Ashore to All Aboard...Sailing to the Northern Star: Stuck Between a Rock and a Hard Place

"Never in my life before have I experienced such beauty, and fear at the same time"

— llen MacArthur, Sailor

Coordinates: 57°10′36″N 133°54′23″W

Splayed out like a seagull straddling two buoys, my legs trembled as I spanned two rocks, the freezing Alaskan ocean yawning beneath me. I giggled helplessly at my own stupidity, even though just giggling threatened to wreck my delicate, if highly ungraceful, balancing act and tip me heels over head into the water. I was completely, irrevocably and quite ridiculously stuck.

At times like this, its funny how you never think about just how you got into this sort of a problem. I certainly didn’t think back to that morning, when we climbed in our Jurassic Park Jeep and headed out for False Bay.

We’ve had quite a few adventures in that Jeep by now, but its hard to write them all—so I figured, in retrospect (now dry) that our trip to False Bay two days back is a perfect example of our forays into the jungle that is Chichagof Island—and which could have ended with a very big, Skipper-shaped splash.

It started, of course, rumbling out of Hoonah, past abandoned quarries wreathed in ferns and hemlocks, bumping over the one-lane road and passing dusty tourist buses. Every time we passed them, we or the bus had to dive hood-first into the greenery at the side of the road, if there wasn’t a dirt turnout handy. The Jurassic Park Jeep handled this splendidly, and it wouldn’t take long driving through this forest to figure out why the Jeep earned its name. You really do expect a T-Rex to come roaring out of the huge ferns and thick trees. Instead, there’s grizzly bears, which I suppose is preferable—but not by much.

We usually slow down when we drive past meadows, since the meadows is where you find the monsters munching on grass—or their prey, the black-tailed deer stepping delicately through the trees, eyeing the Jeep with misgiving. Heck, I wouldn’t take a breath without anxiety if I was a few rungs too low on the food chain in bear country. Which I could be, but that isn’t something we like to think about too often.

Inside the Jeep, Alyssa is usually the keeper of the snacks (cheese sticks and gala apples), Dad, still our wise Captain, at the wheel and Mom on lookout in the front for anything exciting—hairy or otherwise—that we might stumble across.

You never know who or what you’ll find in the wilderness roads of Chichagof. We’ve met compactors on the road and passed backhoes, empty and silent in the rainforest. Since logging is the reason we have these roads to begin with, we don’t resent the presence of the heavy equipment, especially because the fight between Man and Nature is generally a losing one on Man’s side. Built bridges are slowly eroded by green moss, creeping plants and mushrooms (we know—one road was closed when the bridge was out). Traveling through the ancient forest, it felt as if we were hundreds of miles deep into the wilderness, not half a day’s ambling ride on thin roads. As we rumble past, I stick my hand out the window and let the trees and bushes slap against it--like getting a high five from Nature.

Yet thanks to these roads we’ve curved around the bases of mighty mountains, tall, craggy and intimidating, only to break into a lane of alder trees, their white trunk speckled with sage moss and clinging mushrooms cream and brown. Often we get out to take pictures and soak in the splendor. Today was no different, except the road to False Bay was the prettiest so far, with the government-issued name: road 8530. It was obvious as we went that visitors to False Bay were rare; the well-maintained road 8530 turned virtually to a dirt track by the time we broke out of the hundred-foot, old forest giants and broke out into the open, seeing False Bay for the first time.

The water was as clear as crystal, yet the light shimmered and sparkled like stained glass in motion. The mountains of Glacier Bay were visible across Icy Strait, and the black-sand beach was covered with white shells and dried out crabs dried out.

That rock in the middle? Well, I wanted to climb on top of it, and there were a few smallish rocks placed in what seemed like perfectly manageable distances.

Seemed like, anyway.

I jumped on the first two no problem, but when I reached out my right leg to scoot to the furthest rock, well, I sunk into a desperate and ungainly crouch. Luckily, the Captain used a highly advanced rescuing maneuver (He climbed out after me and hauled up on my hood) and managed to drag me clear, laughing himself the entire time.

I did not emerge entirely unscathed, but didn’t mind walking soggily up such a beautiful beach. I leave it to the pictures to describe the Bay.

With a pouchful of shells and a bagful of black sand, we drove away, promising to return. Its not always a promise we can keep in Alaska, but this time, I think we’re sure. On the way back, as the sun began to set (and never really finishes setting, if we’re telling the truth) we climbed over a hill for one more surprise.