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Southeast Alaska is a skinny strip of land pressed up against the main land mountains of Canada by the Pacific Ocean. It is more water than land. Over one thousand islands dot the 500 mile long waterways from Icy Bay to the southern border with Canada. Almost 77 percent, 16.8 million acres, of Southeast is protected by the Tongass National Forest, the nation’s largest. The Forest protects the largest tracts of virgin old-growth trees left in the United States. It is also home to the highest density of brown bears and bald eagles than any other place in the world. Water, mountains, wildlife and wilderness are the predominant themes here. Paddle out on an early spring day in April and like as not a hummingbird will buzz your brightly colored life vest. They are the first harbingers that winter is done. Traveling all the way from Mexico they arrive bursting with vibrant color and the warmest of messages: “Summer is coming”. Bald eagles dominate the sky. In early spring before the salmon return to spawn they perform their mating rituals, soaring up high and taloning, grabbing at their partners talons and spiraling to earth, parting just feet above the water. Often twenty of more birds can be seen in the same tree at one time. On the water seals are our constant companions. Curious and shy they follow the kayaks and duck every time a camera is raised. Sometimes the endangered Stellar Sea Lions will visit, their large angular heads raised to watch us pass. In June the salmon return in force. Everywhere around the kayaks silver fish leap out of the water, jumping four or five times, splashing the surface around us. Kayaking up a salmon stream, their numbers are so strong, that you can feel them bumping beneath the kayak. Reach down into the water and you can touch them as they swim by. Humpback and Orca whales frequent our waters, following feed along the shoreline. Little compares to drifting on a calm morning and hearing a humpback surface and exhale, sending a plume of water six feet in the air, then hearing them inhale, before their tail raises and sends them to the depths again. Listening with the hydrophones you can hear them sing. Salmon also bring the bears to the streams to fish. Trapped in pools beneath small falls the salmon prove easy prey. Bald eagles line the banks and finish off what the bears leave behind. Southeast
is rich in wildlife, and a kayak is a perfect platform to see it from.
With no motor to disturb the silence and the ability to closely follow
the shoreline we are able to experience the beauty and abundance of
both the rainforest and the sea. |
| Southeast
Sea Kayaks
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