Pavlof Harbor & Basket Bay
It’s a joy to wake up with a brilliant sun shining on quiet water. This morning also had the thrill of watching Dall’s porpoises racing around the ship with a characteristic rooster-tail of spray shooting off their heads. They have been clocked at over 30 miles per hour, giving them the honor of being the fastest toothed whale in the world. These cetaceans have a striking white mark on a black and very thick body. The males can weigh over 400 pounds and sometimes interact with ships by crisscrossing in front of the bow.
We arrived at Pavlof Harbor just after breakfast and were soon exploring. Leisurely hikers walked to a 20-foot cascading waterfall that pours clear water from a beautiful lake. We all made a lot of noise, clapping and yelling to alert any bears in the area of our presence. On the way, the path passed by a spruce that bears had recently scratched and several tell-tale, crinkled blonde hairs were stuck to the sap. A few red-breasted sapsuckers flew by and also caught our attention. Other hiking groups walked to a good view of the lakeshore. It is ringed by a broad band of dense grasses and sedges with yellow pond lilies floating just within the margin. White patches of last winter’s snow filled the hollows of the mountain tops and will soon flow through the lake before us. The longer hikes walked a third of the way around and sat on a grassy bench full of red columbine, white bog orchids and orange-bottomed bumblebees crawling upon blossoms.
Limestone from ancient coral reefs and sea floor sediments framed our next adventure. Many of the islands here are in what geologists call the Alexander Terrane. It was formed from a volcanic group of islands somewhere in the South Pacific 350 million years ago. Coral was associated with these islands. This terrane was transported and smashed against Alaska about 100 million years ago leaving massive quantities of volcanic rock and limestone. Today we were at a place where the limestone had partly dissolved away leaving intriguing grottos and caves. We followed a small river through a grotto shown in today’s daily expedition photograph. It was almost like entering through a gateway to another land, greener and more vibrant. Cold clear water poured out from an underground limestone cave and swirled around us.
Kayakers also ventured into the same place. Some of the paddlers found an exceptionally tame bird called a dipper that even came over to sit upon the bow of one of our kayaks. The fast current could have taken one of these nimble crafts to a place where it dare not go, but luck was with us and we were soon back on board.
Our ship cruised north toward Icy Strait as we ate a delicious dinner and watched the evening colors paint themselves across an Alaskan landscape. After dinner we watched humpback whales far into the wee hours.
