Porpoises occasionally broke the surface as we turned from Chatham into Peril Strait. We soon prepared for a landing at the beautiful Lake Eva trailhead. The intertidal area is quite extensive here, especially today during a very low tide. It was an exploration hike just making it to the start of the actual trail. Dozens of mottled sea stars were high and dry as well as the skinny-legged decorator crab with its very pointy head. Butter and large horse clams appeared strewn about with cockles galore. Those wading in shallow water also found a 2-foot-diameter sunflower star and a Dungeness crab scurrying away.
Ferns, brambles, dwarf dogwoods, and May lilies have to poke through a blanket of moss covering almost everything in the understory of the forests near Lake Eva. The trail leads through primeval corridors above a winding stream. Kayakers stood on clams before pushing into solitude. Many hikers continued to the lake or walked to a pool above a waterfall that was filled with pink salmon.
The Chatham Strait Fault is a long and conspicuous landmark that cuts diagonally from northeast to southwest through Southeast Alaska. Glaciers scoured it so effectively that it’s become the most conspicuous waterway on any map of this area. Our afternoon was spent in its vastness heading for and into Frederick Sound, an area noted for high krill concentrations and the animals that feed on them.
In the afternoon we encountered a humpback whale that breached, slapped its pectoral fins, rolled, and breached again. It was if it had an exercise program it repeated over and over. After an early dinner the show really began. When we arrived on deck it seemed like each of ten whales in sight had its mouth open as it lunged for a mouthful of krill. Today’s photo is of two whales feeding side-by-side, the second showing the pink roof of its mouth. So it went until there wasn’t enough light to see. What a way to end another extraordinary day in Southeast Alaska!
