THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, October 30, 1994 TAG: 9410290414
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY STEPHEN HARRIMAN TRAVEL EDITOR
LENGTH: Long : 346 lines
Have you seen God in His splendors, heard the text that nature renders?
(You'll never hear it in the family pew.)
The simple things, the true things, the silent men who do things -
Then listen to the Wild - it's calling you.
-Robert W. Service
The Call of the Wild
DAWN IS GRAY and there is a decided chill in the late summer air. Great furrows of leaden clouds obscure the peaks of the blue-black mountains that rise around us, their images mirrored on the calm, frigid waters of Glacier Bay. A thin veil of fog masks the shoreline like a watercolor wash.
Slivers of sunlight pry through the furrows and dance on the silver-blue water. The tips of icebergs dot the surface like specks of dandruff on the shoulders of a blue serge suit. Birds perch on some, harbor seals lounge on others. Thoughts of the Titanic run briefly through my mind, but I am told these bergs are relatively small compared to those in the North Atlantic.
Until now this ship, Holland America Line's new m.s. Maasdam, had seemed huge - and indeed it is: 56,000 gross tons, 720 feet long and 101 feet wide, carrying more than 1,200 passengers - but in this setting it seems more like a toy floating on a pond in a park.
We are creeping so as not to disturb fish and fowl of this chilled habitat, creeping almost imperceptibly toward the vast glaciers that give this bay on the southeast coast of Alaska its name.
Looming in the distance and drawing ever closer are two of the 16 tidewater glaciers that can be approached to what seems almost touching distance. There is Margerie Glacier on the left, 12 miles long and a mile wide, 300 feet above the surface of the water and another 400 feet below.
Its crystalized face sparkles white, but in places a pastel blue shows through. The latter is centuries-old ice that has been compressed by surface pressure until all the oxygen has been squeezed out. As light strikes this ice, all colors of the spectrum are absorbed except blue, which is reflected back.
National Park Rangers Mike Murray and Tom Vandenberg, who came aboard earlier, spend the day explaining things like that.
And there, to the right, is Grand Pacific Glacier, its dirty face choked with the debris it has scoured from the surrounding mountains through the ages. It stretches 25 miles back into the the St. Elias and Alsek Ranges and is one and a half miles wide where it meets the water. It is 200 feet high - another 200 feet below the surface - and it dwarfs this ship.
There is a strange silence aboard the Maasdam. Hushed conversations among passengers consists mostly of the same sort of ``oohs'' and ``aahs'' you hear at a fireworks display.
It is quiet enough, although we are a quarter of a mile away from the glaciers, to hear the sounds of the birth of an iceberg - a dynamic process called ``calving.''
The glacier groans and hisses and pops and creaks, and there is the rumble of muted thunder as ice - chunks that seem quite small but are, in reality, measured in tons - undercut by the motion of the tide, split off from the face and splash into the bay.
As I stood on the prow of this ship, watching this awesome display of nature, my mind danced back and forth between fantasy and reality.
I can hear Starship Captain Jean-Luc Picard speak of space as the final frontier, where man has never gone before. That is true, of course. And yet I am overwhelmed by the realization that right here, on planet Earth, more than 60 miles up Glacier Bay, I am in a place where very few people, relatively speaking, have gone in the entire history of mankind.
I say relatively speaking because this part of Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve has become one of the most popular segments of ships carrying tourists through Alaska's spectacular Inside Passage. This year 33 ships, large and small, from 14 cruise lines plied these waters through Alaska's Alexander Archipelago. However, the National Park Service carefully restricts boat traffic in this unique and fragile environment.
Still, this is a frontier. This is earth as it was in the beginning . . . or at least at the end of the great Ice Age.
Two hundred years ago, when English explorer George Vancouver sailed these coastal waters, what is now Glacier Bay was hidden under a vast sheet of ice some 4,000 feet thick, 20 miles or more across and extending more than 100 miles, its mouth but a small indentation in the icy shoreline. A hundred years later naturalist John Muir was able to canoe 40 miles up a deep fjord left by the melting glaciers. Now we are 25 miles beyond his campsite. The glacier retreat continues at a record pace.
Today, scientists come to this open-air laboratory - now Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve - to study this raw landscape, to learn of plant and animal progression and what happens when nature wipes the slate clean and starts over from scratch.
This is but one of the many faces of Alaska, that immense region known as ``Seward's Folly'' when its purchase from Russia was negotiated by Secretary of State William Seward in 1867. Purchase price: $7.2 million - about the same as James Worthy will be paid to play basketball this season.
In 1959 it became our 49th state. With 586,412 square miles (and only about 575,000 people) within its boundaries, it is one fifth the size of the Lower 48. It is so big that it once had four time zones; for practical purposes that was reduced to two by legislation in 1983.
It has to be seen to be believed. There are mountains like those of the American west. There are glaciers like those of the French and Swiss Alps. There are fjords like those of Norway. It is like all that but so much more. .
It is awesome and it is majestic, and it is a lot of other superlatives that do not measure up to the visuals.
Understandably, it has become a prime vacation destination. Not just for cruising. To see what it was all about, I jumped at an offer from Holland America Line-Westours to sample parts of its sea-and-land packages on a 10-day, dawn-to-well-after-dark excursion that included cruising aboard the Maasdam but also travel by. . .
Train from Anchorage to Denali National Park aboard the Alaska Explorer, a string of plush and smooth-riding double-decked cars (domed observation deck above, dining area below) pulled by Alaska Railway engines.
Another train of the antique and ultra-scenic variety, the White Pass & Yukon's 40-mile narrow-gauge line. This was an engineering marvel - it climbs 2,885 feet in just 20 miles through some of the most rugged terrain anywhere - when it was completed (in 27 months) during the Klondike Gold Rush, and it remains so today.
A single-engine airplane to a wilderness camp east of Denali in the heart of Alaska, and an ancient DC-3, vintage 1938, from Air North's fleet that had seats more comfortable than those of most of today's commercial aircraft. The latter brought back memories. My first flight was on a Southern Airways DC-3 in 1955.
Luxury motorcoach - Westours calls it the Alaska-Yukon Explorer loungecoach. The articulated vehicle, 20 feet longer than a conventional coach, has a lounge in its rear compartment that features table seating for 14 and a staffed galley.
A small dayboat, the Fairweather, along the spectacular Lynn Canal from Skagway to Juneau. It had something called a ``vistazoom video'' for shoreline closeups.
And Holland America tossed in a tour of Canada's Yukon Territory in the package.
That made good sense. Alaska and the Yukon were inextricably linked a century ago by the quest for gold. And linked as well by the poetry of Robert W. Service, who was inspired by this often-foreboding wilderness.
Maybe you remember these opening lines:
The Northern Lights have seen queer sights,
But the queerest they ever did see
Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge
I cremated Sam McGee.
``The Cremation of Sam McGee'' was, I think, the first poem I ever committed to memory. Maybe the only one.
And although Alaska and the Yukon always have been politically separate, they remain closely tied as vacation-destination partners. A contest between the two entities for best wilderness scenery and wildlife probably would end in a draw.
The Yukon Territory, to the east of Alaska, covers 187,384 square miles (larger than California). Its population includes 213,000 caribou and only 30,400 people. Interestingly, it had more humans in 1898, when gold fever was at its hottest, than it does now.
Termination dust is an ominous term, I thought, as I lay in bed at McKinley Chalets on the edge of Denali National Park reading ``Alaska A to Z,'' a small encyclopedia by Vernon Publications that is indispensable to any tourist.
It's a term Alaskans use for the first dusting of snow each autumn, signifying the end of summer and the beginning of the LONG winter.
Next morning - this was Aug. 21 - I awoke to see termination dust, a lacy white veil cast over the mountains. I better understood why the hotel staff was decorating an evergreen tree the night before. The ``year'' or season is a short one in much of Alaska. Seasonal employees celebrate ``Christmas'' here on Aug. 25.
The weather front that had brought the snow during the night was to mark the beginning of a special adventure for me and several companions, although we did not realize it as we boarded a pair of single-engine planes for what was supposed to be a half-day visit to Denali Wilderness Lodge.
Because of the low ceiling, we couldn't take the usual route, a 20-minute hop over a mountain range and down again to a gravel landing strip at the edge of the Wood River. Instead we took a more roundabout route that enabled me to observe even more of the vast expanse of central Alaska.
It is a Pleistocene landscape shaped by ice and water and wind, largely unchanged over the past 10,000 years. Below I see glaciers, mountains, rivers, forest, tundra. Mile after mile of land that probably has never felt the tread of man. I see a moose standing in the middle of a kettle pond, two more in a nearby meadow. The pilot says up higher, where the trees get sparse, is caribou habitat. In the high tundra, he says, you can often spot wolf and bear. This day I see none.
The rivers are remarkable to see from above. They are unlike the old, deep-channeled waters that flow through Tidewater Virginia. This land is geologically young. Here they are shallow and swift, tireless agents of erosion and deposition, forever moving and smoothing the rubble left by glacial morrains. They run thick and gray with glacial powder in channels that diverge and converge again, braiding across gravel beds, sand and rocks.
The landscape is a palette of earth tones - and this day topped with a sprinkling of confectioner's sugar.
Denali Wilderness Lodge is a real getaway sort of place. Way away. Remote as only Alaska can define the word. The nearest road is about 50 miles distant. Flying is the only way in. Everything that is here was flown here - or built here with the help of a sawmill, which was flown in, piece by piece.
There are more than two-dozen hand-hewn log buildings spread over 22 acres, including guest cabins, a greenhouse, trapper's cabin, theater, sauna, barn and stable with riding horses, and the main lodge that is both a gourmet dining hall and a remarkable wildlife museum that displays more than 100 mounted species from all over the world.
The trophies are the collection of the previous owner, the late Lynn Castle, a internationally known master guide and hunter, who died a couple of years ago in his 10th or 18th plane crash. The stories vary. This began as his hunting camp.
The snow was falling again, heavier, as we sat down to lunch. And by midafternoon, with a heavy mantle of gray clouds slipping lower and lower over the surrounding mountains, it became apparent that we were to become overnight guests. A radio call a short time later made it a certainty.
What great luck! Snowbound in the wilds of Alaska. In August.
Dave and Danielle Thompson, the new proprietors, effortlessly found accommodations for us - with toothbrushes and other toiletries as well - and fed us more of their delicious food. The wilderness stops somewhere short of this lodge's kitchen.
The snow never really amounted to much more than delicate decoration. It was the clouds that grounded the aircraft. But the temperature did drop to freezing as night fell early. My nostrils stung as I inhaled the cold, powder-dry air. Delightful. The tundra ponds and little streams, misty by evening, were ice-fringed by dawn.
Next day, all clear. The planes came and off we flew, saying goodbye to a day of splendid isolation.
On the way back the skies were clear enough to see the distant Mount McKinley. Alaskans prefer the native name: Denali, meaning the ``Great One'' or ``High One.'' At 20,320 feet it is the highest in North America.
Actually, what you see on a rare clear day like this is an enormous twin-peaked mountain mass towering above all else. The other peak is 19,470 feet, and together they are referred to by a third name, the Churchill Peaks. To add the final bit of confusion, nearby Mount Foraker (17,400) is also known as Memlale, or ``Denali's Wife,'' by local natives.
I met a Mountie - properly a Royal Canadian Mounted Police officer - and he was not much like those movie types, Nelson Eddy (Jennette McDonald's boyfriend) or Sergeant Preston (trusty dog King's master) . . . and not at ALL like Dudley Do-right from the Rocky and Bullwinkle Show.
Inspector (lieutenant) Russ Juby came aboard our Loungecruiser at a Klondike Highway roadhouse out in the middle of nowhere (this could describe almost anywhere in the Yukon Territory) where they sell maybe the best and probably the biggest cinnamon buns in the entire world.
He joined us, I should say, after a rather long picture-taking session. Everyone seems to want to have his picture taken with a Mountie. Must be the red serge jacket. People are the same way about the red-coated Guardsmen in London.
And he was resplendent indeed, outfitted in a uniform he said dated to about 1888. It included a white pith helmet that was the height of military fashion at the time. The signature flat-brimmed Stetson was to come later. And his ``mount'' was not a horse - they are mostly for ceremony these days - but an airplane, an integral part of police work these days.
Inspector Juby was dressed in period costume because he is in charge of the RCMP Centennial celebrations set for next year. Then you will see the REAL Mounties. A team of more than 40 horsemen, based in Ontario and seldom seen in the west, will perform its famed ``musical ride'' in Skagway, Alaska, and Dawson City and Whitehorse, Yukon, July 19-26.
A predecessor, an Inspector Constantine, was sent to the gold-mad region 100 years ago this year to determine what it would take to establish law and order and protect Canadian interests in a sovereignty dispute with the United States. Constantine told the government it would take 40 men. The government, being the government, sent him 20 in in the summer of 1895.
I like the way Robert Service put it all to poetry in ``Clancy of the Mounted Police.''
Unconscious heroes of the waste, proud players of the game,
Props of the power behind the throne, upholders of the name;
From thus the Great White Chief hath said, ``In all my lands be peace,''
And to maintain his word he gave the West the Scarlet Police.
The Mounties' numbers would swell to 285 at the height of the gold rush - to police the 2 million square miles of both the Yukon and Northwest territories. Today there are 106 assigned to the Yukon, an area the size of Spain.
On this leg of the journey, not far out of Whitehorse, we passed Lake Laberge, long and deep blue. It's really just a very wide place, a glacier-gouged trough, in the Yukon River. Right! That's the Lake ``Lebarge'' where Sam McGee. . . .
Fact is, Service's poem of that cremation is largely fiction. Oh, there was a Sam McGee, all right. He worked for a transport company in Whitehorse. I saw what is said to be his old cabin. They say McGee was pretty upset when he read about his ``cremation.''
There was, however, a Dr. Sugden (with whom Service lived for a time) who was sent out to a sick prospector's cabin. The doctor found the man dead, frozen stiff. Sugden had no tools to bury the man - probably couldn't have broken the frozen ground if he had - so he cremated him in the boiler of the derelict steamer Olive May (the poem has it Alice May) and brought the ashes back to town. And that's the truth. So they say.
Of all the cities and towns I visited in Alaska and the Yukon, I believe I liked Sitka best. It's just a little place, part Russian, part native Tlingit and totally beautiful with a crescent harbor and a mountain backdrop. It's not terribly touristy, although the presence of a large cruise ship in the harbor down make a temporary impact on the town of less than 9,000 residents.
It began as a 19th century Russian effort at North American colonization when Alexander Baranov (often spelled Baranof), boss of the fur-trading Russia-American Company, overwhelmed the indigenous people. It was at Sitka where the first American flag flew over Alaska. The town was the territorial capital from 1867 until 1912.
The copper-clad, four-story belltower and signature onion dome of the Russian Orthodox St. Michael's Cathedral rises above rooftops of houses, shops and fish houses in the heart of the town.
Actually, it's the new St. Michael's. The 1848 original was destroyed by fire in 1966, but it has been faithfully reconstructed in the same cruciform style of the original with an inconspicuous alteration: gray beaded clapboards cover concrete that replaces the original 12-inch spruce log walls. Most of the religious icons and artifacts were salvaged by a human chain that braved the flames.
Sitka has a significant repository of Native American material culture housed in the Sheldon Jackson Museum, and the Alaska Raptor Rehabilitation Center, where injured birds of prey are treated, is a unique attraction.
A few miles outside Juneau, the capital since 1906, Alaska has a drive-up, walk-up glacier. Mendenhall is one of nearly 40 glaciers that sprawl out of the 1,500-square-mile Juneau Ice Field, which is larger than the state of Rhode Island. And because of its accessibility, it is one of the state's most popular attractions.
Like most, but not all, of the Glacier Bay glaciers, Mendenhall is in retreat. It still flows forward at the rate of about two to three feet a day, but it wastes away at a slightly faster pace. Its present rate of retreat is about 30 feet a year. Not something you can really watch. At its greatest advance, about 1750, its face was 2 1/2 miles down the valley from its present position.
The Visitor Center, whose deck offers a spectacular view of the glacier's 1 1/2-mile wide, dirt-streaked face, sits atop a rock that was covered by the glacier as recently as the 1930s.
The other must-see stop in Juneau is the Alaska State Museum, a 10-minute walk from where the cruise ships dock. The displays do an excellent job of telling the Alaska story.
I want my man, Robert Service, to have the final word here. It was, after all, he who introduced me to the Far North. This is from his poem, ``The Spell of the Yukon,'' but I think it speaks to Alaska as well:
There's a land where the mountains are nameless,
And the rivers all run God knows where;
There are lives that are erring and aimless,
And deaths that just hang by a hair;
There are hardships that nobody reckons;
There are valleys unpeopled and still;
There's a land - oh, it beckons and beckons,
And I want to go back - and I will. ILLUSTRATION: STEPHEN HARRIMAN COLOR PHOTOS
Eldred Rock Lighthouse is just one of the spectacular sights to be
seen on a boat ride along Alaska's Lynn Canal. The vessel
Fairweather offers ``vistazoom video'' for shoreline closeups.
On Alaska's Glacier Bay, passengers crowd the railing of Holland
America's m.s. Maasdam to gaze at the Margerie and Grand Pacific
glaciers.
This airstrip at the Denali Wilderness Lodge in central Alaska is
the only way in and out.
Photos
STEPHEN HARRIMAN
More than two dozen log buildings are spread over 22 acres at the
secluded Denali Wilderness Lodge.
Russ Juby wears a 19th century uniform of the Royal Canadian Mounted
Police.
by CNB