the Icy Tour

he says: 

This is Part I of a piece i'm writing on our trip... hope you enjoy it!

Elizabeth and I are planning for a week long kayak and backpack tour of Icy Bay, Alaska... but we are packing provisions for 10+ days. If the weather gives us the chance, we’ll extend this once in a lifetime tour to fill the window mother nature gives us.

We’ve been waiting nearly a year to get back to this place, to experience the solitude and beauty of rugged coastal Alaska by sea kayak. Last fall, we won a lottery of sorts, and were chosen to participate in a cable television show called “The Alaska Experiment”, pitting small teams against the bush for a three month stretch. A sort of survival endurance contest... Our ‘insertion’ consisted of a two day sea kayak trek through the ice choked fjords of Icy Bay to our tent camp and new home. The taping of the show passed with its trials and hardships, the whole experience was unforgettable. But those first two days on the water stayed with us... and it is those first moments paddling in Icy Bay that brought us back.

Elizabeth loads her ramen, coffee, and soup-stuffed drybags into the bow and stern

 compartments of the rental kayak, and I busily work on some custom modifications to the two-person boat that will carry me and Mo, our 75lb german shepherd. I jury-rig some pvc and crab pot floats into a make-shift double outrigger to give us a little secondary stability should big Mo decide to shift his weight at just the wrong time. If you’ve ever taken a big dog for a ride in a little boat, you probably know that they always chose the wrong time to get up and move to the other side of the boat.

So with a few non-permanent modifications and a very short sea trial, the double boat is ready and Mo seems to like it. The additional backpacking gear and supplies are loaded into the stern and between my legs, and we are ready to go.

We are jumping off from Icy Bay Lodge, a full service resort lodge on the eastern shore of Icy Bay. The lodge provides adventure kayak vacation packages in any configuration you can imagine... from basic boat rentals and minimal support to lodging and meals, a landing craft insertion deep in the bay, and fully guided kayak tours. From the lodge, we’re planning to cross the bay to Independence Creek, and then work our way clockwise along shore as we slowly make our way back to the lodge.
“Once we cross the bay, we’re kinda committed”
“Yes, we are”
“What if the ice chokes the bay later in the week?”
“We’ll find a way”

And quiet hope is all you have on a trip like this. We were going beyond any kind of assistance or easy rescue. On a trip like this, you simply have to be ready to wait for the weather, for your opportunity.

All said, the sea tour will cover approximately 30 miles, not counting diversions, meandering, and side trips. And we have two short backpacking trips planned, so when we’re not exploring by boat, we will be bush-wacking through scrub alder, devil’s club, and salmonberry bushes to take in the views and experience the full force of one of Alaska’s wildest places.

We’re off....the sun is shining through holes on the gray blanket of clouds, winds are light, the bay is flat. We paddle hard for Gull Island, the only waypoint before making the crossing. Aptly named, the gulls are numerous and noisy. They protest our presence, mostly the presence of a wolf on their sanctuary, but they soon get over it. They circle above as he shows interest in fetching driftwood, not sniffing out their nests in the grass. After the short stretch we head west into the bay, west to the coastal mountains and Independence Creek. The ice in the bay is thin and easy to move through, and we are thankful that the wind and current have given us a fee pass today. The bay can be packed with ice depending on the conditions, and it could make for very slow paddling. After two and a half hours of paddling, we make landfall and begin scouting for a decent campsite.
We make camp, and start a small fire to cook dinner on and to smoke the bugs away. Tomorrow we will backpack up Independence Creek, but tonight we sleep on the beach.

Packing the boats to head further up the bay, we are thankful to be free of the devil’s club infested gulch that holds Independence Creek. That is one forbidden place; dark, steep, nearly impossible to move. I kept thinking of the 80’s flick “Predator”, and wishing at times that I had Jesse Ventura’s ‘ol painless Gatling gun to cut a swath through the unruly tangle of underbrush and deadfall. Moby kept looking at us quizzically...

“Dad, what in the hell are we doing here, exactly?”
“I’m not so sure either, ask your mother!”
“Adventure!” was her reply.

In this moment I am thankful for her enthusiasm. It helps soften the edge of this horrid canyon, this place that feels more hostile than indifferent. I am dreaming of the bright open spaces on the water, not the dark, close brush we are battling this moment...

Paddling north and west around Kichyatt point, the ice is thick and the icebergs are huge. We are wary of the big ones, and give them plenty of respect. We have seen several split and roll in the last few days, and we don’t want to be in the neighborhood when it happens. The beaches are choked with ice, and hundreds of car and house sized blocks seem to be hung up in the flats after last night’s high tide. After a bit of searching, we finally locate a beach with a few clear spots and navigate through the huge beached icebergs.

We survey the beach to see who and what makes a living in the area. We find mostly moose tracks of all sizes, only one set of bear tracks, and some smaller coyote tracks. Not that we would have abandoned this beach, but it is comforting to find only one set of bear tracks. Our wildlife safety gear includes a vhf radio, bear spray, and a last resort 12-gauge shotgun. We hang our food in the tall cottonwoods that line the bay, and always cook away from camp. In our limited experience, scent discipline is the most important aspect of bear safety, so we do our best to minimize the incentives around camp.

Last fall, we had several very close encounters with coastal brown bears, and in each case the bears were curious but not intent on sacking camp or eating humans. While this is not always the case, we’d much prefer to make lots of noise, be cautious with our food, and never ever have to shoot a bear!

The next few days delivers a coastal gale. While the water of the bay is protected, it was hard to tell where the ocean stopped and the rain filled air began. So we stayed on shore, hiking and beachcombing and exploring in the pouring rain. Rain gear or not, it is hard to stay dry in this kind of constant deluge. So we spent the evenings and nights rotating wet gear into our sleeping bags for body-heat drying and storage. By morning, we were each packed in our synthetic bags with several layers of almost dry but very warm synthetic clothing...dampness rules here.

“You want to go to the desert this fall?”
“Yeah, I can’t wait to be able to crawl into a dry sleeping bag, maybe even my down bag!”
“I know, and to have dry clothes to sleep in”
“And I can’t wait to be able to drink water without feeling like I’m colluding with the enemy..”

These are the kind of big dreams you have after day three in the tent...