Alaska by Cruise Ship by Anne Vipond

Author:Anne Vipond
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Alaska, Alaska cruises, Alaska History, Alaska wildlife, cruise ships, British Columbia, Canada, Inside Passage Cruises, Glacier Cruises, glaciers, humpback whales, Ketchikan, Juneau, Anchorage, Skagway, Sitka, Vancouver, Seattle, Denali National Park, Fairbanks, Kodiak, Bering Sea, Nome, Gold Rush, Klondike, Trail of '98, Alaska Shore Excursions, Land Tours to Alaska, Cruises to Alaska
Publisher: Ocean Cruise Guides Ltd.
Published: 2018-01-21T16:00:00+00:00

The lighthouse on Ivory Island, at the other end of Seaforth Channel, was built a year earlier – in 1898. Completely exposed to the open ocean, it bears the brunt of winter storms rolling in from the Pacific. Farther along the meandering maze of interconnecting waterways is Boat Bluff Lighthouse. This scenic lighthouse overlooks Sarah Passage and sits on an island inhabited by wolves.

Boat Bluff Lighthouse

The natives were always wary and respectful of wolves. In her Klee Wyck stories, published in 1941, the artist Emily Carr wrote of an elder who, upon seeing her about to enter a forest, “ran and pulled me back, shaking his head and scolding me . . . The Indians forbade their children to go into the forest, not even into its edge. I was to them a child, ignorant about the wild things which they knew so well.”

Wild things are found throughout the Inside Passage of British Columbia, and a huge tract of northern coastal land has come to be known as the Great Bear Rainforest. Lying within this remote and relatively uninhabited area is Princess Royal Island, home to a rare type of black bear called a kermode. A genetic mutation has given this black bear a fur coat that is not black, brown or cinnamon – but pure white. These rare bears are not easy to find in the old-growth forest of an island the size of Princess Royal, but biologists with the Valhalla Wilderness Society have been conducting research here since 1990 to determine the bears’ population and habitat. The Society proposed that a kermode sanctuary be established on Princess Royal Island to save the white ‘spirit’ bears that live here and, in 2001, a logging moratorium was imposed by the provincial government. When a Canadian schoolboy named Simon Jackson decided to found the Spirit Bear Youth Coalition, his impassioned activism sparked Hollywood’s interest which resulted in the independent production of an animated feature film called The Spirit Bear, its profits helping to preserve the kermodes’ habitat.

The narrow reaches of Princess Royal Channel are lined on either side with cliff-hanging waterfalls that vary from single strands to tumbling cascades. Halfway along this watery corridor a small island splits the channel. Ships often steer to the south of Work Island, affording passengers a full view of the abandoned cannery at Butedale on Princess Royal Island. To the right of the weatherbeaten cannery is a spectacular waterfall.

Of all the channels of sheer cliff and clinging cedar that comprise the Inside Passage, none is more impressive than Grenville Channel – squeezed between the mainland and Pitt Island. Not only do the precipitous sides of this channel rise from watery depths of 1,600 feet to forested heights of 3,500 feet, they form such a narrow corridor that large ships entering from the south look like they’re going to get stuck in the first bend. This is of course an optical illusion, but the channel is, at its narrowest point, only a fifth of a mile wide.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.