William’s Cove & Endicott Arm

Finally, on our very last day, the true Alaskan rainforest experience. Fat raindrops plopping softly into green seawater, carving rings that overlap on the surface. Hikers slog across the slippery beach rocks, then swish- suddenly, like a curtain closing, step into the quiet green magic of the Tongass National Forest. Following bear trails that weave among the huge conifers, discovering new lichens and mosses on the logs we clamber over, up through mud and creek and devil’s club to the bog, the curtain opening again on a new habitat of small lakes and tiny plants and old trees that are only three feet tall. Perhaps this boggy place is a home for wood elves? Certainly for some geese and maybe a mink family as they have left us some sign of their passing.

We leave the spruce and hemlock trees behind us as we cruise up Endicott Arm and begin to see bare rock faces smoothed and scraped by ice-held rock. Narrow and steep-sided, water falls in slim ribbons down the fiord walls from a thousand feet above us. And ice. Clear ice, blue ice, green ice, brash ice. Bergs and shooters. Some of the pieces are reminiscent of French art deco glass. The face of the Dawes glacier is right in front of the Zodiacs and big chunks of white and blue ice come tumbling down with a tremendous crashing sound, while arctic terns and gulls swoop in to pick up copepods and other bits that the calving glacier churns up. The scope of this land presses our rational minds to let go of measurements best used in smaller spaces than with this towering blue river of ice.

For some, a day of rain after our week of fine weather might be a disappointment. But we suited up, took to the boats and enjoyed every last bit of glorious beauty the landscape had to offer. Weather, well we had some- after all it’s this is Southeast Alaska!