Mud Hopping Through the Alaskan Rainforest, Part 2

(Continued from Part One which can be found here.)

In the morning the rain had somewhat subsided and we returned to the Econoline, dumping our damp gear into the backseat, using my half-torn poncho to mop up some of the rain that had leaked through the permeable doors of the van. Back along Dangerous River Road we came upon a jogging moose, which galloped just in front of us for about 100 yards before darting directly across our path and vanishing into the forest. About fifteen miles later, we hooked right and took a rutted county road, lined with thick bushes of pink fireweed on both sides that gradually began to encroach further and further upon the road until no room was left between van and bush. At another dead end, we secured the Econoline, packed up our gear for an overnight stay in the woods, and set out through the Russell Fjord Wilderness for Situk Lake.

Over the muskeg bogs and through the woods. Yakutat, Alaska.

Three miles in stood a nursery-rhyme-style cabin, complete with a wood-burning stove, an axe with a chopping block for firewood, and, inside, etched carvings made from bracket fungi reminding us to stay “bear-y aware.” Throughout the rainforest, bracket fungi is found growing on the sides of trees, often resembling white and brown clams, or fragments of the rings of Saturn that became wedged in a tree by a careless, interstellar, disc golfer. Historically, the bracket fungus was used by local native cultures as a fire igniter, and, afterward, female elders would smoke the remaining ashes with tobacco.

Smoke if you got ’em. Tongass National Forest, Alaska.

Consequently, we were not entirely alone along the shore of Situk Lake, as a group of three fishermen landed in a float plane, clad in camouflage jackets and rubber wading boots, and set-up for the day across an inlet to the west. Our cabin came equipped with a metal rowboat and oars, and as the sun came out for the first time, we paddled to the center of the lake, waving to our new friends along the way, and Mt. St. Elias, the second-tallest mountain in North America, appeared with a perfect blue backdrop from behind the rainclouds. It’s prolonged pointed top extended into the sky like a wizards hat, and a raging blue glacier could be seen curling around its back, like the tail of a massive ice dragon. As the day quietly passed, we rested on a log on the shore, as our friends struggled to lift the three iceboxes full of fish they had caught into the teal-trimmed floatplane that had returned to bring them back to civilization, and with a splash of fluids and gasoline, the plane was gone and we were alone again. To pass the evening we ventured on a hike towards “Mountain Lake” on a swampy, mostly unmarked trail that curved through the darkening forest and every 500 feet came foot to foot with fresh bear tracks, occasionally tramping through muskeg bogs, where the water level came up over our shins. The trail ended in a ragged field of devil’s club, revealing an obscured and lackluster view of the lake, and with the unsettling feeling that a cave bear or minotaur may be waiting around the next dark turn, we decided to head back to our cabin before the sun completely set, without bathing in the murky waters of the blandly named Mountain Lake. We went to sleep soundly as the midnight twilight hovered overhead, and in the morning headed back through the forest, passing the mushrooms that decorated the ground like a deep-sea coral reef adorned in extraterrestrial purples and oranges.

My entry in the Situk Cabin Logbook. Situk Lake, Alaska.

Our time in Yakutat was growing shorter, and it was time to acquire a surfboard before it was too late. Driving back to “the place where chickens scurry,” I was once again knocking at the door of Icy Waves Surf Shop to no avail, and was just about to give up when a blue pick-up pulled in the drive way. This happened to be the owner’s son who informed me that his dad was on vacation and would not return until the next evening but, with a hint of divine intervention, decided to rent a board to me even though he did not know any of the process or paperwork for rentals. He explained that he did not surf much anymore, but he highlighted on the map where some of the local surf spots were, accessed by a road that curved around “Ocean Cape,” a piece of land that jutted out like an upper-cutting fist into Yakutat Bay, serving as a barricade between the open ocean and the tranquil harbor, offering wind protected point breaks perfect for surfing at certain tides. Eventually the road would curve around to Cannon Beach, situated along the open ocean and completely unprotected from the winds of the mighty Pacific.

Without a moment to lose, we set off towards Cannon Beach to scope the wind-blown beach break and head clockwise around Ocean Cape in search of the diverse surf spots with salty, evocative names like Snappers, Boilers, and Graveyards. Upon reaching Cannon Beach, the road opens up to a magnificent, driftwood strewn sandy beach stretching for miles in both directions, and the sky is an open vortex of swirled blue and gray, as if the American Civil War was still being drawn out in slow motion in the skies over the thin artery of land that connects Southcentral to Southeast Alaska. A looming, rusted tank also stands guard permanently, a relic left over from the U.S. Army garrison, keeping watch in case of attack from the East, along with scattered cannons pointed towards the haunting spirits of Japanese submarines submerged beneath the breakers. The waves were drained and an onshore wind created dismal conditions, and with the continuous rain that had returned pelting the windshield, we took the mysterious road that turned right to continue the search for waves.

One of the most maintained stretches of Ocean Cape Road. Yakutat, Alaska.

I instantly realized Ocean Cape Road was not going to be a joyride along the coast but, in reality, was a four-wheel drive bushwhacked corridor through the jungle, and I became worried if the Econoline was going to survive. Within the first mile, moss-covered trees stood at attention like crossing guards in the center of the road, and the van was forced to weave around fallen logs and ominous mud lakes of unknown depths that may or may not have contained long-believed extinct marine-dwelling dinosaurs. The road became a few inches narrower than the width of the van, and as we plowed forward, branches began slapping the windshield, as if we were rock stars trying to jam our limousine free from a crowd of rabid, teenage groupies. As the forest began to become more claustrophobic, instead of slowing down to avoid the random boulders and attacking plant life, I sped up, weaving around the blind turns, unsure if a tribe of poison-spear wielding dwarves or, perhaps, even an oncoming vehicle lay menacingly before us. As the Econoline charged onward like a baited bull, the antenna hung limply broken in half, and a thorny piece of foliage the size of a baseball glove clung like a zombie’s claw to the right-side mirror. In all this madness, I had noticed only a fleeting glimpse of the ocean and nowhere even remotely plausible to park, when all of a sudden the road raised up above the forest and a perfect view of the ocean appeared as the van was suddenly on a miniscule type of land bridge with a ten-foot drop garnishing both sides of the vehicle. This was where I put the Econoline in park, hopped out onto the few inches of solid ground I had to stand on, and saw a six-foot wave with a near perfect, arching barrel crashing onto a patch of jagged rocks. The tide was wrong, and my body and board would most likely be smashed upon the rocks by the first wave I caught, and we were basically prisoners to this tower above the forest, creating quite a predicament in reaching the beach if we wanted to. With a sinking feeling of hopelessness, I sat back in the drivers seat, turned up the muffled radio that was squeaking out the Guess Who, and continued headlong into the mud.

With my mind weaving between hallucinations of exploding tires and my surfing stoke drowning in the high tide, I didn’t seem to notice that as we passed over the Ankau Saltchucks we were passing through an area of historical importance. Yakutat was traditionally home to a mix of native cultures, predominantly of the Eyak language and culture that was ultimately fused with Tlingit culture of the Southeast. One theory suggests the naming of the area, “the place where canoes rest,” could be indication that this was the western most extent of the Tlingit dominance, and sea travel farther west may not have been relevant, implying a termination point to trading and hunting routes by canoe. In any case, by 1796 the Russians had claimed much of the coastline of Alaska as “Russian America” and had built a maritime trading post for processing sea otter pelts along Ankau Creek naming it “Новороссийск,” or New Russia, and at one point envisioned the site as the capital of Russian America. By 1805, after several incidents in Southeast Alaska that had quickly deteriorated Russian-Tlingit relations, the Tlingits burned down the entire settlement and slaughtered all but a few inhabitants. The Russians would never reoccupy the site, and today the site is a National Historic Landmark with only the charcoaled remnants of the buildings buried beneath the topsoil remaining, with no other indication of the events that transpired there over 200 years ago. Nevertheless, sideswiping back into modern-day Yakutat, dodging the spirits of Russian fur trappers and the never-ceasing bombardment of shrubbery, we ambled across a one-lane bridge and returned to pavement, failing to find a single surfable spot.

By this time, evening was starting to come down and, without any more reservations, I veered the van back to Cannon Beach, found a perfect campsite nestled in the moss and the mushrooms right along the sand, zipped up my wetsuit, sauntered down to the water like a bloated penguin, and dived in to fulfill one of my lifelong dreams of surfing in Alaska.

Cannon Beach, Alaska.

Now the waves were hardly good enough to speak of, but, as I paddled about 100 yards into the Gulf of Alaska and looked around at the vastness of the open, blue water, as sandpipers scampered along the shoreline and gulls dived headfirst into the kelp beds to search for a pre-dinner snack, this was the blissful feeling that surfing had always brought me; a remote sense of living on the edge of existence and a spiritual freedom that only a seafarer could recognize. The power that the ocean holds over all humanity and the delicate balance between man and nature can only be truly recognized when one succumbs to that power and can lay back and be part of that totality, which binds all living things together and, in effect, is the source of all survival. Not that I’m going to pull out my healing crystals and start preaching for you to give up driving and join a vegan commune, but nature is an extremely powerful force, and humankind has already been necessitated to realize that by destroying nature, we are only going to destroy ourselves first. With that in mind, I dropped in on the only wave that had broken for the last hour, stood up and felt the cool, summer south wind across my face, and moments later was submerged by the power of the mighty Pacific.

The lonely surfer. Yakutat, Alaska.

We camped under clouded skies, and by morning the rain was falling again, but my goal had been attained and we headed into town for a commemorative coffee at “Fat Grandma’s.” Pulling into the gravel driveway, the exterior to the building looked like an androgynous gift at a baby shower, wrapped in baby blue and pink, and as you entered through the double doors, an animatronic frog made a loud croaking noise to welcome your presence. Fat Grandma may have been a grandma, but I could not say for sure, and she was not necessarily fat, but was a kind-faced bubble of a woman with rosy-red cheeks. She did offer fresh brewed coffee and homemade pumpkin muffins, along with a complete gift shop full of Alaskan t-shirts, souvenir plates, books, bongs, and a donation-based book shop that was nicknamed “Yakutat’s Library.” Behind her coffee bar was another unlit room that may have been the storage closet for a prospective flea market, stacked full of boxed up hodgepodge, including pinball machines and old football uniforms. After chatting with her about building fires and bird feathers, we ventured down the road to gander at the curiously placed old locomotive that sat at the town crossroads.

In 1905, a group of businessmen from Seattle were the first people to profit from the untapped potential of Yakutat’s fishing industry. The men built a 60-acre cannery along the shores of the Yakutat harbor, originally employing large amounts of failed leftovers from the Alaskan gold rushes and large amounts of Japanese and Filipino workers that had been recruited from the slums of Seattle and San Francisco, being promised high wages and freedom from the racial prejudice spread throughout the Lower 48. While working conditions and wages were nothing like as promised, the cannery did well, especially profiting from supplying European and American troops during the First World War, oftentimes with rotten and barely-edible salmon intended for the dogs and dumpsters. The entire operation was in turn supplied by the little known Yakutat and Southern Railroad, a short set of rails that ran between the cannery and Situk Landing at the mouth of the Situk River. Until the 1960’s, the railroad operated as the only “fish train” in the United States, only running during the fishing season from May to October. According to Yakutat-Southern.org, the train only ran during fishing season from May to October and had a schedule dictated solely by the tides as “the fishing boats could only unload their fish at high tide.” Today the train sits under a snow-protected awning next to the “Welcome to Yakutat” sign and quietly rests as just another little-known reminder of an America that once was.

As the perpetual cloudy skies began to waver into evening, it was time to return our proud warrior, the Econoline, and face the damage costs we feared hung over our heads. As we returned the van, complete with a bag of stinking trash we had collected over the last four days, the woman did not seem to blink an eye at any marks or scuffs or limping antennae that adorned the van and even offered to throw away the trash for us. Once again, hauling our 40 lbs. of supplies on our backs, we hobbled down to the Yakutat Lodge adjacent to the airport, had beers and nachos, survived the scrutiny from the extraneous Yakutat Airport security and the shifty-eyed police officer, and the paranoia of freefalling out of the sky began tap-dancing on my shoulders once again, as we headed back to Juneau.

Yakutat Jack wishing you safe travels.

To be concluded in Part Three….