Anniversary celebration, day 3

Seriously , this is the best stretch of sunny weather ever.  Today it was 76 degrees.  That’s almost too warm.  J  To wrap up perhaps the best weekend ever, we started with an early morning walk with Seca out to the mendenhall glacier.  We got there long before the tourist crowds.  It was a bit underwhelming after yesterday, but still nice. 

And we got to see this cute porcupine!  Check out his gnarly orange teeth.

We haven’t been up to Mendenhall since the ice melted off the lake, so it was fun to see all the icebergs that have broken off.

After our walk we took care of some Irv maintenance then went for motorcycle ride this afternoon.  We ended up down at Tracy’s Crab Shack (downtown) for a special dinner (thanks T!).  OMG king crab legs are out of this frickin’ world.  Perfect way to end a perfect weekend!

Happy Memorial Day, and thanks to all veterans and current service members. 

Tracy Arm Fjord cruise

South Sawyer Glacier, Tracy Arm fjord

There really aren’t enough superlatives in all of the English language to do today justice.  First off, we’ve been wanting to take trip to Tracy Arm since we moved here, but really wanted to wait for a perfect weather day.  We got it!  It was probably 70 degrees in town, much colder on the water, but nearly perfect blue skies.  What a day!

The tour company (Adventure Bound) has two boats – the Adventure Bound and the slightly larger Captain Cook (at 65 feet long).  We were on the Cap. Cook, and there were about 25 passengers total, maybe room for 30 at full capacity.  From my experiences, that’s a smallish boat, and a good number of people.  It occasionally felt a bit crowded, but not too bad.

Heading down Tracy Arm

The trip leaves from downtown Juneau at 8 am and returns at 6 pm – you head south to Tracy Arm.  Tracy Arm is a long, very narrow fjord that has incredible mountains and nearly vertical cliffs that rise 3000-4000 feet right from the water.  Beyond these cliffs are mountains that are 6000-7000+ high. 

A textbook example of a U-shaped valley carved by glaciers

There are two ‘arms’ at the end of Tracy Arm…the northern most one ends at Sawyer Glacier, the southern one at South Sawyer Glacier.  South Sawyer is much bigger.  These are both tidewater glaciers, which means they end in tidal waters, so when chunks break off into icebergs, they are floating in salt water and can (and do) move down the fjord.  At the mouth of these glaciers, the water is 600 feet deep or more, so chucks can break off from above the water and crash down, or break off from below the water line and surge up.  

Icebergs being born - ice calving off the Sawyer Glacier

Close up of the base of Sawyer Glacier

There were a lot more icebergs in and around South Sawyer Glacier than Sawyer Glacier.  They ranged in colors from white to brown to brilliant blue.  Some were huge, many were very small.

deep blue iceberg

clear ice from the former underside of an iceberg that just rolled over

iceberg that looks like a sea monster

birds chilling on an iceberg

At South Sawyer Glacier there were so many iceberg that we couldn’t get very close to the face of the glacier.  The face was about 400 feet high off the water at the calving line, 600+ further back.

At both glaciers the captain shut the boat off and we were able to sit and listen and watch.  The calving of the glaciers was very loud.  There were seals and seal pups on the icebergs.   

 They mostly ignored us, though this one came over for a look. 

Of course, with thousands of feet of cliffs and lots of snow melting,  there are more waterfalls than you can count.  Incredible.  Here’s some of my favorites:

For wildlife we saw a black bear, a couple of humback whales, two pods of Dall’s porpoise, bald eagles, seals, and sea lions.

The trip was expensive (there’s a ‘locals’ discount that saved us $20 each off the usual $163 cost per person) but it was worth every penny.  Wow.  Happy Anniversary to us!

Mt. Roberts tramway and hike

View from the Mt. Roberts tramway station

Today is our 11 year anniversary!  Because it was beautiful weather all weekend, we celebrated all weekend.  :)

Steve and Emily as we head to the Mt. Roberts trailhead

This morning, Steve, I, and our friend Emily hiked to the top of the Mt. Roberts Tramway and after exploring a bit, we took the tram down.  It’s a very steep hike up – you gain ~1600 hundred feet in maybe 1 mile or so of trail (the guide isn't very clear).  Mt. Roberts is actually much taller, another 1800 feet and 2 miles to the summit from the tram.  But since there’s still so much snow, we didn’t venture any further than the tram station. 

Taking the tram is a popular tourist activity, but it was pretty mellow and uncrowded at the top.   There’s a small nature center, a restaurant, a couple of gift shops, and a live bald eagle exhibit at the tram station. 

View from the tramway area...steep!

On a nice day (like today!) you can see more than 10 miles north and south, by my estimation.  It’s pretty expensive to take the tram round trip – maybe $35-40.  I’m not sure it’s worth it on most days when it’s cloudy.  I’m not even sure it’s really worth it on sunny days.  It’s not a bad hike.  It’s $10 to ride the tram down, but if you show a receipt for $1 0 or more in purchases from the gift stores or restaurant, it’s a free ride down.  We ate lunch at the top so we could ride down.

The rest of the day we did things around the RV, like laundry and dishes, because tomorrow we have tickets for a 10 hour cruise to Tracy Arm Fjord!!! 

Sablefish - Part 6

Maggie, scaring a sculpin.  It went back the water, alive.

Friday -

Last day of sampling. We're having a lot of fun, but I think we're all ready to go home.  The conversations are getting sillier and sillier...today we all practiced out 'senior yearbook photo poses' and did a lot of dancing to the music to stay warm.

Katy's yearbook pose

We saw a deer on one of the beaches, which was weird to see in broad daylight.  It was really pretty cold today, but not raining until the very end of the day.  When we were tucked into the bay there was very little wind and the surface of the water was like a mirror.  There were two sea lions and three seals hanging around pretty much all day.  The sea lions would circle the boat, underwater, but creating a pressure wave that was clear enough to follow their progress. 

flushing out a sablefish's stomach

We caught two more sablefish today, for a grand total of 4.  That means 1 fish per day.  Or one fish per 8 hours.  Keep in mind that there were five of us fishing 3-4 hooks each.  That's pretty crappy.  But still, a bad day of fishing is better than a good day of work, right?

wiped out on the ferry back to Juneau

Sablefish - Part 5

Thursday -
Back on the water!  A bit of a snag early in the morning with the winch again that set us back about 2 hours, but in the end, everything worked out.  We finally caught sablefish!!!  Two.  But still, two is better than zero.  We also caught a nice halibut that we kept for dinner.

A kelp greenling

Not a halibut

A halibut

The coolest part of the day - we saw two grizzlies and I took the most awesome picture ever!
The grizzlies seemed to come down to graze at low tide.  The two were on different beaches and we didn't get very close to either one.  In fact, the pictures I took of them are pretty bad.  But they were neat so see. Today was probably the nicest day of the week, weather-wise.  It was cloudy all morning but in the afternoon the sun peeked out a bit. 

The best picture ever...So, wow, this was so cool.  We caught a couple of rockfish in deep water.  And the trouble with rockfish (for you non-fishing types) is that when they are brought to the surface quickly, their swimbladder expands and can expand out of their mouths.  This isn't necessarily fatal, (though it can be) if they have time to recover it can usually shrink back down.  But, until they recover and the swimbladder shrinks they are unable to swim back down because they are too buoyant.  Well, one of the fish we caught wasn't able to swim down right away and an eagle came by and scooped it from the water right in front of us.  I was able to grab my camera and get a couple of good pictures of it happening.  After that, any rockfish we caught were allowed to recover in our coolers before we sent them back...we felt pretty bad for letting that happen the first time (even though the eagle was probably happy).

Bald eagle eating the rockfish

A pacific cod.  We threw it back.

Karson, holding a sablefish that's just been tagged.

Sablefish - Part 4

Wednesday -

Anne (the professor) and I set out early to find working internet so we could start calling around for replacement parts.  Most people suggested calling Napa, and it turned out, for good reason as they did have a new winch in the size we needed (a 3200 lb winch is apparently not a commonly stocked item!).  We had to go with a whole new winch since nobody sold the replacement parts.

After some consulting, we decided we could put the new winch on ourselves.  We did, but it took hours to do since it meant working with crappy tools in tight spaces.  But we did it!

Because it took so long, we didn't fish today.  On the bright side, it wasn't raining, so we didn't have to work on the trailer in the rain.  On the bad side, it would have been really nice to go fishing on such a beautiful, warm, sunny day...

Sablefish - Part 3

 Tuesday -
Ugh, early start, on the water by 6 am.  It was really and rained hard all day long.  My best guess is that the air temperature was in the low 40s.  We measured the water temperature - only 38.5 degrees.  Brrrrrr.  I think that is the most miserable and cold I've ever been. We didn't get back in until about 5 or 5:30 pm...it was a looooong day.

We didn't catch many fish, and no sablefish again today.  Last year's trips caught 300-500 fish during the sampling week, it doesn't look like we'll be doing that this week.  Thankfully we had a waterproof radio on board so we had some music.  We passed the time by telling stories and getting to know each other.

staghorn sculpin

fish with creepy parasites in it's eye

When we went to pull the boat out of the water, the winch on the trailer broke.  We spent a good 45 minutes in the pouring rain trying to figure out what to do so that we could at least get the boat back into town to repair the winch.  With the help of a borrowed hammer and some good whacking, we were able to get the boat fully on the trailer and went home to figure out a plan to fix it.  We were cold, wet, and exhausted.  We decided to wait until morning to see if we could find a replacement part (ideally) or a replacement winch (more expensive).  Sitka's a fishing town, so we where hoping someone would have what we needed.