Alaskamag_2025_April

GLACIER BAY TURNS 100

GO FISH

OUR FLY-FISHING ANNUAL ROUND-UP IN FOCUS IMAGES FROM SOUTHEAST ALASKA

CAPTAIN KODIAK MEET LEE ROBBINS

PLUS: SOLO IN SEWARD

A World’s First Creates The Lowest Mintage Silver Eagle…Ever!

The American Silver Eagle is arguably the most popular coin on the planet. First struck in 1986 for US citizens to own physical silver bullion, the Silver Eagle is made from one ounce of 99.9% fine silver. It’s no wonder why these hefty silver dollars have become THE global standard for silver bullion coins, with over 640,000,000 coins minted to date.

And now, the US Mint has released a special Silver Eagle that might just become THE greatest of all time…the Star Privy Silver Eagle!

What’s So Special?

There are two “key” reasons why the Star Privy Silver Eagle is poised to become the most sought-after coin in the Silver Eagle series;

One, collectors LOVE “Firsts” and the Star Privy is the First-Ever bullion Silver Eagle to have a Privy Mark, cementing its permanent place in Silver Eagle history.

Two, collectors also GO CRAZY for low mintage coins, the lower the better. And the Star Privy Silver Eagle not only has a low mintage. It’s the lowest mintage bullion Silver Eagle EVER!

First-Ever Privy-Marked Bullion Silver Eagle

Privy marks are small symbols added to coin, oftentimes to commemorate special occasions and/or historic events. In this case, the US Mint has added a “star” to the Silver Eagle to celebrate the release of a new mobile gaming app, 8th Era, a groundbreaking new mobile gaming app that marries gaming with coin collecting to inspire the next generation of collectors. It’s an instant “musthave” for Silver Eagle collectors.

Lowest Mintage Bullion Silver Eagle EVER

Not only is the Star Privy Silver Eagle the first ever privymarked bullion Silver Eagle, it’s also the lowest mintage bullion Silver Eagle ever! How low? It’s not even close!

Consider this….the 1996 Silver Eagle is the lowest mintage with 3,603,386 coins made. The Star Privy Silver Eagle has a mintage of only 500,000 coins. That’s SEVEN TIMES LOWER. Just look at the graph for perspective.

The First 50,000 Coins Released

Each coin comes certified in Gem Brilliant Uncirculated condition, coming from the first 50,000 coins issued, the “top 10%” if you will, certified by the leading independent 3rd party grading company NGC. Those are bragging rights every collector would dream of having!

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PORTFOLIO SOUTHEAST IN FOCUS

Text and images by Kim Nesbitt

CRUCIBLE OF CHANGE

Glacier Bay National Park turns 100 by Emily Mount

GOING SOLO IN SEWARD An easy getaway for travelers and locals by Sue

Durio

Right: Glorious summer shot in Glacier Bay with wildflowers and a cascading waterfall.

e Gold Rush of 2024

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A h, my dear compatriots, allow me to share a tale of intrigue and fortune. Picture this: a venture into the heart of a South American goldmine, where the earth yields its treasures to the daring and the cunning. With every step as we follow Diego, our mining master, the air thickens with anticipation, the scent of wealth mingling with the thrill of the unknown.

ere, amidst the darkness, lies the prize we seek — veins of gold, glimmering like stars in the night sky.

Now picture this: a ring, not just any ring, mind you, but a masterpiece crafted to adorn the fingers of the discerning. Crafted with meticulous care, each piece encasing ribbons of 24 karat gold in a Tungsten setting, whispering tales of luxury and prestige.

Meticulously crafted and amazingly comfortable, you will not find anything like this in a jewelry store. As gold prices skyrocket, we have been able to craft this and hold the price under $100 making it exclusively available with only 495 reserved for this ad. And of course we offer a 30 day no questions asked guarantee.

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Yanacocha Gold Mine, located near Lima, Peru, is the largest gold mine in South America and the fourth largest in the world.

A symbol of power and sophistication. is isn’t just a ring, it’s a statement. On any adventure, let this ring be your companion, a silent witness to your every triumph. Ahhh… the rush of a gold rush.

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Wild Departures

HOPEFULLY, BY THE TIME THIS ISSUE is in your hands, I’ll be having a cup of co ee staring out into Middle Bay, enjoying the quiet and solitude that’s eluded me of late.

JUMP IN

THE WATER’S JUST FINE

ITWAS HARD UNTIL IT WAS EASY. A couple years ago, I almost gave up on getting our house built on a remote lot in Kodiak. As I pe this, it’s got a roof, deck, siding, windows and doors. e plumbing and electric are in process, and the insulation and drywall are on site, ready to be installed. Hopefully, by the time this issue is in your hands, I’ll be having a cup of co ee staring out into Middle Bay, enjoying the quiet and solitude that’s eluded me of late. Fingers crossed on all of that. I’ve endured enough construction projects to know that last-minute snafus are probable. Still, I’m as excited as a grizzly with a silver salmon.

You might recall that I decided on Kodiak in part because of the climate. Not to be fatalistic, but wildfires, excessive heat, and drought made me feel as if our warming planet was heading toward Armageddon. Water is the theme of this issue, and it’s exactly what I was looking for when I found our little piece of paradise atop a cli overlooking a wave-lapping black sand beach. It rains in Kodiak. A lot. Summer temperatures rarely reach

70 degrees. e forests and marine life are healthy—nourished by consistent moisture and rich soil. Of course, there are earthquakes and tsunamis and hurricane-force winds, but I’m choosing my battles and hoping our new home will stand against them.

Back in September, I watched the framing go up; I looked out over the water; took out my binoculars; and glassed the sandbars and exposed rocks of the ebb tide. I stopped when I spotted a seal, then 20, no, make that 80, hauled out with no one around to witness them but me. A sea otter floated through the kelp close to shore, and a loon bobbed in the wake. It reminds me that I’m not the only one counting on this area to sustain me, so I plan on being a good steward of the resources, including recounting all I see, hear, and experience while I’m there. Water is life, and I’m ready to jump into it with both feet as I enter this new phase of exploring. I invite you to join me. e water here is more than fine.

See you in the wild,

Michelle Theall, Executive Editor editor@alaskamagazine.com

Mole Harbor

Mole Harbor, on eastern Admiralty Island, is the jumping-off point for the Cross Admiralty Canoe Route, a 32-mile backcountry path to the village of Angoon on western Admiralty. The route crosses seven lakes, including two named for Annie Alexander and Allen Hasselborg, who are featured in this month’s Natural Alaska. In the Lingít language of southeast Alaska, Admiralty is called Kootznoowoo, or “fortress of the bears.”

MAP: SITKA, NE QUADRANGLE, 2024

Magazine staff

GROUP PUBLISHER

John Lunn

EXECUTIVE EDITOR

Michelle Theall

ART DIRECTOR

Steven Merritt

ASSISTANT EDITOR

Tim Lydon

CONTRIBUTING EDITORS

Nick Jans

Bjorn Dihle

Emily Mount

Molly Rettig

ALASKA ADVERTISING SALES

Mailing Address: P.O. Box 240449

Anchorage, Alaska 99524

Shipping Address: 3721 B Street #240449 Anchorage, Alaska 99503

Contact John Lunn: 907-313-9110 / 512-470-7447

CIRCULATION

Kolin Rankin, Consumer Marketing Director/Director Print Order Department

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Orders, address changes, problems: 800-288-5892 www.alaskamagazine.com

Email: alaskamagazine@emailcustomerservice.com

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WWW.ALASKAMAGAZINE.COM

Where do you read Alaska?

Send us photos of yourself with the magazine, and we might publish it in our next issue. Editor@alaskamagazine.com

Photo Contest

It’s that time of year! Our 2025 Photo Contest is open. You have until August 31 to submit your entries. Go to alaskamagazine.com for more details.

Alaska magazine encourages and supports efforts to heal Indigenous cultures, and we acknowledge that our work occurs on Alaska Native homelands.

PRESIDENT Tina Battock

VICE PRESIDENT, FINANCE & OPERATIONS Scott Ferguson

DIRECTOR OF MANUFACTURING & PRODUCTION Sherry Brown

ACCOUNTING MANAGER Veronica Brooks

CIRCULATION BUSINESS MANAGER Michelle Rowe

MORRIS COMMUNICATIONS COMPANY, LLC

CHAIRMAN William S. Morris III

CEO Craig S. Mitchell A PUBLICATION OF MCC MAGAZINES, LLC a division of Morris Communications Company, LLC 735 Broad St., Augusta, GA 30901

Alaska , ISSN 0002-4562, is published monthly except for combined July/August and December/January issues by MCC Magazines, LLC, a division of Morris Communications Company, LLC. Direct correspondence to: MCC Magazines, c/o Alaska magazine, 725 Broad St., Augusta, Ga. 30901. Not responsible for the return of unsolicited submissions. Known office of publication: 735 Broad St., Augusta, Ga. 30901. U.S. subscription rates: $24 for one year; $46 for two years. Canada and Mexico add $20 per year (U.S. Funds only). Outside North America add $40 per year (U.S. Funds only). Our trademarks registered in the U.S. Patent Office and in Canada: “Alaska,” “Alaska Sportsman,” “Life on the Last Frontier,” “From Ketchikan to Barrow,” “End of the Trail,” “The Guide Post,” “Main Trails & Bypaths,” “Alaska-Yukon Magazine.” Periodicals postage paid at Augusta, Ga., and additional mailing offices. Postmaster: Send address changes to Alaska, PO Box 37131, Boone, IA 50037-4131.

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© 2025 Alaska magazine. All rights reserved. Printed in the U.S.A. Volume 91, Number 3.

Where Do You Read Alaska?

My wife Peggy

Sundstrom and I recently carried our copy to Antarctica. As I was born in Fairbanks and spent my first days in Manley Hot Springs, it only seemed right to visit the other side of the globe. I thought the similarities between Terra Del Fuego and SE Alaska quite striking. Love your magazine.

MIKK ANDERSON, AURORA, CO

In December, I went on a Caribbean cruise and took my Alaska magazine with me to read while traveling. I have always wanted to visit Alaska and hope to do so in the near future.

THERESE

GREEN

Alaska magazine kept me cool in Kona Hawaii. I loved my visits to Alaska, and your magazine keeps me up to date ‘til my next visit!

LARRY SCHOENECKER, NEW PRAGUE, MN

Being frequent visitors to our 49th state, we missed the north while in the 50th state. So, we went to the north shore of Oahu to enjoy our Alaska magazine. Keep up the good work!

THE HAMBLINS, OF WISCONSIN AND ALASKA

ALASKA EXPOSED

ON THE LOOKOUT PHOTOGRAPH BY MICHELLE THEALL

Steller sea lion watches a gull in the Inside Passage. wilddepartures.com

ALASKA EXPOSED

UP IN ARMS PHOTO BY RICH DIJULIA, US FOREST SERVICE

A galaxy of sea stars at Goose Bay in Prince William Sound.

On the Edge

MYSTERY SOLVED

THE ENIGMATIC FISH OF HOME

by Nick Jans

RIFTING WITH THE CURRENT, I stare over the side of my jet ski . e river bottom—a matrix of sand, gravel, and clumps of sunken brush, flows past, the water so clear I seem to stand on air. Upswept peaks frame a cold-rushing maze of channels northward toward narrowing canyons and great rock faces. e country itself is reason enough for going. But I’m also searching for ghosts—the elusive sea-run char that ranges along the Kobuk-Noatak divide— and finding none.

I first met them on this same river, this same stretch of water, half a lifetime ago. On that first Alaska journey through the western Brooks Range, Peter and I had paused to make camp. We’d had tough going lining our canoe against the Ambler’s relentless current and were low on food. As the river steepened toward its headwaters, the grayling we’d depended on had become scarce, with thinner days ahead. en I cast into that purling run before me, my chore of catching dinner was tinged with primal desperation.

am! Something big grabbed my spoon as it fluttered along the bottom. A bright shape catapulted from the river and surged downstream, peeling line. Several rod-bending, leap-punctuated minutes later, I skidded up the most beautiful fish I’d ever seen. Bull-shouldered, long as my leg, it seemed machined from

living steel—iridescent silver-blue flanks flecked with pink spots; caudal fins edged in white, the hooked lower jaw brushed by delicate shades of orange and olive. Two casts later, I hooked its in. at the hell were these fish? Some sort of salmon, I jotted in my journal. Peter and I gorged on that bright, fat-rich flesh that night and the next day; in a very real sense, those fish fueled our bodies for the brutal slog ahead, lugging our entire 350-pound outfit, canoe and all, up over the crag rise of Nakmaktuak Pass, dozens of miles of backand-forth shuttles down to the Noatak. My gratitude for that gi remains, the memory vivid across a span of years.

Months later, scanning a Fish and Game handout in my newfound home village of Ambler, I discovered the identi of my mystery catch: not salmon, but a member of the genus Salvelinus, the char family. Either arctic char or Dolly Varden, I figured—closely related species, so similar in appearance that the state of Alaska didn’t expect anglers to tell the o apart

Nick Jans

and had one state sportfishing record that covered both. Meanwhile, my Inupiat neighbors identified the same fish simply as ‘trout.’ Rare compared to other species that turned up in subsistence nets on the upper Kobuk, a good, fat trout was prized table fare—baked or fried; as a frozen raw delicacy known as coq; or in soup.

A year later, I took a teaching job 150 miles to the northwest in Noatak village, on the great river of the same name—one where ‘trout’ were far more abundant.

Steered by local knowledge and determination, I learned to fare out in a small ski , find, and catch them; and I became increasingly enamored of these fish—for their delicate taste; their powerful, o en acrobatic fights; and their pure, wild beau , all of which seemed a distillation of the clear, current-swept waters in which they held.

I also traded notes with Fred DeCicco, a state biologist who was the ‘it’ guy in those days when it came to researching the migrations of northwest Alaska’s char. e first thing Fred did was set me straight on basic facts. Both arctic char and Dolly Varden (the latter named a er a brightly dressed Charles Dickens character) were denizens of the northwest Arctic. ile they resembled each other, an educated eye could easily di erentiate them. Besides, the region’s arctic char were exclusively year-round lake dwellers; and Dollies, like salmon, were anadromous— living at sea, then returning to freshwater rivers to spawn.

e fish I’d caught far up the Ambler were surely Dolly Varden; but, Fred explained, a separate race from the Dollies found further south, common not only in Alaska but south to Puget Sound, and across to Asia. Comparatively, these northern Dollies, ranging far up Alaska’s arctic rivers and streams into the Canadian Arctic, were giants—commonly exceeding 10 pounds, up to more than double that figure. Like salmon, they returned to spawn in the river where they were born, even the

same pool. Likewise, spawners, especially males, shape-shi ed from sleek and silvery to hook-jawed, humpbacked, gaudily colored creatures hard to recognize as the same species. Once past spawning, they gradually faded into sna , deep green forms known as kelts. Unlike salmon, these super-Dollies also overwintered in fresh water, sometimes many hundreds of miles from their natal streams. ile in fresh water, they ate little or not at all for months. e timing and patterns of their movements, especially at sea, were largely unknown.

Far as I was concerned, Fred’s gig was pure genius: he got paid to go fishing. Traveling by small plane, he and his crew located concentrations of fish, caught them on rod and reel, tagged and released them. e idea was enough of the tags would be reported by commercial, subsistence, and sport fishers to draw some conclusions. And sure enough, it worked. Much of what we know about the migratory habits of northern Alaska’s Dolly Varden is thanks to Fred’s work. By the way, at least one fish tagged in arctic Alaska ended up in Siberia. en I returned to Ambler and the

Opposite: Dolly Varden portrait. Right: Nick, 30 years ago, with a big male Dolly in spawning colors.

upper Kobuk in the late 1980s, I continued my own hands-on research. During the open water season, late May through late September, I ranged as far as I could up Kobuk tributaries by jet ski and on foot, my exploration of the country impossible to separate from the rivers I traveled and what they held. Fishing rod ever at the ready, I probed promising pools along the Kobuk-Noatak divide. Grayling and pike were the most common year-round denizens; and during their seasonal spawning runs, chum salmon and sheefish (an outsized member of the whitefish tribe) were locally abundant—at times, ridiculously so. But trout, as everyone called them, were always my piscatorial grail.

ousands of river miles reinforced what I already knew: finding upper Kobuk trout was tric . Some promising-looking rivers and creeks held none. In a hundred-mile river system with a healthy run, a few scattered, remote pools might hold nearly all its fish; and their comings and goings were hard to figure. A stretch full of

overwintering trout one spring might be barren the next; and you might encounter a mix of sea-bright fish, spawners, and emaciated kelts that were obviously on completely di erent schedules. rough sheer persistence, I learned enough to come home with enough to eat and a few to share. In both a physical and spiritual sense, trout defined my bond to the land.

Over years, I began to notice fewer

fish in the spots I knew; catching a couple rather than a couple dozen over a fall season became the norm; and year before last, I caught none. Many of the main spawning areas have themselves changed: become shallower and faster as permafrost banks thawed, or in some cases, cut o as a river altered course. Irregular weather—episodes of drought interspersed with monsoon-driven floods—has been common over the past decade. e average daily year-round temperature in arctic Alaska has risen an astounding seven degrees since I arrived. You don’t have to be a biologist to know none of this bodes well for a fish that evolved in clear, cold water. I’m not suggesting that northern Dollies across their enormous range are endangered. But something isn’t right in the country I love. I cast over and over, willing a strike—and feel the terrible weight of nothing.

Nick Jans is a contributing editor at Alaska magazine and the author of Romeo the Friendly Wolf. Learn more at nickjans.com.

Right: Nick hefts a 10-pound Dolly Varden.

in 7

e Spirit of the Wolf

The Bond Women’s Hoodie

As untamed and powerful as wolves are, they also have a softer side when it comes to their pack, and this hoodie featuring artist Lucie Bilodeau’s artwork captures those tender moments. The back of this hoodie serves as a “canvas” for Lucie’s printed artwork, “The Bond”. A rare moment between two wolves is artistically depicted using a neutral palette of tans, browns and greys for a truly realistic and breathtaking image. Expertly crafted in a tan cotton poly blend knit, this comfortably stylish hoodie also features a mock neck, rib knit cuffs and hem, side pockets, and a full front zipper closure. A silvertoned charm enameled with a paw print adorns the zipper adds a perfect finishing touch. Available in 7 women’s sizes Small to 3X. Imported.

Wolf Men’s Hoodie

The wolf has always added an air of mystery to the powerful strength and majestic beauty of the wilderness, and it is captured beautifully in the artwork of Al Agnew. Handcrafted in a machine-washable cotton-blend knit with a comfortable fit, this mid-weight wolf art men’s hoodie features Al Agnew art with an embroidered silver wolf on the front and on the back a printed close-up portrait of a wolf, standing out in striking contrast to the black knit background. The hoodie has a classic zip-front styling, two front pockets, knit rib cuffs and hem, and a soft fleece lining. Plus, the hood features contrasting gray lining and silver-toned metal toggles on the cords. Available in 5 men’s sizes Medium to 3X. Imported.

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Women’s hoodie available in sizes S-3X and the men’s hoodie available in sizes M-3X; for women’s sizes 1X, 2X, and 3X or men’s XXL and XXXL, add $10. Your purchase is backed by our unconditional, 30-day guarantee. To order, send no money now; just mail the Priority Reservation. It’s a wearable work of art and it’s available only from e Bradford Exchange, and we expect strong demand. So don’t delay—order today!

WRITTEN AND COMPILED BY ASSISTANT EDITOR TIM LYDON

Alaska At a Glance : NORTH SLOPE BOROUGH

The Alaska Constitution requires that the state be divided into governing boroughs based on geographic, economic, and other factors. Alaska has 19 organized boroughs and one unorganized borough. The North Slope Borough is the largest organized borough.

94,000: North Slope Borough in square miles, nearly the size of Wyoming.

11,031: Population as of the 2020 census (does not include several thousand oilfield workers).

8: Number of North Slope Borough communities.

71.2905: Latitude of Utqiagvik, borough seat and northernmost city in the U.S.

95: Percent of North Slope Borough’s $400 million budget that comes from taxes on oil and gas infrastructure.

Average temperature in degrees Fahrenheit.

Average precipitation in inches.

Above: Whale bone arch in Utqiagvik, North Slope Borough

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Shop Alaska

HAMMERS FAMILY BIRCH

APRIL IS BIRCH SYRUP SEASON in the boreal forest of Alaska’s interior. It’s a busy time for the Alaskan-owned Kahiltna Birchworks, one of the world’s largest birch syrup makers. Company founders Michael and Dulce East started the business over 30 years ago from their remote homestead near Talkeetna, and in 2023 they sold it to Hammers Family Birch in Wasilla.

“We have a great relationship with the Easts,” says Ted Hammers, the CEO and co-founder of Hammers Family Birch. “ ey helped with our 2024 harvest and trained us about the business.”

ile pure birch syrup is their signature product sold around the world, they also produce birch-based condiments and candies and supply to both local and national breweries, including Denali Brewing Company for its seasonal OneTree Birch Beer.

NAMES ON THE LAND

QUTEKCAK (SEWARD)

Qutekcak (pronounced K’toochek) translates from Alutiiq as “Big Beach” (Quta meaning beach). Qutekcak was a prehistoric Alaska Native mixing area in and around

Hammers also now owns Alaska Wild Harvest. Another creation of the Easts, the company buys wild Alaskan berries from independent harvesters to produce a suite of jams and syrups. ey include blueberry, lingonberry, and mixed berry jams, raspberry rhubarb syrup, cranberry sauce, and more.

Hammers is excited about all the brands, but birch is his passion. April, he says, is when the trees begin thawing from the long winter and pulling water from the ground to grow their buds. e resulting sap is loaded with vitamins and minerals. His company’s high-tech automated

the sheltered northern tip of Resurrection Bay near present-day Seward. It served as a crossroads for Alutiiq and Sugpiaq groups. Learn more about Seward in this month’s feature by Sue Durio.

Source: Qutekcak Native Tribe

AKERTA (SUN)

Across Alaska, April is a time of lengthening

system of taps and tubes brought in 135,000 gallons of sap last year from 5,500 trees. About 100 gallons of sap make one gallon of syrup.

Hammers calls it a sustainable form of “wild agriculture” that does not harm the trees. And he’s excited to make birch sap’s health benefits available in a new fermented birch brew he describes as a little like kombucha.

“It’s a naturally e ervescent beverage rich in electrolytes, antioxidants, and vitamins,” he says.

Check them out at alaskabirchsyrup.com

days and often improving weather. Storms still bring snow and rain, but long sunny days are possible, too. The Yup’ik word for sun is akerta, and akercirtuq means, “it is sunny.”

Source: Yup’ik Eskimo Dictionary, Second Edition

Courtesy Hammers Family Birch

Below: Tapping the birch trees at Hammers Family Birch.

Blades of a Feather

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Blades of a Feather Knife $249 $99* + S&P Plus FREE Eagle Eyes® Blade Extreme Glasses with your purchase of the Blades of a Feather Knife — a $99 value! California residents please call 1-800-333-2045 regarding Proposition 65 regulations before purchasing this product. *Special price only for customers using the offer code.

ONLY IN ALASKA CAUTION: GUIDES

AT PLAY

McCarthy is an off-grid outpost surrounded by Wrangell-St. Elias National Park, the largest park in the country. It sits at the end of the 60-mile McCarthy Road, a gravel route that starts 70 miles from Glenallen at Chitina. Around 100 people live here in summer, but the population dwindles in winter. Recreation and tourism support the local economy, with companies offering adventures in fl ightseeing, rafting, hiking, mountaineering, ice climbing, backpacking, or just leisurely historical tours of the town’s mining history. With so many companies offering tours, it’s hard to throw a carabiner here without hitting some sort of guide.

“It’s a great community,” says Kevin “Kevlar” Smith, who guided mountaineering and glacier trekking out of McCarthy for over a decade. “The mountains, glaciers, and rivers are pretty much right outside your door.”

The Arctic’s Rusting Rivers

CLIMATE CHANGE PUTS MORE METALS IN WATER

HUMAN-DRIVEN CLIMATE CHANGE is rearranging Alaska in many ways. Now, scientists say it’s causing some rivers in the Arctic to turn a rus orange. It’s a sharp contrast to the region’s o en clear-running streams, and it may be impacting aquatic life.

Researchers with the National Park Service, U.S. Geological Survey, and others tested dozens of sites along arctic rivers and found that metals such as iron, zinc, nickel, and lead, along with more mineral content, are causing the discoloration. ey say rapidly thawing permafrost is releasing the naturally occurring metals that were previously locked inside frozen soils. Arctic Alaska is warming up to four times faster than the rest of the planet, according to NASA and others.

e rus look would be familiar to residents of the Appalachians, Rockies, Sierras, and other areas where mining activi from a century ago still leaches

metals once sequestered in geologic formations. Scientists used satellite imagery to determine that much of the rusting in the Arctic began in the last five to 10 years and in some cases correlates with periods of record warmth.

Michael Carey, a research fisheries biologist with the U.S. Geological Survey, says that some discolored stream locations show sharp decreases in fish and other aquatic life, including important subsistence species such as salmon and Dolly Varden. Some of these populations are already adversely a ected by climate change.

“Many questions remain,” says Carey, adding that it is unclear whether fish were killed, moved away, or if other factors are at play.

e research was published in Nature Communications Earth and Environment

Top: Josh Koch, U.S. Geological Survey; Left: Michelle Theall

Below: An orange tributary of the Kugororuk River.

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Sea otters rebound

IN SOUTHEAST, RECOVERY BRINGS CHANGE

THE MARITIME FUR TRADE that reached southeast Alaska in the 18th century drove sea otters nearly to extinction. Even with protection that began in 1911, numbers in Southeast remained so low by the mid20th century that biologists believed they were unlikely to recover on their own.

In the 1960s, biologists reintroduced over 400 sea otters to seven locations along Southeast’s outer coast. Monitoring soon showed a steady increase and expansion across the region. Today, at least 22,000 sea otters inhabit southeast Alaska, with an estimated one-third of them in Glacier Bay. e fewest otters are in Behm Canal north of Ketchikan, Stephens Passage near Admiral Island, and Lynn Canal north of Juneau.

Sea otters voraciously consume clams, crabs, urchins, and other shellfish. During their long absence, these species flourished, increasing in size and abundance. In the case of urchins, another aggressive

eater, their increase reduced kelp beds, which are important nurseries for salmon, crab, and many other species. Kelp beds also sequester carbon and fight ocean acidification from the burning of fossil fuels. e consumption of urchins by sea otters now shows signs of restoring kelp beds, which could benefit other species. But not everyone is happy about the change. Lucrative dive fisheries for abalone and other shellfish came upon hard times beginning in the 1980s and were closed in the 1990s. Some blame otters. Others point to overfishing and other factors.

Research and debate will persist in the years ahead as otters continue to fit back into an ecosystem that they helped shape for millennia. In the meantime, tourists and residents are becoming accustomed to seeing otters and hearing their loud crunching of shells echoing o seaside blu s.

HISTORY CHEERS TO REPEALING ALASKA’S BONE DRY LAW

On April 6, 1933, Alaska’s Territorial Legislature repealed the Bone Dry Law, which for 15 years prohibited the sale of alcohol in Alaska. The original law predated national Prohibition by two years. In an unfortunate reflection of the era’s mistreatment of Indigenous people, the 1933 repeal applied to Whites only. Selling alcohol to Alaska Native people remained illegal until 1953.

Above: Whiskey from the Port Chilkoot Distillery in Haines.

Below: Sea otter floating in kelp in southeast Alaska.

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April Happenings

GUNSIGHT MOUNTAIN HAWK WATCH

LOOKING FOR A NEW April adventure?

Consider heading up toward Tahneta Pass on the Glenn Highway to join this year’s annual Gunsight Mountain hawk watch. e main event is April 19-20 and features talks by pro birders, hawk counts, and a potluck barbecue. Last year, says Mr. itekeys of Anchorage Audubon, observers counted over 250 raptors in one day, although thousands of hawks

transit the area each spring.

“ is is a spectacular event,” says itekeys. “It’s an almost eightweek parade of hawks.” itekeys first attended in the 1990s and was

“immediately hooked.”

Mat-Su Birders and Anchorage Audubon host the annual event celebrating the return of migratory hawks and eagles to interior Alaska, which peaks in mid-April. ey include bald and golden eagles and over five species of hawks, including many Harlan’s redtailed hawks. It’s been a popular spot to watch raptors since the 1970s and is now the northernmost International Hawk Watch count site.

“It’s unique among hawk-watching sites in the U.S.,” says itekeys. He explains that the snowy landscape reflects sunlight upward at the raptors, who travel the local winds by soaring with outstretched wings. “Lit from the bottom, you can see all their feathers and markings.”

e site is at a highway pullout 120 miles northeast of Anchorage. At 3,000 feet, expect snow on the ground and possibly cold temperatures. Raptor viewing tends to get better in the a ernoons as rising thermals develop. Pinched be een the Chugach and Talkeetna mountains, with nearby peaks up to 10,000 feet high, the area is a transition be een the Cook Inlet and Copper River basins. Nearby lodging includes Sheep Mountain Lodge and the Eureka Roadhouse.

Visit anchorageaudubon.org.

Mr. Whitekeys

Below: Hawk watchers near Gunsight Mountain in 2024.

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A horned puffin on the cliffs of St. Paul Island.

DISCOVER

WELCOMING A NEW WEASEL

FISHERS ESTABLISH THEMSELVES IN SOUTHEAST

by Bjorn Dihle

ABOUT TWO AND A HALF DECADES AGO, I was hiking through the woods above the Mendenhall Glacier when I came across a set of strange tracks. ey looked a bit like marten—a boreal, cat-sized member of the weasel family—but way bigger. en I got home that night, I flipped through the book Animal Tracks of Alaska, but I couldn’t find any animal those tracks could have belonged to.

Years later, I’d realize the tracks were those of a fisher— an up to four-footlong member of the weasel family. Fishers weren’t included in my book of tracks because they weren’t thought to exist in Alaska. Until recently, their range extended only as far north as the border of Yukon and British Columbia. In 1997, right around when I found those tracks, a trapper in the Juneau area reported catching one to the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. at animal became the first documented fisher in Alaska. e theory is that it and the fishers that

followed arrived in southeast Alaska via the Taku River, which drains into the ocean 10 miles south of Juneau and has its headwaters into British Columbia.

SUPER WEASEL

Fishers are sometimes called “tree wolverine” or “super weasels.” ey can be found in several of the more northern states in the U.S., as well as most Canadian provinces. ey are considered mature at one year old, with males growing significantly

NATURAL ALASKA

Above: Researchers studying the teeth of a Pacific fisher.

larger than females. ey are versatile, able to adapt to a varie of forest habitats if they have access to trees with a wide enough diameter to den and raise their young in. ey are opportunistic predators and, while known to tackle larger animals, are not known to possess the neurotic fury their larger cousin, the wolverine. (An o -debated trait of the larger predator.)

Big male fishers may look like small wolverine, but fishers behave more like marten. Both fishers and marten are boreal and able to run full-tilt head-first down a tree trunk. One of the fisher’s superpowers is its specialized abili to hunt porcupines. Most predators that try to kill porcupine end up worse for the wear. Not the fisher. Fishers attack the heads of porcupine front-on and, by moving quickly, can for the most part avoid being quilled. ey then consume the porcupine starting from the rodent’s vulnerable underside, sometimes “skinning” the porcupine in the process and leaving behind a quill-coat.

FISHERS IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD

A few years ago, I noticed that porcupines seemed to be disappearing around where I live in Juneau. At

first, I didn’t think much of it.

One winter, I saw the tracks of a marten hunting snowshoe hare along the edge of my bac ard’s fence. I set up a cheap camera trap and then waited a month before checking it. I got several shots of the marten before I saw a picture of a much larger, uniformly chocolate-colored mustelid with a short face. It was a fisher. I put out a few more camera traps and recorded a handful of video clips of at least o di erent fishers living nearby.

Around then, a friend who resides in downtown Douglas Island phoned me to report an encounter he’d had with a strange animal during his morning run. It happened at dawn, when there was hardly anyone out and about, and it was in an area with lots of houses and buildings.

He’d seen it loping along the street. It wasn’t an otter, though it was similar in size. It had a bunched up back and looked like wolverine. It wouldn’t be impossible for Douglas Island to have a wolverine, but I highly doubted it, especially in an urban area. I spent the next several months teasing my friend until I thought to send him a clip of one of the fishers I’d gotten with camera trap. Without hesitation, he said that was what he’d seen.

NEW ARRIVAL HERE TO STAY

Climate change has a ected a lot in southeast Alaska since I first saw those “mystery” fisher tracks en-some years ago. Some of these environmental impacts are unnerving, like the rapid melting of glaciers

and warming of ocean temperatures. To some species, these changes are an existential crisis. Others are taking advantage of new opportunities and expanding their range. For instance, moose have colonized new areas, including the central islands of southeast Alaska. More recently, mule and whitetail deer have migrated as far north as interior Alaska and are establishing populations in northern southeast Alaska. Fishers are now established in the Juneau area and have been documented as far north as Berners Bay and a ways south of the Taku River. Only time will tell how much more their range will extend into Alaska, but the odds are good other communities will begin seeing these super weasels before long.

I for one like having them around.

Bjorn Dihle is a contributing editor at Alaska magazine.

Opposite: Pacific fisher image, showing claws. Right: Pacific fisher on the move.

DISCOVER

TIMING IS EVERYTHING

OUR ANNUAL FLY-FISHING PRIMER

by Joseph Jackson

ALASKA HAS LONG BEEN touted as the angler’s paradise, and for good reason. e state hosts the largest annual runs of Pacific salmon anywhere in the world – in some years, Alaskan salmon number in the hundreds of millions – and these salmon not only contribute directly to sportfishing opportunities, but they almost single-handedly sustain freshwater fisheries for a varie of resident fish species.

Of course, such an abundance of fish means an abundance of information about how to catch them. Every Alaskan has a fish story, you could say, which is both a blessing and a curse. Even if you rule out the intel of questionable integri (the author John Gierach once said all fishermen are liars), there’s still a profusion of tips, tricks, and opinions that can quickly get overwhelming.

I’ve been fishing in Alaska for over a decade now, and people o en ask me for advice about the best time to cast a line. I’ve realized that

the “best time” question is most e ectively broached with a month-by-month schedule of Alaska’s o erings. It’s sort of an a la carte response that organizes and withholds just enough information to keep your questioner’s eyes from glazing over. In presenting such information, though, I’m making a few assumptions of my own:

One, that you’ll be sticking to the 49th state’s web of public highways, and o, that you’ll be carrying a fly rod.

Above: August is prime time for hungry rainbows like this.

TRAVEL

Courtesy Joseph Jackson

Right: Arctic grayling are the fly-fishing kings of Alaska. These fish are happy to indulge your efforts with dry flies, nymphs, or streamers. Below: Two essentials for summer Alaskan fishing: bug spray and bear spray.

If you go that route, it’s hard to go wrong.

APRIL/MAY

Alaska is crawling out of winter like it might crawl from a frozen sleeping bag. If you’re planning on heading north at this time, make sure it’s to Southeast. Steelhead are returning en masse to their natal streams to spawn, and you can intercept them in impressive numbers around Yakutat and Sitka. Coastal cutthroat trout are fun and underappreciated bycatch. Bring a 5-weight, an 8-weight, and a selection of nymphs and egg-sucking leech flies.

JUNE

Most would agree that summer has arrived. If you want to fill the freezer, or just have an abiding a ection for migratory salmon, June is your time. en king salmon ran in greater numbers, early- to mid-June was the prime. However, their population has been dropping at an alarming rate, and you’d be better o chasing their smaller and more prolific kin, the sockeye. For traveling anglers, these fish are best accessed in the Russian River (a tributary

of the vaunted Kenai) and/ or the Klutina River, which flows into the formidable Copper. Both fisheries o er ample public access and a varie of lodging options. On the Russian, the magic bullet is polarized sunglasses to spot fish (and chartreuse Comet flies when you find

them); on the Klutina, it’s persistence.

JULY

is is a good all-around month, and usually the one that year-round Alaskans use to remind ourselves why we live here. Generally, the

ALASKA HAS LONG BEEN TOUTED AS THE ANGLER’S PARADISE, AND FOR GOOD REASON.

weather’s good and there are lots of fish around. Sockeyes are still running but are soon joined by pinks, chums, and, in the last week of the month or so, the cohos. Prized freshwater residents like rainbow trout and arctic grayling are voraciously feeding and can be targeted along the Parks and Richardson Highways, respectively. Mouse flies and streamers make for fun a ernoons (the Kiwi Muddler

Left: Topographical maps (provided here by an Alaskan road atlas) are great ways to find stream access points. Below: The lords of spring: Alaskan steelhead! Head to Southeast destinations such as Yakutat, Sitka, or Ketchikan for these lovely chromers.

in white is a personal favorite). Northern pike are also an option in a smattering of lakes near Wasilla.

AUGUST

e salmon start dying. e second week of August or so marks the start of what I consider to be the best period of fishing in Alaska. Fresh coho salmon are running with a vengeance on the Kenai Peninsula and in southcentral and starting up in Southeast, while other salmon species are spawning and dying o at a rapid rate. Consequently, egg and flesh imitations are irresistible to trout, who’ve begun feeding with reckless abandon with the promise of impending winter. In fact, being the trout and grayling fanatic that I am, I’d recommend August as the best all-around month to come fishing in Alaska, period. e only hindrance can be the weather. Bring a good rain jacket.

SEPTEMBER/

Fall is here, toting its hallmarks of termination dust, chilly mornings, and sparkling stars. September o ers a chance at legions of coho salmon, fresh incoming steelhead along the Kenai Peninsula, and fat, once-ina-lifetime trout all across southcentral. It’s also when many rural Alaskan businesses start closing up shop for the year, so beware. Down jackets and hand warmers are some of the most useful gear you can have, along with a good selection of egg flies (or beads), leech flies, and flesh imitations.

Of course, I’ve le out a lot of specific information about fly-fishing in Alaska. Too many websites and magazines today present fishing information like it’s a recipe for croquembouche or something; it’s needlessly complicated and leaves little to interpretation. is is supposed to be fun, remember, and most of the fun comes from seeking adventure and craving the next bend without totally knowing what you’ll find.

Want the real secret? e best time to come fly-fishing in Alaska is when you can.

Joe Jackson has ent the la decade-plus learning the ins and outs of y-fishing Alaska’s road sy em. He’s gone through several sets of tires doing this but has managed to have some fun and do some writing about it for magazines like Alaska, Fly Fisherman, Gray’s Sporting Journal, and others. You can view more of his work and buy his books at josephdjacksonwriter.com.

Courtesy Joseph Jackson

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DISCOVER

THE SCIENTIST AND THE BEAR MAN

ANNIE ALEXANDER AND ALLEN HASSELBORG

by Bjorn Dihle

IN 1907, ANNIE MONTAGUE ALEXANDER, a naturalist, paleontologist and world traveler, was camped with a team of scientists on Admiral Island in southeast Alaska. She was trying to make good on her dream of collecting specimens to create a museum of natural history on the west coast of America. Having witnessed the depletion and extinction of wildlife in the Lower 48, Alexander saw the museum as a way to help preserve the country’s natural history.

C. Hart Merriam, the Director of the US Biological Survey, had directed her to attain as many bear specimens as possible. Alexander was trying her best to fulfill Merriam’s request, but that May in 1907, the expedition had collected very few vertebrate species and no bears. eir failure was even more disheartening since Alexander had spent the previous summer in Alaska and was also mostly unsuccessful — something she blamed on the inabili to find a good guide or hunter.

Alexander’s luck changed in mid-May of 1907, when out of the wilderness a lone man in a canoe appeared. He paddled to camp and

o ered to sell Alexander the hide of a bear he’d recently killed. His name was Allen Hasselborg and, though he was young and rough, the scientists realized he possessed what they lacked: a practical knowledge of bears and the woods. Alexander o ered him a job guiding and hunting for the expedition. ile this might sound like the setup for a romance story, both Alexander and Hasselborg defied dominant paradigms and, to this day, easy categorization.

Hasselborg would go on to become a legend. He never sought notorie but numerous writers he’d later guide, from Arthur Pack, the founder of Nature Magazine, to outdoor writer Frank

Hibben, o en wrote stories about him that stretched the truth. He was sometimes depicted as an eccentric hermit, other times as a wilderness version of Socrates. He was fearless and talked to bears; he survived at least o maulings (in both cases he shot at the bears, causing the attack). He killed hundreds of bears for money until, one of the myths go, one day he hung up his rifle and fought to save them.

John Howe’s biography on Hasselborg, Bear Man of Admiral Island, does a good job portraying Hasselborg in

a more human light. At the point Hasselborg met Alexander, he was far from legendary status. He was a young man who was disillusioned with civilization looking for an opportuni to make a better living. He’d worked in several mines under terrible conditions. For him, a job hunting bears and exploring was a dream come true. Hasselborg suggested

Top: Annie Alexander with her rifle in the 1900s. Above: Allen Hasselborg posing with a downed bear in Rodman Bay, Baranof Island, 1907.

moving the expedition 20 miles south to Mole Harbor, where he said there were more bears and where the team could explore a series of lakes across Admiral Island where Hasselborg trapped during winters. Today, these lakes comprise a significant portion of the Cross Admiral Canoe Route. One of the lakes is named a er Alexander, and Alexander named the biggest lakes a er Hasselborg, a token of how much she valued and respected the hunter.

e expedition went on to collect specimens from other islands in northern southeast Alaska and what is now known as Glacier Bay National Park. Alexander went home with 1,008 bird and mammal specimens, including 28 bears. It was enough for her to make good on her dream of founding the Museum of Vertebrate Zoolo in Berkely, California. In 1921, she also founded the Universi of California Museum of Paleontolo .

In 1908, Hasselborg was hired to hunt bears for Merriam until June, when he met up with Alexander and other scientists to collect specimens in Prince William Sound. New to the team was Louise Kellogg. She and Alexander would become partners for the rest of their lives. By the end of

summer, Alexander returned to California with more than 1,000 additional specimens for her museum. She and Kellogg would make other collecting expeditions to the northwest, but that was the last Alexander and Hasselborg worked in the field together. Director of the US Biological Survey Merriam’s obsession with bears never waned. He kept Hasselborg employed for years hunting for him. Hasselborg never got over bears either. He ended up

living for much of his life alone on his homestead in Mole Harbor on Admiral Island.

Annie Alexander continued her obsession with exploring and categorizing the natural world. She was not as romanticized as Hasselborg. ere were no men’s magazines telling stories of her fighting giant bears, but she was just as much of a force of nature. She cared little for societal expectations of women. Alexander’s biographer,

Barbara Stein, and others point out that her contribution to America’s natural history was foundational.

In her later life, Alexander focused on botany. She and Kellogg found a new genus of grass in the Sierra Nevada in 1949. A short while later, Alexander su ered a stroke that put her in a coma. She died 10 months later at age 83, with Kellogg steadfast at her side.

Dihle is a contributing editor at Alaska magazine.

Bjorn

Right: Monument for Alexander on the CU Boulder campus.

DISCOVER

THE WAR ON MUD

KEEPING ALASKA’S BUSIEST PORT OPEN

by Tim Lydon

VISIT ANCHORAGE’S PORT OF ALASKA in summer and you might notice a barge-like boat slowly plying the waters of upper Cook Inlet. Colored red and white, reminiscent of a candy cane, it has a boxy cabin on one end and a tugboat lashed alongside it. Bee red arms angle out over the water from its open deck.

is is the 180-foot Westport, moving at an almost imperceptible speed as it continuously sucks up the mud – or more accurately, the glacial silt – that every day threatens to seal o Alaska’s busiest port. In summer, the boat may operate around the clock. Although dwarfed by the port’s buildings and stacks of containers, the humble Westport keeps this whole place running.

“I’m really proud of this rig,” says Donnie Johnson, the Manson Construction superintendent for dredging at the port. From his o ce,

he can see the Westport working in upper Cook Inlet.

Johnson, whose father also ran dredges, started dredging at eighteen. One of his first jobs was in the Pacific Northwest following the 1980 eruption of Mount Saint Helens. He’s now worked with the Westport for 30 years.

e ship, a “split-hull trailing suction hopper dredge,” is ideal for keeping the Port of Alaska open, says

SENSE OF PLACE

Rachel Napolitan, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers –Alaska District

Above: The Westport’s hopper taking on silty material from the Port of Alaska.

Johnson. It trails o big suction hoses with teeth that probe the seabed, loosening up compacted silt. e mud comes aboard and fills the hopper, an open space that can hold 2,000 cubic yards of material. en it’s full, o hydraulic rams open the split hull to dump the silt into deeper water.

“We suck up the mud, drive it across the bay, then dump it,” says Johnson. “ en we do it all over again.”

A simple task. But without it, the port would quickly become inaccessible to the steady flow of barges, cruise ships, military transports, and giant cargo ships bringing goods and fuel to Alaska. According to Port of Alaska director Steve Ribu o, who has overseen port operations for a decade, half of Alaska’s ocean-bound cargo comes through the port. From oranges to ottomans and trucks to trampolines, it’s all loaded onto barges, trains, trucks, and airplanes for delivery to people and businesses statewide. e goods reach 85 percent of Alaskans.

e port’s pipelines and storage tanks also supply refined petroleum to Anchorage’s international airport, gas stations across Alaska, and the state’s military bases. Recognizing these vital roles, the port is one of only 18 federally

designated strategic seaports nationwide.

But for all its importance, the port sits in a gnarly spot. Upper Cook Inlet hosts some of the biggest tides on Earth, with currents that can bully a cruise ship or cargo vessel. Winds and careening blocks of winter sea ice add more challenges. Captains must also keep watch for endangered beluga whales, which can a ect operations. And the whole place is susceptible to earthquakes and tsunamis.

“It’s way above the average set of circumstances,” Ribu o says with a short laugh. “Any port around the world might have one of these challenges, but we have them all.”

And then there’s the mud. e massive Susitna and Knik rivers, among others, pour into Cook Inlet, opaque with glacial silt from the mountains that form the port’s backdrop. e tiny grains, which glaciers like the Knik and Matanuska perpetually grind from the surrounding mountains, remain suspended in the rivers until they reach Cook

Inlet, where slower currents let them to settle into mudflats, which are then further shaped by the tides.

“It’s an annual certain that we need to dredge,” says Ribu o.

e 1958 Rivers and Harbors Act and other laws require the port’s shipping lanes be maintained at 35 feet deep, a task delegated to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which contracts the work to Manson Construction. e Corps is also heavily involved in a port modernization project that will move the docks further into the inlet, which may require less dredging. e federal role, says Merlin Peterson, a hydraulic engineer with the Army Corps of Engineers, also requires surveying changes in the mudflats ice each week in summer. A boat accompanying the Westport conducts the surveys using multibeam sonar, which Peterson says can gather “many thousands of points,” which are condensed into maps that the Corps shares with the port and shippers. e surveys also end up

on Donnie Johnson’s desk. He analyzes them for how the changing shoals a ect shipping lanes or areas alongside the docks, keeping in mind the tankers that he says “come in heavy” with Alaska’s fuel needs. Johnson also checks the week’s tides, which can change water levels by over 40 feet in just six hours. He then colors in the high spots he wants the Westport to trim down.

Two captains run the Westport, says Johnson. Traveling at just one-third of a knot, they switch duties hourly to maintain operations and stay alert. ree other crew run the tug and the nearby survey boat.

“ ere’s lots of opportunities for accidents,” says Johnson. “And it’d be horrible if someone ended up in the water, especially at night.” He adds that the crews train for safe and wear personal locator satellite beacons in case of an emergency in the inlet’s strong, mur currents.

Many of Johnson’s co-workers have been with the employee-owned Manson for years. He says that they enjoy good relations with the port and the shippers who steadily bring Alaskans the stu that surrounds our daily lives.

“ ere’s a lot of trust there,” says Johnson.

Tim Lydon is an assi ant editor at Alaska magazine.

Right: Westport and its accompanying tugboat, Gladys

DISCOVER

OCEAN CONSERVATION

LEADERS IN THE PRIBILOFS NAVIGATE CHANGE

by Tim Lydon

For the communities of Saint Paul and Saint George, it can make ocean conservation feel like chasing a floating target.

“ is area is special and deserves recognition,” says Lauren Divine, who directs the ecosystem conservation o ce for the Aleut Communi of Saint Paul Island, the tribal government.

e National Oceanic COMMUNITY

sanctuaries for nearby waters, where diverse fish species support marine mammals, seabirds, and people. e sanctuaries would remain open to commercial fishing and subsistence hunting, among other activities. ey would also be co-managed by the tribal governments.

LIKE MANY ALASKANS, people in the remote Pribilof Islands are weathering a world of change. Sea ice has decreased, weather is less predictable, and Bering Sea populations of seals, seabirds, crab, and halibut have declined, a ecting foods closely tied to cultural traditions. Human activities are changing, too, with more vessel tra c, marine debris, and shi s in commercial fishing.

In recent years, leaders in both Pribilof communities landed on a new idea for Bering Sea conservation. A er much deliberation and in response to declining wildlife, they proposed o new federal marine

Divine, who has worked for Saint Paul’s tribal government for 13 years, says sanctuary protections could strengthen ecosystem resilience while also diversi ing the economy through added research, education, and eco-tourism.

Greg Thompson, US Fish & Wildlife Service

and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) accepted the proposals and added them to its Inventory of Successful Nominations, quali ing them for further analysis. But in 2023 Saint Paul leaders announced they will no longer pursue their proposed sanctuary.

Divine says that misinformation about shutting down the lucrative trawl fishery and “fear of the unknown” made the proposal too contentious, adding that commercial fishing industries and state leaders did not support a sanctuary.

Subsistence and commercial fishing are essential to the Pribilof economies.

Located in the Bering Sea 300 miles from mainland Alaska, residents rely on halibut for food securi and a small commercial fishery.

Saint Paul also hosts North America’s largest crab processing plant, which provides hundreds of seasonal jobs and millions of dollars in tax revenue. e plant processes cod, salmon, and other species, too, while the communi provides a harbor and services for fishing boats.

But the disappearance of billions of crabs from the Bering Sea following a devastating marine heat wave has closed the processing plant, tearing a hole in

the economy. Halibut and other species are declining, too. Many blame massive by-catch by Bering Sea industrial trawlers targeting pollock for fast food and imitation crab meat. e billion-dollar fishery, largely based in Seattle, is a politically powerful opponent of the sanctuary idea.

Although Saint Paul leaders have changed course, Divine says their focus remains protecting the ecosystem and promoting a sustainable economy that keeps pace with rapid change. Asserting Indigenous knowledge through co-management is still a priori .

“We are interested in a meaningful and equitable co-management role,” says Divine. For decades, she explains, fishery policies have been set without adequate Indigenous representation, something the

communi seeks to change. Divine points to a northern fur seals conservation plan revised in 2024 as a positive example. Fur seals, called laaqudax̂ in the regional Unangam Tunuu language, are a critical subsistence species that has declined to one quarter of historic levels. e new National Marine Fisheries Service plan sets goals for rebuilding the population. It also features far more Indigenous knowledge and recognition of co-management than past plans.

Michael Williams of the National Marine Fisheries Service says cooperation with the communities “improved the plan tremendously” by including knowledge and perspectives from the Indigenous people most closely tied to the area. Williams says local co-management already occurs through population

monitoring, marine mammal disentanglement from debris, and other work.

“It’s an exciting time,” says Williams, adding that he looks forward to more co-management be een the tribes and the government.

Divine says the North Bering Sea Climate Resilience Area also o ers potential for co-management. e multi-agency federal taskforce works to build regional climate resilience and food securi by prioritizing Indigenous knowledge in research and policy discussions. Formed under President Obama in 2016, it was disbanded by President Trump in 2017, restored on the first day of the Biden presidency, and now faces an uncertain future.

Tribal leaders also invest in diversi ing their economy through eco-tourism, mariculture, and Saint

Opposite: A northern fur seal hauled out on Saint Paul Island. Right: The community of Saint Paul Island.

Paul’s Bering Sea Research Center, opened in 2024. e facili promotes communi -driven research that bridges Indigenous and Western sciences, with work including mercury testing of marine mammal samples, monitoring coastal erosion, and mitigating climate hazards. Heading up research, explains Divine, builds opportunities for co-management.

e research center adds to education and cultural revitalization in Saint Paul and Saint George. But for Divine and others, the contention surrounding sanctuaries represents a lost opportuni to support these e orts, which she says are part of ongoing healing for

Pribilof communities.

“ at is traumatic and tragic and can’t be said enough is that the history of the Pribilof Islands represents colonialism at its worst,” she says.

e Pribilofs were not

permanently inhabited until Russian fur traders brought enslaved Unangax̂ people here from the Aleutian Islands in the 18th century. For decades, they hunted seals for the Russians, then for a U.S. government-run

fur trade that persisted well into the 20th century. Government o cials forcibly relocated the Unangax̂ during World War II and in 1984 banned commercial sealing, prompting residents to hastily enter the halibut fishery. rough it all, the government assailed Indigenous language and culture and determined ocean policies without much Indigenous representation.

“It’s a long traumatic history,” says Divine. Yet, she adds, the people have always shown resilience. Today, she says, they come forward with their knowledge to build a new model in a changing world.

“It’s not been an easy battle,” says Divine.

Tim Lydon is an assi ant editor at Alaska magazine.

Right: A researcher among northern fur seals on Saint Paul Island.

Northern lights opportunities can be few and far between in Juneau. We have plenty of darkness, but we often have clouds. I love when I can see the lights in the fall, before the lakes have frozen over so that they can reflect the sky. This was a funky northern lights night where it was mostly a haze, but I loved the alien-like aura it created.

MMy first glimpse of Lingít Aani, aka southeast Alaska, was as a seasonal worker. Like many before me, I was blown away by the mountains, glaciers, and whales. Unlike most, I never le . I remember first seeing the trees and the beau of the Tongass National Forest and wondered why I had never thought of Alaska as a rainforest. is is one of the few places on Earth where ocean, glacier, and forest coexist, woven with a rich human history since time immemorial.

en, when I thought Alaska couldn’t get any better, I went SCUBA diving in Icy Strait. In the dark, 46-degree F water, I found a ord wall pulsing with life sustained by the infamous strong currents in the area. It was both thrilling and challenging to see a world completely di erent from the one above.

Southeast

TEXT & IMAGES BY KIM NESBITT

In Focus

MMy journey in photography began in sports as a means of extra income in high school and college. But like so many underwater photographers, I welcomed the release of the GoPro as it opened up so many new possibilities. Suddenly, I had an a ordable underwater camera to showcase the beau I saw beneath the waves. I’ve since expanded to a giant underwater camera and light system that weighs about 15 pounds. is pivot from sports to wildlife photography took on new life when I joined expedition cruise ships in 2017, taking travelers to some of the world’s most remote and awe-inspiring places.

Since then, I’ve had the good fortune to photograph coastal regions worldwide and sail nearly the entire coast of our great state. Yet Southeast remains my favorite place on the planet. It’s challenging in every way—di cult to reach, expensive to live in (thank goodness for the Juneau Costco), and relentless on my gear.

I’ve spent over 200 hours underwater throughout Southeast, from Icy Strait and Mis Fjords to four miles from South Sawyer Glacier’s face in Tracy Arm Fjord. is place is as wild as it gets. Here, photography can be as simple as driving out the road to look for bears or as demanding as donning 120 pounds of SCUBA gear to only spend an hour underwater.

e di cul and reward drive my obsession with photography. Southeast Alaska is a living, breathing wilderness, and every photo I take is a glimpse of that life. I’m grateful for the chance to share the story of this place and to call it home.

Above: The former calving face of Sawyer Glacier. This was actually the last time I saw this glacier fully touch the ocean, back in 2020. She was a beautiful blue color with towering seracs and deep crevasses. This photo shows the center of the glacier as she touched the water. This part eventually broke off and got stuck on a sandbar created by the forward movement of the glacier, grounding the ice behind it. The face of this glacier is almost unrecognizable today based on this image. Left: An icon of summer in the Tongass National Forest, Devils Club (Oplopanax horridus) is a pleasure to look at but a pain to touch. The huge leaves are very intriguing though, and I love when just enough sunlight comes through the forest canopy to illuminate the leaves. Devils Club is highly medicinal; you just have to get past the spines that cover most of the plant!

Above: I love identifying marine critters, especially in Southeast where many animals are still poorly understood. This Arctic cookie star ( Ceramaster arcticus) was especially exciting for me to capture, since it was the first time this animal has been documented in Alaska via the citizen science platform iNaturalist. Not only do I enjoy the artistry of photography, I also enjoy the scientific role photography can play. Below: An exciting find on any dive in Southeast is this basket star (Gorgonocephalus eucnemis). These are tricky to find since they love high current areas. My timing needs to be perfect with Southeast’s strong tidal swings to hit just the right moment where the current dies down for an hour with hopes of seeing them. These sea stars feed by extending those tendrils out into the water and catching anything that floats by, so it makes sense they would like high current since more current equals more stuff floating by.

Above: A common intertidal animal in Southeast is the moonglow anemone (Anthopleura artemisia), aptly named since they fluoresce. This image was made with the help of a dark winter night and an underwater UV light. There are many hypotheses of the purpose of fluorescence but for now, I’m enjoying using the light to see a whole new world of critters.

Top: A coastal brown bear strolls along in the rain and kelp. Our brown bears get larger than the bears of interior Alaska thanks to the salmon runs and the intertidal zone. This huge influx of protein from the ocean means more nutritious food, allowing the bears to grow bigger. This bay has a huge mud flat, and this bear was digging for clams, a great way of sustaining himself until the salmon start to run in the rivers. Middle: Resting atop a bull kelp forest, a northern sea otter spends time grooming herself between dives. Kelp forests are an important underwater habitat here in Southeast. They’re a spot for young rockfish to grow up, and the kelp itself is delicious! Right: Photographing underwater in Southeast is no easy feat. There are strong currents, lots of equipment, low visibility, and the gear is expensive. Not to mention water temperatures anywhere from 34 to 48 degrees F. It’s a risk I take with my dive buddies to showcase the stunning underwater life of the region.

Above: One of our smallest summer visitors is also one of the most charismatic. The rufous hummingbird (Selasphorus rufus) has the longest migration of any hummingbird, spending winters in Mexico. They’re an absolute joy to see at hummingbird feeders around Juneau, and I anxiously await their return every spring. Left: Winter sunsets are just different. On the coldest night of the decade, some friends and I headed out to a Forest Service cabin (we did not know at the time it was going to be that cold), and as the sun slowly tucked back behind the mountains mid-afternoon, the alpenglow lit up a section of the valley for one of the most incredible sunsets I’ve ever seen.

Crucible of Change

GLACIER BAY NATIONAL PARK TURNS 100

BY EMILY MOUNT

If you look up “change” in a dictionary, Glacier Bay is not part of the definition. But it should be. Pra ically unparalleled in its dynamism, Glacier Bay has metamorphosed from a land sleeping beneath a mile of ice to a place blooming with new life.

is is geolo seen on a human timescale, like a time-lapse video of North America awakening from the Pleistocene. Former Glacier Bay ranger Kim Heacox, now an author, writes in his memoir e Only Kayak, “A thousand habitats were born – and are being born every day – above sea level and below...Total destruction has become a tabula rasa for total rebirth; a dark ages followed by a renaissance.”

Renaissance, French for rebirth. A land reborn, Glacier Bay is as much a definition of change as it is defined by it, but the place embodies change far beyond its physical components. Here, the human story of love and loss, of hope and reconciliation runs as deep as the ords. Here, 100 years a er Glacier Bay was protected as a national monument, the place itself, as spiritual homeland to the Huna Łingít, as a laboratory for scientific research, is a

living crucible of change.

Pleistocene Glacier Bay was unrecognizable by today’s standards. For starters, there was no bay. ile the 15,000-foot Fairweather Range raised its serrated teeth above the ice, almost everything else was draped in a vast expanse of white, a wing of the great ice sheet that blanketed much of North America. Ice slid over the bedrock like a relentless belt sander, scraping and gouging, sculpting and eroding for thousands of years. At the close of the last Ice Age, glaciers thinned and retreated, unveiling a basin flooded by seawater and devoid of life. Over the subsequent millennia, glaciers advanced and retreated several times, pulses of ice covering the bay and releasing it in a cycle common to tidewater glaciers.

Around 800 years ago, when ice covered about half of the 65-mile-long bay, the area became habitable for humans. e Huna Łingít, a culture living in and

around the bay for generations, resided on the glacier’s terminal moraine. Glacier Bay was their spiritual homeland, a land that nourished both body and soul. ey were part of the living landscape, believing A káx yan tudél wé tl’átgi ka at wudikeen aaní aat ka éil – We are stewards of the land, the air, and the sea.

In the mid 1700s, as Alaska was gripped by the Little Ice Age, everything changed for the Huna Łingít. e glacier surged rapidly forward, “as fast as a dog can run” according to oral history. Villagers fled by canoe, watching in horror as their homes were lost to the ice. ey relocated to Chichagof Island, where they established the town of Hoonah, waiting and hoping for a time they could return to Glacier Bay.

In 1794, British Navy Captain George Vancouver anchored west of Hoonah and sent boats to survey the area. e great glacier that had surged beyond the mouth of Glacier Bay was beginning to retreat,

calving a tremendous amount of ice into the surrounding waters. Five miles into the bay, Joseph idbey, commanding Vancouver’s small boats, found “a solid, compact mountain of ice, rising perpendicularly from the water’s edge.”

is ice wall drew John Muir to Glacier Bay in 1879. He sought a landscape where ice flowed over rock, where he could read the living pages of geolo to prove his theories of Yosemite’s glacial history. en Muir entered the bay in a dugout canoe with his Łingít guides, he was prepared to find Vancouver’s mountain of ice. Instead, he was greeted by a wide and open bay, Sit’ Eeti Geeyi in Łingít, meaning “the bay in place of the glacier.” Fi y miles later he finally encountered the mountain of ice, a glacier still in a state of rapid retreat.

With mounting excitement, Muir bounded across ice and newly revealed rocks. Here he could see glaciers at work, carving, polishing, moving over the land.

Of one epic day he wrote, “Beneath the fros shadows of the fiord, we stood hushed and awe-stricken, gazing at the holy vision; and had we seen the heavens opened and God made manifest, our attention could not have been more tremendously strained.”

Muir became obsessed with Glacier Bay’s ice, making three more expeditions over the next 20 years. His elegant prose captivated tourists and scientists alike, inspiring them to step back in time to visit a place where the ice age still lived. Muir was among the first to lay the groundwork for glacial theories that would change science forever. In the words of noted Glacier Bay ecologist Greg Streveler, “Muir was seeing a dance be een landscape, ice, atmosphere and forest, the living, interined world that he intuitively believed in. It is this vision that ignited the grand scientific (and esthetic) story to follow, a story that led to the establishment of a great national park, in which science was mandated to play a pivotal role.”

Beyond scientific study, however, Muir became a leading voice in the youthful American conservation movement. “Muir became our corrective lens, our better conscience,” writes Heacox in his biography John Muir and the Ice that Started a Fire. “He spoke for the wild places and gave them credible value. He showed us an Alaska as a New World’s new world, a place to reimagine what remained of America, and our destiny in it.”

As the century turned, Glacier Bay became a focal point for glacial study. “ at made the area really interesting to glaciologists was that it was changing so fast,” says Lewis Sharman, retired Glacier Bay ecologist who has lived and worked in the bay since 1982. “You could actually see it happening, and you could compare it to other landscapes that had been exposed by retreating ice as long ago as the Pleistocene. In Glacier Bay, you could see that story unfold before your eyes in the course of a career. You couldn’t see that anywhere else in the world.” ese early scientific pioneers saw Glacier Bay as a dramatic example, perhaps the best in

Opposite: Steamship passengers wander onto the ice beside Muir Glacier. Left: A more recent image of Johns Hopkins Glacier in the park.

the world, of glacial geolo . eir publications, notably Harry Fielding Reid’s work on glacier dynamics and his description of the environment, caught the attention of a scientist from a very di erent discipline: botany.

William Skinner Cooper, assistant professor of botany at Universi of Minnesota, was searching “for a situation where vegetational change and development were proceeding so rapidly that they could be studied with fair completeness in the span of a lifetime.” Glacier Bay fit the bill. Cooper first visited the bay in 1916. He set out nine quadrats at various distances from the glacier, intending to visit every five years to monitor and document changes in soil and plant composition. His subsequent monographs and papers are the defining work on post-glacial succession and had a major influence on the field of plant ecolo .

In Glacier Bay, Cooper found not only a botanical wonderland, but a place that would keep him coming back for the rest of his life. Heacox writes of Cooper: “Glaciers shape the land, the land shapes the man.” In studying the land, Cooper was compelled to become a voice for its protection.

In 1922, Cooper presented his Glacier Bay botanical findings to the Ecological Socie of America. e socie responded with enthusiasm, believing Glacier Bay should be protected “for permanent scientific research and education, and for the use and enjoyment of the people.” ough a quiet, modest man, Cooper chaired the committee spearheading the movement to protect Glacier Bay. His passion, combined with a downpour of supporting letters, convinced President Calvin Coolidge to create Glacier Bay National Monument on February 26, 1925.

In Glacier Bay’s enabling legislation, science played an unusual starring role, something “remarkably rare amongst all of the public lands and national parks in the country,” notes Sharman. “ ere are only a handful that explicitly list the value of scientific research in their enabling legislation as a driver for setting the area

aside; Glacier Bay is the quintessential one. It’s very clear that it is one of the most important reasons for establishment of the monument.”

In addition to scientific value, Glacier Bay’s enabling legislation noted the exceptional opportunities for tourism, where visitors could, with relative ease, visit tidewater glaciers by ship. Beginning as early as the 1880s, tourists sailed into the bay to

Right: The steamship Queen sails through the icy waters near Muir Glacier. Below: Hikers look out at the Muir Glacier, date unknown.

Top: Frank Jay Haynes; Left: Unknown

witness the calving glacier, walk on shore, and climb the hills. It was the most accessible tidewater glacier in North America, a spectacle to behold.

Not everyone, however, was pleased. “A monstrous proposition,” cried the Juneau Daily Empire. “It is said the proposed National Monument is intended to protect Muir Glacier and to permit the study of plant and insect life in its neighborhood. It tempts patience to try to discuss such nonsensical performances. e suggestion that a reserve be established to protect a glacier that none could disturb if he wanted and none would want to disturb if he could … is the quintessence of silliness…a monstrous crime.”

ere were others too, wounded to the quick by the establishment of the monument. e Huna Łingít had not even been

consulted in the fate of their homeland. Monument designation and management would become an intense source of pain over the subsequent decades. ey felt betrayed as traditional activities became unwelcome and even illegal in Glacier Bay.

In the early days of the monument, the fledgling National Park Service (NPS) viewed Glacier Bay as a nature

preserve without human disturbance. Management overlooked, ignored, or discouraged the presence and traditional uses of the original inhabitants. e NPS aimed to protect the area according to its mission, “unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations.” However, Glacier Bay was the tribe’s ancestral homeland, their birthright, their breadbasket. Such

Right: William Skinner Cooper, pioneering botanist and the man who led the movement to create Glacier Bay National Monument, in front of the mountain bearing his name. Below: One of the many major cruise lines bringing tourists into Glacier Bay.

fundamentally opposing interests would inevitably come to clash.

e most significant source of tension arose over seal hunting. Harbor seals are a traditional staple in the Huna Łingít culture. e meat is used for food, the blubber rendered for oil, the hide made into clothing. e Huna Łingít hunted seals in Glacier Bay for communi use, while some hunters also garnered income from commercial hide sales in the Alaska territory’s seal boun . Over the years, the NPS grew increasingly uneasy with the seal hunt, where several hundred seals might be taken in a single season. Concerned hunting was incongruous with the monument’s conservation mission, the NPS ended seal hunting in 1974. For the Huna Łingít, this exclusion from their ancestral hunting grounds created deep bitterness.

Tourism, meanwhile, steadily increased. In 1969, the first cruise ship sailed into Glacier Bay. e NPS welcomed ships as a way for visitors to experience the monument without ever setting foot on land and provided a park ranger to o er educational opportunities. e cruise industry responded with enthusiasm and in 1970 more than 15,000 tourists visited the bay, a number which tripled in five years. Today, nearly 800,000 people visit annually, 96 percent by cruise ship (the remainder by small tour boat and kayak). e journey into the heart of Glacier Bay is akin to boarding a time machine, where a visitor can observe over o centuries of biotic change, from temperate rainforest to glaciers, in a matter of hours.

As vessel tra c intensified, however, so did the noise. ile boats presented an ideal way to visit the monument without roads and infrastructure, in large numbers they were loud, particularly underwater. e marine ecosystem of Glacier Bay is incredibly rich. Freshwater flows from tidewater glaciers, huge tides pump in and out of the bay, and long summer days fuel a phytoplankton bloom that feeds a bonanza of sea life. One of the most charismatic creatures sustained by this prodigious productivi is the humpback whale.

In the early 1970s, the then-endangered humpback seemed to be avoiding the bay. e NPS contracted local whale expert Charles Jurasz to monitor the whales’ location and behavior, particularly in relation to ships. Beyond monitoring, Jurasz discovered humpbacks have a fluke pattern as unique as a human fingerprint, making it possible to identi individual animals. For -five years later, scientists still monitor humpbacks in Glacier Bay, making this one of the longest-running humpback monitoring projects in the world. Starting in 1979, the NPS utilized this data to set vessel quotas and speed limits, an essential marker in managing ship tra c to this day. is also became an impetus to create wilderness waters in part of the monument.

Wilderness designation came in 1980 under the Alaska National Interest Lands

Conservation Act. is expansive statewide legislation changed Glacier Bay’s status to that of a national park, increased its size, added a 57,000-acre national preserve, and designated 2.7 million acres as Wilderness. Wilderness waters are rare, but 13 percent of the bay’s water also became Wilderness. In total, the park and preserve are 3.3 million acres, an area about the size of Connecticut. en combined with o Canadian parks and Wrangell-St. Elias National Park, Glacier Bay forms a 25-million-acre contiguous international protected area, one of the largest on Earth. In 1986, the park was designated a UNESCO biosphere reserve (together with Admiral Island National Monument). In 1992, it became a UNESCO world heritage site.

Today, a visitor may see towering ice, bears, pu ns, and the story of succession as free to read as from a living book. But the place is di erent than that experienced by previous generations. e great glaciers Muir studied have thinned, diminished and fractured into smaller glaciers, many of which are retreating onto land in response to the changing climate. ey have le behind the evidence of their passage – roc moraines both underwater and on land, ancient forests sheared o by ice and eroding from glacial ou ash, a region rising up each year, rebounding out of the sea from the released weight of the massive glacier. e landscape is maturing yet persists in abundance. is window into the Pleistocene continues to be internationally recognized as an exceptional living laboratory in which

Right: Seal hauled out on ice floe in Glacier Bay. Below: Carvings inside the Xúnaa Shuká Hít or “Huna Ancestor’s House.”

to study primary ecosystem and landform genesis. With almost 150 years of scientific tradition under its belt, Glacier Bay has inspired thousands of scientific publications. Of note, Cooper’s pioneering studies are still carried on at his original sites, today the world’s oldest post-glacial plot ne ork.

Of all the stories of change in Glacier Bay, perhaps the most significant is that of reconciliation be een the NPS and Huna Łingít. A er seal hunting ended (in addition to many other traditional activities such as mountain goat hunting, gull egg collection and commercial fishing), tribal members felt cut o from their homeland. Pain was paramount. Slowly, as the decades passed, relationships formed be een park management and the tribal government. Slowly, small collaborative projects led to larger ones.

In 1987, a traditional sea otter hunting canoe was carved on the shores of Bartlett Cove. e NPS listened to the tribe’s stories of loss and responded by facilitating young tribal members connecting to homeland, collecting and preserving oral histories, and encouraging traditional harvest activities compatible

with park regulations. In 2014, a er years of NPS research and support, congressional authorization allowed the Huna Łingít to collect glaucous-winged gull eggs in Glacier Bay.

e biggest accomplishment of this partnership is a permanent clan house, the first of its kind since the Huna Łingít were forced to flee 250 years ago. Xúnaa Shuká Hít or “Huna Ancestor’s House,” completed in 2016, is a spiritual anchor. A few years later, o totems were erected outside the tribal house, and a totem depicting healing be een the tribe and NPS was raised near the visitor information station.

Today, the NPS and tribal government are developing co-stewardship programs to cooperatively manage the tribal house, a culture camp inside the park, gull egg harvest, traditional gathering and more. “It’s a dramatic shi ,” says Matthew Cahill, Glacier Bay’s Interpretation Program Lead. “Today when we have opportunities to support tribal engagement in homeland everybody in the park pulls out the stops to help. Everybody here wants to be part of that engagement. It’s really part of our ethos now.”

e park’s centennial is not planned to be a big celebration, but rather a quiet commemoration. “We acknowledge where we came from, where we are, and

where we’re going at this point in history,” says Cahill. “As a centennial acknowledgement, we want to speak to the di cult history and the progress that we’ve made, as well as the path that we are on going forwards.”

at path is filled with hope and promise for a better future, the next 100 years of collaboration. In a place brimming over with life, there is resilience, and where there is resilience, there is hope. In this place so defined by change, what greater change can there be than that within the human mind and heart? As Heacox writes in e Only Kayak, “People are reborn here too. is place is that powerful. In Glacier Bay you don’t inherit, you create. You practice resurrection because the land and sea show you that anything is possible.”

Emily Mount, contributing editor at Alaska magazine, is a former Glacier Bay park ranger. Like Muir, Cooper, Heacox, Sharman, her beloved late friend Streveler and so many others, she has an intense attachment to the place. Her fir day in Glacier Bay felt as though she had come home. Today she owns land on the edge of the park and nurses great ambitions to build a cabin.

Below: Members of the Tlingit Clan paddle their ancestral waters in their traditional homeland in Glacier Bay.

Going Solo in Seward

An easy getaway for travelers and locals

By Sue Durio

When it is time to escape the noise and bu le of daily life, pack your bags and head to Seward for a summertime solo respite where natural beau awaits.

Here in this small seaside town, you can laze the mornings away with a good book along the harbor, hit one of the many easy-access trails, spend a day on the water, and recharge your mind and body. In Seward, the best thing about going solo is you can do nothing – or do it all.

Morning sunshine on the boats at Seward harbor. MICHELLE THEALL / WILDDEPARTURES.COM

Enjoying a relaxed meal at The Cookery. SUE DURIO

Enjoy the Journey

e stunning o-hour drive from Anchorage to Seward hugs the shorelines of Turnagain Arm before heading through the Kenai Peninsula. Take in the beau at one of the many pull-o s for possible beluga sightings and scenic photo ops. Beluga Point is a popular one, about 20 minutes south of Anchorage. If you time it right, you may be treated to seeing the amazing bore tides. e highway passes close to Girdwood, worth a quick detour to pick up a loaf of e Bake Shop’s legendary sourdough bread, a staple for locals and travelers since 1963. Continue to milepost 79 for a stop at the Alaska Wildlife

Conservation Center, a 200-acre sanctuary for injured and orphaned wildlife.

e 1.5-mile loop is a good place to stretch your legs before making the rest of your drive.

Keep in mind that this section of highway is known for slowdowns from both tra c and summertime road repairs, so pack your patience. Remember, in this beautiful state, it is as much about the journey as the destination.

If you prefer to leave the driving to someone else, consider taking the Alaska Railroad or one of the daily bus shuttles that service the Anchorage-Seward route. No need for a vehicle once you arrive; a free Seward shuttle runs from mid-April through mid-September.

Savor Harbor Harmony

ere’s perhaps no better way to begin your solo Seward escape than watching the sunrise from the docks of the Seward Small Boat Harbor. Grab a cup of fresh brew from Resurrect Art Co ee House, a welcoming gathering place housed in a circa1917 Methodist Church. en follow the Waterfront Park trail along Resurrection Bay to the harbor. (Note to self: return later to the benches along the trail with a good book but be forewarned, the views may be distracting.)

Each morning, the Seward harbor yawns its way past dawn, while the sun peeks over the mountains across the bay.

As fishermen make their way down the ramps to prep their boats for a day of charters, sea lions lazily float by, and eagles swoop high above. Grab a spot along the waterfront, close your eyes and listen to nature coming to life.

Later, the harbor is the place to reserve a Kenai Fjords National Park boat tour for an up-close encounter with calving glaciers, whales, and all manner of marine life. Interested in bringing some fresh catch home? Hook up with one of the 100 or so local charter boat operators to join in with a group of anglers. Places like e Fish House will flash freeze your fish in coolers for you to bring back to Anchorage or elsewhere in the state or to ship back the Lower 48.

Top: The Seward Airport and airstrip. Above: The colorful exterior of the Resurrect Art Coffee House.

Sue Durio

Walk Seward’s Downtown

Seward’s walkable downtown is filled with history, beautiful views, artisan wares, and some of the best meals you may ever have. e Historic Seward Depot, built in 1917, is a great place to start. It is one of several structures on the National Registry of Historic Places. Just down the way, you’ll find the Alaska Sealife Center, Alaska’s only permanent marine mammal rescue and rehabilitation facili . is can be your indoor escape on those unpredictable Seward rainy days. Get your own personal Marine Mammal Encounter in one of their exclusive tours, great for individual travelers.

Before leaving the waterfront district, pop in Zudy’s for whatever baked surprise of the day she’s concocted. Also stop by the Trail Blazers Statue, one of several around town celebrating Iditarod pioneers. e Iditarod Trail Mile 0 marker is just outside the Sealife Center.

As you mosey the avenues and shops downtown, keep an eye peeled for the 30 hand-painted murals that earned Seward the moniker “Mural Capital of Alaska.” On Saturdays from June to September, the Farmers Market on 4th Avenue downtown is the place to meet local artisans and pick up fresh foods. Make a note to return for dinner at e Cookery on 5th Avenue; as a single, you may be in luck to score one of the 10 coveted spots at the bar (but come early, the food here is legendary!).

Explore by Air, Sea, and Trail

To fully experience Seward requires getting outdoors, either on your own or with a small group. Even with other kayakers around, you can take in the sereni of Resurrection Bay from the solitude of your own boat. From a full-day paddle to Aialik Glacier to a morning put-in at Lowell Point, or a kayak-and-hike combo, Seward outfitters will help you soak up the scenery, your way.

Around Seward, you’ll find nearly unlimited trails. e one-mile Two Lakes Trail, right in town, is a great warm-up

Above: Trail signs on a hike in Seward.

hike for all levels. It spans several streams and waterfalls; its proximi to downtown means you likely will encounter other hikers along the way. e Exit Glacier View Loop and Overlook Trails are also popular options. Since these accessible and shorter hikes start from the Exit Glacier Nature Center, you’re likely to have company on the trail, but you’ll also enjoy spectacular views of the Harding Icefield.

en you’re ready to amp up the burn, consider the steep 5-mile round-trip Mt. Marathon Bowl or the more moderate Caines Head Trail to Tonsina Point and beyond. A erward, enjoy some peaceful

muscle recovery and refreshments from the beachfront covered porch at Miller’s Landing Cafe.

Prefer the added safe of hiking with a group? Join one of the ranger-led hikes at Exit Glacier or a guided trek with a local.

If one is by land and o is by sea, then a third great option for seeing Seward is by air. Grab a seat on a helicopter or small plane tour for breathtaking views. Land on a glacier or glacier lake, spot wildlife, and marvel at the mass of Harding Icefield from above.

It’s all possible on flightseeing tours from Seward Airport, just about o miles northeast of downtown.

Get Pampered Seward Style

Cap o your Seward stay with a luxury Alaskan sauna experience, courtesy of Seward Sauna. Solo travelers can rent an entire sauna for the ultimate in peaceful solitude, or you can o en fill in gaps be een regular group rental hours at a lesser rate. Guests staying at Rustic Roots can also enjoy sauna time, as well as an onsite yoga studio.

Durio is a freelance writer whose work has appeared in Texas Life yle and Pilot magazines.

Sue

Resting for a while at Tonsina Point.

Interview

LEE ROBBINS

ADVENTURES IN KODIAK

LEE ROBBINS AND HIS WIFE ANNIE TOEBOSCH run a B&B and marine wildlife cruises from their home on the north part of Kodiak Island, showing o whales, birds, bears as well as the stunning islands and coastline around Kodiak. A er exploring the area for nearly 40 years by boat, plane, and foot, Lee says the wilderness continues to amaze him. “Even though there’s been habitation for 12,000 years or more,” he says, “you still see more animal tracks than human tracks and still find places no one has walked.” —AS TOLD TO AND EDITED BY MOLLY RETTIG

What do you love about Kodiak?

Alaska is like seven or eight states all in one, and Kodiak is the best place. We have a lot of bright people with hard hands. The people here are risk takers and thinkers and hard workers. I may not know everyone, but I often know either their first name, their last name, or the name of their boat.

How’d you end up there?    I came up to ski with the U.S. biathlon team January 2, 1969 at the training center at Fort Richardson in Anchorage. After two and a half years, I went back east, got married, and came back to Alaska. We had twin girls and a son. I was working as a general contractor, and my wife was a PE teacher and coach. We decided to move out into the bush to become full time parents. We found property on Raspberry Island, in Kodiak, moved down there and built the Raspberry Island Remote Camps, a multi-activity, family-orientat-

ed, wilderness lodge. I lived out there for 27 years, and then my son and his family took it over.

It sounds like a different world than the east coast. How did you adapt to life on a remote island?

I grew up in upstate New York and caught my first fish in a trout stream when I was four. When I was 12, my grandpa gave me an Adirondack guide boat, basically a cedar and canvas canoe, and I had free range of the Hudson River. I used to take it to go catch large-mouth bass and trap mink, possum, and skunk. I started learning to fly when I was a senior in high school and finished my pilot license in Alaska, so I’ve always been comfortable in the woods. Things are different up here, but it’s the same concept, whether you’re in the air or on the water. You need to understand water, terrain, and geography. All the weather we see originates in Kamchatka, Russia, then follows the

Aleutians to Kodiak. If you look there, you know what will happen here in three to four days.

Now that you moved back to “town,” you’re running wildlife cruises from Kodiak. Who comes on these cruises?

The people who make it all the way to Kodiak are really serious about adventure. They come from all over the world. Last year we had guests from England, Germany, Belgium, France, Spain, Mexico City, and Asia. I’ve learned people who are into photography will follow their camera wherever it takes them. And if they haven’t seen a horned puffin or humpback whale, they’ll come to Kodiak to see it. Fortunately, I’m on the north end of the island

so I can almost always dodge weather and get somewhere that can work.

What do most people want to see?

Everyone wants something different. Some people just want puffins. Some want whales. Some want sea otters, bears, all of it.  Of course, it’s all weather dependent and seasonal. Some whales are here year-round, but usually they migrate back south to Baja or Hawaii depending on air and water temperatures. Even the birds are seasonal in regard to what photographers want. If you want puffins on water, I can do that almost all the time.

Above: Lee Robbins aboard his boat. Right: Lee’s daily office view from the captain’s chair.

If you want puffins nesting it’s easier to do in mid-July, when the grass is packed down around the nest so you can see them on land. Later on, as the chicks get bigger, parents come in with mouthfuls of fullsized bait, so the chicks realize what their food looks like when they fledge and are on their own. Spring is a good time to see bears as there are long days and less vegetation. Sows come down with their cubs, and boars are looking for trouble or love when they come out of hibernation. Later, when the salmon start to spawn, the bears congregate along the rivers and streams and will

stay until the runs are over.

What’s a memorable wildlife experience?

This past summer I had an all-female group of photographers that came to Kodiak to see whales. We spent the day photographing flying puffins, sea otters, and even had some transient orcas. I had started to run back to Kodiak when, right beside me, a 70-foot fin whale surfaced and was literally looking right in my port side window. He was so close, I thought for sure we were  going to hit him. I pulled the power off and we came to a sudden stop, somehow missing the

whale. As the boat settled into the water and my photographers understood what had happened, twelve whales came up like submarines all around the boat. The ladies and their cameras were racing out on deck to get their shots! That was memorable. That group had seen whales all over the world, and they said they’d never seen anything like this.

When you’re getting so close to these large animals, how do you make sure you’re not putting them or your clients at risk?

If you treat both land and marine wildlife with respect

and try to understand their behavior, they come to you. If you start running around chasing them, making a lot of noise, then it’s just not fair to them. I take my time and try to anticipate where they’re going, what they’re doing, if they are feeding or traveling. The best guides know the animal and can interpret body language and movement. If the guide is quiet and not nervous, the guests will be too. Animals seem to understand quicker than humans, frankly.

Learn more about Lee’s wildlife cruises at p ossibilitiesunlimitedalaska.com or adventuresinkodiak.com

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