I was thrilled and took way too many photos of this gorgeous mountain. I can only imagine how wonderful it would look if the sky were blue.
Even the mountains to the south of town were out. Now you can see why they say that Sitka might just have the most beautiful setting of any town in Alaska.
Today we’re going south of town to the end of the road again and then up the hill for a hike to Beaver Lake in the foothills of those southern mountains. Put on your hiking boots and bring your hiking stick cause this one’s steep and rocky. The hike begins in a river gorge near the town’s hydroelectric project. There are waterfalls that cascade down the hillsides.
The trail goes over a rather huge metal bridge (built in 2010) that they don’t let cars go over. Sometimes things like this make me wonder whose brother-in-law was in the bridge building business. The trail started gradually through the rain forest and then went nearly straight up the rocky hillside.
These are rock stairs that we had just come up, really they are! As the trail climbed you could see other waterfalls across the canyon along with the snow at the bottom of the avalanche chutes.
And you got nice views of the mountains to the east.
The beginning of the trail didn’t have many flowers but as we got further up the trail things got more interesting. There were shooting stars and then masses of little flowers called Gold Thread (Copptis trifolia). We also spied a Winter Wren who stopped for a moment in his singing to rest on a branch nearby.
There were more Marsh Marigolds (Caltha palustris). I kept taking photos of them for several weeks until a flower friend told me what they were.
Beaver Lake turned out to be a nice little lake surrounded by a wooden walkway.
Here's a panorama shot to give you a wider view.
We walked a ways along the pathway so I could see past the end of the little peninsula across the lake.
While we were standing here, a solitary bald eagle took off from one of the trees and soared across the lake. There were a number of folks here at the lake and on the trail who hadn’t passed on the trail and we finally asked someone where they were coming from. It turns out there’s another trailhead beyond the end of the pavement that the locals use because that trail is in better shape than the one we took. Ah ha! Our guidebook didn’t tell us that and neither did the folks who we talked to about this hike yesterday.
Here’s Walter on the wood walkway. You can see it’s a bit narrower than usual.
There were also a series of wonderful new wood bridges. I love the railings on these. Somebody had spent a lot of time peeling logs and sanding them down to make these pretty bridges.
On the way down I couldn’t resist taking a photo of these stairs with bunchberry between each step.
The stuff grows everywhere in this part of Alaska.
Along the side of the trail in amongst the rocks there was a lot of Foam Flower (Tiarella trifoliata) growing too. The flowers are so delicate they’re hard to photograph but I’ve kept trying...
Here's a closeup of the flower itself.
Near the bottom of the trail I began to see this strange plant I’d never noticed before. At first I thought it was a moss and then I decided it must be spruce seedlings. But I was wrong. These cool little plants are called clubmoss. I believe this one is Lycopodium clavatum but I could easily be wrong.
This was the steepest hike we’ve done since our accident and we did it without any ill effects. Hurray for working out 6 days a week. We were both happy to get to the truck and sit down but neither of us was sore the next day. YES!
We drove back down the hill and just before we joined the highway I noticed a huge group of bald eagles perched in the trees. This is just a small portion of them.
I parked the truck and got out to take pictures and realized that they were in the trees because down below them were the old paper pulp holding tanks that they’d transformed into a habitat for a pair of orphaned brown bear cubs. The place is called Fortress of the Bears. I guess it must have been close to feeding time!
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I had thought that the bears were in separate enclosures but that turned out not to be so. The second one showed up out of the underbrush and the two of them played for a while.
Meanwhile the eagles would swoop down into the enclosure and grab things and the bears paid them no mind. This is Walter’s favorite of the eagle pictures because you can see the mountains in the background.
From here we stopped back at the spot where we’d had lunch a couple of days ago (Sawmill Cove). Two days ago it was all mist and tiny glimpses of snow. Now you could REALLY see the view.
Here’s a panorama shot of the area.
We stopped at the grocery store for a couple of things and I couldn’t resist taking a few more pictures of Mt. Edgecumbe. Can you imagine having a view like this from your grocery store parking lot? I got a couple of indulgent smiles from the locals who saw me taking pictures.
When we got back to our campsite, the Fairweather, the fast ferry that we were going to take the next day, was just leaving. It’s a catamaran and goes almost half again as fast as the ferry we took on our previous 3 ferry rides.
The next morning we took some time off and did a little housekeeping. Then we caught the 1:00 pm ferry to Juneau.
Here's a map of the area. We'll be going out the Peril Strait to Angoon and then up Chatham Strait to Juneau.
It was cool and damp as usual but I did manage to get a few decent photos off the back deck. This ferry doesn’t have a front deck so you can only take pictures off the side and back decks or through the side windows. This one was taken off the back deck. You can see how the ferry stirs up the water even when it’s going pretty slow through the narrow passages.
We went north and up through the Peril Strait again, this time in the daylight. Here’s one of the narrow passages you go through. Yiu can see the red buoys that identify the channel.
It was a Saturday and there were lots of boats out. I amused myself with taking photos of them as they went by.
The weather cleared for a little while and I got this nice panorama of the mountains to the south of the Peril Strait. This is the north end of Baranof Island where Sitka is located.
Not long after this it started to rain in earnest and photography became difficult both on the deck and through the windows. But I did get this shot of the way the boat churns up the water when it’s going at full speed.
We stopped in Angoon, a native village on Admiralty Island—in fact the only settlement on the whole island. The rest of the island is a National Monument.
This is a view of Admiralty Island after we left Angoon.
The layover in Angoon was only for about 45 minutes while they off-loaded a whole lot of passengers and loaded a couple of semis and some cars. The semis ended up parked in front of us (there had been folks going to Angoon parked in front of us to start with). That wouldn’t have been a problem except one of them was just the flat bed with no tractor to pull it. When we got to Juneau they unloaded the whole ferry and THEN we got to back up and drive around it to get off.
It was raining hard but it was still light when we got to Mendenhall Lake Campground that evening at about 8:30. In Part XII, we’ll take you to see the Mendenhall Glacier and take a drive ‘out the road’ north of Juneau.