The Inside Passage --- Fjords

The Inside Passage -- Fjords

The Float Plane with our ship in the background

      Today found us stepping shakily onto the pontoon of a float plane, a method of transportation common in these parts of Alaska.  We were in the bustling first stop city (for cruise ships, anyway) of Ketchikan, a city nearly 700 miles from Seattle.   The planned trip now was to a place in the Tongass forest (the nation's largest) to the interior and the misty fjords as the park and national monument area is now known (so proclaimed in 1978).  One would think that we would be quite used to a rollicking platform after spending so many days at sea, this being our first time back and temporarily on land after nearly three days.  And indeed once inside the tiny aluminum container, we were again swept into the artificial complacency of safety, a few quick finger-pointing tips from our pilot about life jackets and fire extinguishers and first aid kits (each about the size of a box of matches) and we were suddenly caught watching the noisy plane taking off ahead of us while finding ourselves lifting off of the water as we busily untangled the headphone wires our pilot was pointing to.

Taking Off

     Once called sea planes, the float plane is a lightweight craft that rests on two pontoons and because of all the surrounding water and remote locations, has become the primary means of transportation in many parts of Alaska.  Gas runs about $7 a gallon and a flight like ours would use up about 35 gallons, we were told.  But little of that mattered to the five of us as we watched the water skim past us, Kevin the pilot telling us all about how he had covered most of Alaska in this hard-to-find 1956 Beaver aircraft which we were now sitting in, his bush pilot yearnings and urgings now finally out of him ("I'm expected home each night," he casually mentioned).  "Yup,"he added, "you don't find airplanes like this anymore." With the noise and the rattling and the five of us now jammed inside the small cabin like huddled and frightened bear cubs, we were inclined to believe him.

Over part of the Tongass

Glacial beginnings

     The fjords are just a small part of the 500-mile stretch of the Tongass National Forest in the temperate panhandle of the lower Alaskan coast.  Named after one of the native Indian populations of Tlingits, the Tongass was a logging paradise but far too isolated to be of much economic value when it was established in 1907 by Teddy Roosevelt.  But after World War II, things jumped into full gear and within 60 years, nearly 40% of the old growth timber had been decimated for making newsprint and other ground-up pulp matter.  Of the 16.8 million acres so designated as the park, just over half a million acres are considered loggable today or are areas which either are accessible or have been made to be so.  Our pilot said that for every dollar made by the logging companies who harvest the logs, two dollars had been spent by the government to build the roads and to create the access for those logging companies' trucks.  The high rate of loss of the old growth trees in the forest soon increased to 66% and in some areas, said The Nature Conservancy, ran as high as 94%.  Before long, fishing streams began drying up and salmon began staying away, each industry of which once brought in nearly $1 billion annually to the local economy.  Said the magazine: Fisheries biologists have recorded 15,764 miles of salmon streams in the Tongass, and these streams are responsible for about 28 percent of Alaska's annual commercial salmon catch, or about 49 million salmon.  Yet even with as many logs as the eyes could fathom, the forest simply couldn't keep up.  So three years ago and as a compromise to a pro-logging Congress, a memorandum was issued that announced a shift away from harvesting the old growth and instead selling the newer trees (less strong but by now almost more readily available) over the next decade and a half.  Some of this was visible from our flight, but more striking was the surge of old growth still proudly clinging to remote hillsides and up mountains, untouched and now more likely to remain so.  Even gold, we were told, lay comfortably sealed in veins of rock here, hidden under layers too remote for even the hardiest miner to discover.

The glacial formation

The fjords from above

 

Closer to the glacial lake

    But here we were, suddenly getting lower and lower and flying so close between the fjords that it would appear to be  almost dangerous (DID the bush pilot urge really left him, we seemed to wonder).  Then the water grew closer and closer and soon, the engine was sputtering to a stop...we were alone and coasting to a stop in who knows where?  "One of my favorite spots," Kevin proudly declared, his door already open and his hand reaching in his shirt pocket for a cigarette.  "We call it the amphitheater...anybody want to get out and stretch their legs on one of these pontoons?"  Before long we were balancing on the float, not quite sure what to think of it all.  Move the wrong way and somebody was going in the water.  "Ahh," he proudly said between puffs, "you won't find those cookie-cutter big float plane companies doing this."  And we all soon realized that Kevin was as thrilled to be here as we were, the sun breaking pattern from the 162 inches of rain (over 13 feet) the area receives annually (which doesn't include the 32 inches of annual snowfall).  Skies were blue and visibility was clear.  Like us newcomers, Kevin was simply in love with this place.  A radio call from the airwaves (there's no official "tower control" here, just all the pilots pretty much communicating enough to stay out of one another's way)...a bear was on the small runway. "Never heard that one before," he chuckled, and then we were off, the float plane lifting off as smoothly as it landed, us newly decorated veterans of riding on the sea as confident as ever and sad to know that this glorious view of untouched and unbridled nature was soon going to end for us.  Perhaps the Tongass will survive the onslaught of humans after all.  The new people arriving and staying here had a real love of the land; yes they were making a living but now in a different way, showing others like us that not that far beyond the shores was a seemingly endless forest, an old forest full of life and full of discovery...but much of it just beyond our reach.  And perhaps that would be its saving grace.  Who knows?  But it was just as our pilot Kevin said, they just don't make these anymore.