range and tidal pressure is so large that a wave of up to 12 feet forms at the front as the water rushes in. Once upon a time (pre-1964) it used to cause a taller incoming wave but an earthquake (9.2 on the Richter scale) in the area caused the inlet to relax, sinking lower as the earthquake released built up pressure. The now deeper inlet means a smaller apparent wave on the surface. In some respects, this is a little similar to what occurs at horizontal falls in the Kimberley, albeit on a much, much larger scale.

Along the way are some well regarded vantage points, Beluga Point (I didn't see any) and Bird Point (two more bald eagles) before getting to Girdwood, the Alyeska ski town. Girdwood is situated in a rain forest and given that it's basically at sea level, is one of the lowest ski towns on the planet. Apparently that's desirable.

Around to the north of Girdwood is Crow Pass, a trail to a former gold mine. The drive up is thickly forested and the mine closed for a wedding. The pass continues so I keep driving. A neighbourhood very unexpectedly appears as I break through the upper reaches of the treeline, "... and even here, there is (human) life."

No tripod... no worries.

The end of the road comes a bit later after crossing a pair of rickety bridges. The carpark at the top marks a trail head I won't be exploring, but even here I'm being treated to another million dollar view.

The view from the carpark. Being lazy is still rewarding!

One the way back the sun is getting a little lower - to say it's setting is to be pretty economical with the truth - though it's not going to hit the water until early morning... and even then it's only really hiding for an hour or two. I return to Bird Point for little to no reason, another look can't hurt. Walking past an elderly gent who has a large telescope mounted on a tripod pointed across the highway and up the mountains (presumably in the wrong direction, the birds are behind him) my attention is grabbed in undivided fashion when he says, casually as you like, "say, do you want to take some photos of a few bears?"

Fucking oath I do.

Ken has been tracking a grizzly bear mother and her two cubs for the afternoon. In a flash he removes his eyepiece on the telescope and is rigging up a ghetto Canon mount with my camera on the other end. It's a little fiddly and by the time he sorts out the mount he has lost the bears.

Ken with his telescope. The bears are near the top, by the middle blob of snow... a casual two miles or so away.

Tersely whispered "darn!"s appear to be the upper limit of his cussing vocabulary. I adjust mine accordingly.

He finds the bears quickly enough and we sit there shooting and having a yarn over the course of a couple of hours. It's tricky work taking their photo, between tracking them, manually adjusting the focus and using live view on the camera, the working conditions are miles from ideal... but then again, the bears are miles away. 9pm rolls past and he remember he needs to get home. It's easy to lose track of the time when it doesn't get dark. The camera is dismounted, telescope dismantled and we leave...

Grainy out of focus bears!

... but it's a long time until the giddiness subsides. I continue to be remarkably fortunate.

Bird Point