From my field notes, 17 August 2018:
“Last night I slept on the flat bench of duff-covered ground at the base of the ‘camp tree,’ a white and skeletal cedar with the characteristic axe marks from decades-past Tlingit or Haida woodsmen who had notched the bark from the underhanging side of the leaning tree trunk. As Wayne, our on-hand anthropologist, explained, the notched wood of the tree would have died and dried in the rainshadow of the trunk making for ready tinder to be harvested the next season when the camp was reoccupied. The overhanging tree would have also provided the Native campers with shelter for fire or lean-to bivouac. One of the same purposes for with I utilize it today.
As I fell asleep under the history-laden tree, I dreamed of a boat at anchor in high winds. As the gales tugged at the boat, the anchor dug into the muddy bottom and the rode strained taught to the windlass bolted to the foredeck. But the wind was strong, and the windlass was pulling from the deck boards and the road was splitting. With each gust, the planks screamed “Eeeeerrrrck!”
A few more heavy gusts would rend the boat from anchor, setting it adrift in the turbulence. Another gust and a louder “Eeeerrrrck!”
In my dreamy torpor I was frozen, I could do nothing but watch.
“EEEEEERRRRCK!” and I watched the windlass pull loose, hanging by a single bolt.
Just before the final fastener snapped, I woke up to the sun shining sidelong under my tarp and straight into my eyes. I could still hear the creaking Eeeeerrrck sound out in the cove and realized it was the agitate call of a belted Kingfisher. The sound of the gusts in my dream had been the sound of light swell washing the beach.”
One of my favorite quotes about Wilderness is from former Senator Clinton Anderson who said, “Wilderness is an anchor to windward. Knowing it is there, we can also know that we are still a rich nation, tending our resources as we should—not a people in despair searching every last nook and cranny of our land for a board of lumber, a barrel of oil, a blade of grass, or a tank of water.” No doubt, I must have had that quote on my mind as I fell asleep on the third night of our three week expedition in South Prince of Wales Wilderness.
South POW is one of the many forgotten Wilderness areas of Southeast Alaska, overshadowed by the iconic ice-filled fjords like Tracy Arm or Glacier Bay, and tourist hotspots like Misty Fjords. Nevertheless, it can easily compete in scale and dynamic topography, and what it lacks in defining photo-geniality, it more than makes up for in its isolation and profound solitude.
At just under 90,000 acres, South POW is the 10th largest and the southern-most (narrowly outcompeting the southern point of Misty Fjords) of the twenty-four Wilderness Areas in Southeast Alaska. As its name implies, the designation was carved from the southern portion of Prince of Wales island, including the watersheds draining into Klakas Inlet, all watersheds south that drain to Cordova Bay and Barrier Islands. Encompassed in the boundary is a labarynith of convoluted (some might say fractal-like) shoreline. This is dynamic and magic country. It is intricate and you need to see it intimately, by kayak, or even better, by foot. Inlets and passages otherwise hidden from sight appear as if by incantation, the trees parting to a kayak-width channel only when you paddle immediately beside.
From my field notes, 18 August 2018:
“From our southernmost camp, we paddled out to the most seaward rocks and islands. Out here on the outside waters, among the breakers, expansive kelp beds, and scattered, battered islands with rocky headlands. White breaking water sparkled in the sun with each swell, but the water was otherwise calm. All of the branches of the few trees on these islands point leeward, like frozen weathervanes recording past winter storms originating from the Dixon Entrance to the south.”
From my field notes, 19 August 2018:
“After exploring the Barrier Islands, we spent time tracing the coastline of the main island which is punctuated by deep, multi-chambered inlets, bays, and saltchucks. For instance, a side channel in Hunter Bay opens into Biscuit Lagoon. At the back of Biscuit Lagoon, the Saltchuck opens at high water above a tidal waterfall. The shoreline is like walking through a labyrinth with new passages appearing and opening into whole new habitats.
We paddled up to the base of the Saltchuck where salmon were preparing to run at high water. Wayne, whose eyes always seem to catch any inorganic shape on the landscape, noticed that beneath our tethered kayaks, below the waterline, rocks had been arranged in a line. He reasoned that at lower water the stones would cordon off a pool. The Native fishermen would have either trapped salmon in the pool or used it as a holding pen for their catch pulled from the falls.”
The Wilderness is a mélange of habitats from wave washed coastal shores, to glass-still secluded bays, upland muskegs, lowland salal thickets, and rich estuaries throbbing with activity. The varied habitats granted us countless wildlife sightings, include a few once-in-a-lifetime encounters.
From my field notes, 19 August 2018:
“As we ate lunch next to the falls and pondered the rock wall, Kim noticed two wolves trotting up the shoregrass upwind from us. When the wolves saw us, the first bolted. The curiosity of the second got the best of him. With the wind preventing any scent information, he boldly came up to us for a close look. Satisfied, he trotted back away only to decide he still needed a closer look. This process repeated, with us standing like stones, the click of my camera shutter the only sound, until he dematerialized in to the forest.”
The Alexander Archipelago wolf are a controversial subspecies (Canus lupus ligoni) of North American wolf that occur only in the islands and mainland of Southeast Alaska. They are absent from the ABC islands which are dominated by brown bear, but the range is largely congruent with black bears in Southeast. No fossil evidence of the wolves exists, suggesting that the species colonized after the last glacial maximum.
Goldman (1944) was the first to describe the species and granted the name Alexander Archipelago wolf. A more recent molecular study (Weckworth et al. 2005), corroborated the original distinction, finding that the Southeast Alaska population was genetically delineated from the continental population and was itself highly structured and diverse. That same study found evidence that the Prince of Wales population formed its own unique and isolate subgroup within Southeast Alaska. Having spent a fair amount of time with wolves in Glacier Bay and Gustavus, our crew had guessed this was the case. In fact, it took us a split second to even realize we were staring down a wolf when it appeared–it was so dissimilar from the canids we had encountered up north. These island wolves appeared smaller, more dog-like, and with an unusual coat pattern.
The biogeography of the Prince of Wales wolves puts them in a particularly perilous position. It is a general rule in ecology that the smaller and more isolated a population, the more sensitive it will be to environmental and demographic fluctuations (for example, the case of Isle Royale wolves). Although Prince of Wales is an exceptionally large island (the 4th largest in the U.S., just after Puerto Rico), the landscape itself has been highly fragmented and reduced by massive clearcuts and the most extensive road system in Southeast Alaska (about 2,500 miles; more roads than the rest of Southeast combined, many times over).
Roads are a major problem for POW wolves (even more so than for most widlife). Studies across all U.S. populations of wolves have shown a negative correlation between road density and wolf abundance. Wolves were absent where road densities exceed 0.9 mi/mi2 (Jensen et al. 1986,
Mech et al. 1988, Fuller 1989, as cited in Schoen and Person, n.d.). Most of the roads on POW were created by logging companies (on tax-payer dollars), which makes a strong correlation with roads and clearcuts, both of which are avoided by wolves (Person 2001).
Black-tailed deer, the wolves’ primary prey, require old-growth forest for summer browse and winter habitat to shelter from heavy snow. Clearcutting areas leads to a “succession debt” for wolves as logging removes habitat which removes deer. And logging continues on the island, driving the succession debt further into the red. In fact, habitat loss from logging alone is expected to reduce the wolf population by a further 25% before 2045 (Person 2001).
But habitat loss is not the only threat to POW wolves. Despite Canis lupus being listed as an endangered species in the lower 48, wolves are considered both big-game and furbears in Alaska, subjecting them to both hunting and trapping. Between the 1980s and 2010, around 175 wolves were killed in Southeast Alaska; 75 of those were from POW (Schoen and Person, n.d.).
As logging and associate road infrastructure continue to proliferate, “wolf populations on Prince of Wales and adjacent islands will be caught between two significant pressures: declining prey abundance and increasing hunting and trapping mortality” (Schoen and Person, n.d.).
The South POW Wilderness, at least, is a partial refuge for the wolves. While Wilderness designation prevents future roads and logging, it does not exclude hunting nor trapping; so, there really is no safe haven for these unique canids. My hope is that the isolation and extreme difficulty of hunting here compared to the road system will keep it to a minimum.
In addition to the wolves, we came nose-to-nose with loads of wildlife, including sandhill cranes, black bears, whales (alive and bones), and so many kingfishers and river otters.
From my field notes:
“More kingfishers than I’ve ever seen! The shoreline seems like it is just dripping with kingfishers from every low-hanging branch. And below, the tidal rocks are writhing with families of river otter. It must be a productive place for small carnivores and pescavores!”
We spent a large chunk of our time in Klakas Inlet, the long fjord that dominates the norther reach of the Wilderness. Although not too steep, the shoreline harbors very few beaches along the flanks. One exception is a grassy cove sheltering a pink and sockeye waterfall. We spent an entire day watching black bears filter through, try their luck with the flying salmon, and continue their up-fjord journey.
The density of black bears in Klakas was astounding. We paddled to the head of the inlet, where the fjord splinters into three massive estuaries, each full of late-running salmon. At one point, I could see 7 bears around the shore. They circled the shoreline of the fjord almost like a slow and dispersed school of fish circling a pond.
From my field notes, 27 August 2018:
“In the morning I watched multicolored bat stars pass beneath my kayak. Their five to six bright arms were like a dappled rainbow fluorescing against the dark water. Watching black bears pass by on shore is like the inversion of the bat stars. The dark fur seems to absorb light and looking for bears is more about looking for the absence of a bear or a bear shaped black hole in the otherwise colorful shoreline.”
From my field notes, 21 August 2018:
“On every trip, we try to make a point of hiking uphill, above the treeline, in order to look back down on the landscape. Experiencing a Wilderness is a lot like experiencing a painting. It takes time. You have to shift your focus and view it from different angles to take it all in. Look close, then step back. Put your nose right up to the canvas, then from across the room. In wild places, you have to paddle close to shore, get out and crawl through the brush of the forest, then get up high to see the whole thing. The detail and the composition are the functional integral of artistic mastery; same goes for the majesty of nature.”
So, we set our sights on a bald knob at the mouth of Klakas inlet and landed below a steep, even-aged stand of spruce and hemlock. We had envisioned a strenuous, patience-trying hike over old growth deadfall and bashing through endless under-story brush. It turned out that the stand had been beach logged many decades ago. The regenerating forest was the perfect age to shade out the under-story brush, but too young to accumulate much deadfall. It turned out to be one of the easiest routes we’d ever hiked. Surprisingly, there was not even brush at the transition from the forest to the subalpine bald, so we walked out into the sun and onto the rocks. From the top, we were treated to views of the entire southern half of Cordova Bay, up into Klakas Inlet and the ridges of the surrounding watersheds. In short, we could see almost the entire Wilderness area and the saltwater well out into the Pacific.
The pools on the bald were ringed by bright red sundews, a carnivorous plant that produces a sticky, sweet digestive enzyme from the tips of hairs on its leaves. Bug are attracted to the scent, land on the leaf, then wrap themselves up in the leaf as they struggle and adhere to more leaf hairs.
I see the round leaf sundew (Drosera rotundiflora) often, but I was surprised to see the English sundew (Drosera anglica) was more common and growing right alongside the D. rotundiflora.
From my field notes, 22 August 2018:
“The Native Haida and Tlingit folks who frequented this region made ample use of the fractal coastline. In almost every landable spot, Wayne noticed some trace of human occupation Some hints were subtle, like notches in trees or new forest growth indicating an area that had been cleared. Occasionally, the signs were more obvious, like the square foundations of old plank houses subsumed into the ground, and even pilons supporting old floor joists, now fixed in place by the roots of saplings growing atop them. The debris of stoves and other iron objects were sunk into the moss of a few such sites.
Wayne pointed out an iron ax head—the same type of ax head used to make the tree notches we’d been seeing all over the coast.”
After 16 days, we left the Wilderness toward Hydaburg. After days of calm waters and avoiding the oppressive sun, we found ourselves preparing for some exposed sections and large crossings in big water. The water shut us down and sent us back to camp for an extra night. We made progress despite lots of waiting and watching as the conditions fluctuated. We made our longest crossing of Cordova Bay in building, following seas. About midway across, we spotted black fins slicing the water miles away. As we thrashed onward on our heading, we watched the pod of orca surface and dive, rapidly closing the distance between us. The bull crossed comfortably forward of our bows, but the four females intersected our course. They surfaced with explosive spouts close enough to startle us. We exchanged some wide-eyed glances of concern while the females cavorted amidst out kayaks until they melted back into the water and joined the male far off to starboard.
From my field notes, 30 August 2018:
“South POW is a palimpsest. The page has been written by glaciers, over-written by many chapters of ecological succession, punctuated by interludes of logging, and a final chapter back to succession, all with the footnotes and interjections of Haida and Tlingit history throughout.
Now, having departed the Wilderness Area, our time there seems even quieter in contrast. Clear cuts appear over every ridge and we hear the whining buzz of outboards every few tens of minutes as boats zip in and out of Hydaburg.”
We paddled into Hydaburg on a quiet mid-morning diffused with grey. The brightly painted poles and homes seemed like holes pricked into the grey blanket of the day.
We found the folks in Hydaburg incredibly welcoming. We were invited into smokehouses and carving sheds, folks told us stories and we even made canine friends after saving a dog from drowning at the dock.
Overall, our South Prince of Wales expedition will remain one of my favorites. The immense quiet and solitude, the shoreline full of intrigue, the enigmatic wildlife—will define my memory of this place.
Route and Logistics:
Out trip could not have happened without Katy. We rented all of our kayaks through her, and in order to maximize our time in the Wilderness, Katy transported us to Klakas by skiff. She also picked us up and even stored our gear for us.
If you decide to paddle in South POW (and you should) keep in mind that camping can be sparse, weather can pick up quickly, parts of the coastline are committing, and communications are almost non-existent. Talk to locals, know your own skill level, and pour over your charts. Of course, I’m always happy to provide beta. Just drop me a line.
Check out my posts from other expeditions.
Check out other posts about designated Wilderness.
References:
Fuller (1989) Population dynamics of wolves in northcentral Minnesota. Wildlife Monographs 105.
Goldman (1944) Classification of wolves. In S. Young and E. Goldman, eds., The wolves of North America, Part 2. Dover Publications, New York
Jensen, Fuller, and Robinson (1986) Wolf (Canis lupus) distribution on the Ontario to Michigan border near Sault St. Marie. Canadian Field Naturalist 100: 363-366.
Mech, Fritts, Radde, and Paul (1988) Wolf distribution and road density in Minnesota. Wildlife Society Bulletin 16:85-87.
Person (2001) Alexander Archipelago wolves: ecology and population viability in a disturbed, insular landscape (Doctoral dissertation). University of Alaska, Fairbanks, AK.
Schoen and Pearson, Chapter 6.4 “Alexander Archipelago Wolf.” In A Conservation Assessment and Resource Synthesis for The Coastal Forests and Mountains Ecoregion in the Tongass National Forest and Southeast Alaska. The Nature Conservancy.
Weckworth, Talbot, Sage, Person, and Cook (2005) A signal for independent coastal and continental histories among North American wolves. Mol. Ecol. 14: 917-931.