Alaska

I was not aware of it, but Beer Fest was happening in town that weekend. Too bad, since I had other plans. I can always get trashed on my own time, I say, and I did not come to Haines to fight a hangover. By the way, this was happening on the set of White Fang, mentioned in part 1.

The first thing I did was rent a bicycle, to take it out onto Haines Highway. As the town of Haines itself, the highway is one of the most beautiful roads in Alaska, although I would guess most of the roads in Alaska are that way. Some actually choose as their cycling adventure a multi-day trip via Canada, from Haines to Skagway.

There is some Canadian TV programming in Haines, with Canadian and U.S. coins freely accepted at the same time.

Since I have not ridden a bike in well over 10 years, I didn’t push it this time all the way to Canada, although “real” cyclists can cover that distance for fun and not even notice it. I am sure I could have gone further, but my casual riding style sent my butt into intense pain. The bike and I just weren’t made for each other. My real goal was the Bald Eagle Preserve, but I fell far short of it, having to turn around before I couldn’t sit anymore.

And the road was, as expected, beautiful. There is almost no traffic, and there must be only a few roads in the world that are so scenic and almost desolate.

This is the heaven cyclists go to when they die.

I spent a fair amount of time just chilling in the town itself. If you can call 75 degrees “chilling”. Someone actually complained that it was “almost too hot”.

There a few things in particular that struck me about the town:

* Haines appears to have a much bigger slice of 20-somethings, compared to Juneau, sort of contributing to the idea that the young and the hip don’t dig places with no roads out.

* Even though the place is not a cruise ship port (a good thing), there are multiple public restrooms built throughout the town, which is obviously very convenient.

* Prices, OMG. The only cab in town will charge $20 to drive you 4 miles to the ferry terminal. A medium-sized bag of chips can cost as much as $5. And this is not even the edge of existence.

The travel back “home” seemed much shorter, now that I knew my way around the Malaspina. I parked on one of the lower decks, having the place pretty much all to myself for over an hour:

I was gooed in sunblock this time, so I could spend a lot more time outside watching for wildlife and scenery shots.

An interesting thing that the ferry system does is host a forest service representative on board. Keep in mind this is not a narrated sight-seeing tour but a means of transit. Nevertheless, you can still sit in on Southeast Alaska trivia sessions and learn that bears are not true hibernators. Dang it! Just when I was about to find one and pull on its tail!

The long weekend coincided with gorgeous weather across Southeast Alaska, with temperatures pushing 80 degrees during the day. Seeing that camera lenses adore a lot of light, this had to be the time to start seeing the rest of the Southeast, so I grabbed my backpack and boarded a ferry to Haines. Here is my exact GPS route.

Why. Why. Haines is considered to be one of the most scenic towns in the Southeast, if not of the whole state. It was chosen as a set location for the movie White Fang in 1991, for which an entire gold rush town replica was created - Dalton City. The other part of filming was done in Skagway - the town nearby, about 35 minutes away on a fast ferry.

The set of White Fang in Haines. Some buildings are actually operational, such as a microbrewery located in one of them.

The Marine Highway System is pretty much THE method of transportation in the Southeast, and it’s the only way to get your car in/out of landlocked joints such as Juneau.

The vessel I was on - Malaspina - sported a bar with a plasma TV, a reasonably priced large cafeteria, a movie theater, and two glassed 270-degree front observation decks.

One thing for sure – Alaskans don’t deny themselves the beauty of their own state. Myself, I tried to stay outside for as long as possible, spotting marine life, but all the sun and wind started making my face numb, so I had to shamefully hide in one of the observation decks.

The captain did call out a whale at one point, which sent all shutterbugs rushing to the starboard side of the ship, tripping over each other. I didn’t get the shot, but I did see its tail going down. Most of the time, however, I spent gazing into the 270-degree observation deck windows, which were completely filled with snow-topped mountains throughout the entire trip. This is one of the trips where “getting there” is half the fun, at pretty much the same price it took me to get to the ferry terminal from downtown Juneau.

The ferry arrived in Haines at 9 PM, where I jumped into the only taxi cab in town.

To be continued….

On Saturday it was fifty degrees outside, and a rain-free overcast, which is perfect for hiking and braving steep trails, such as the West Glacier Trail.

After trying to actually attend to some work, I had to give up since I had to “do” this particular trail as soon as possible - summer has begun and a good weekend can’t be wasted. Even though I have about 3.5 months left, time is running out if I count all the places I’d like to see - Haines, Sitka, Skagway, Denali, Barrow, and the Bering Sea.

One thing that I am sure most cruise ship visitors don’t know is that you can get right next to the Mendenhall Glacier. You can do whatever you want once you are there: come up to it and pet it, lick it, sniff it, or even get into an ice cave and kill yourself instantly by collapsing ice.

Getting to the glass is not so obvious, however - it’s an unofficial branch of the West Trail that is marked but has no signs giving out its destination. It’s just a trail. Somewhere. I had to dig up this info on the Web, and know that it’s a hidden trail near the first rest stop. Duh. Of course. I knew that.

This time I used my GPS logger from the second I left the house, so I present to you - my exact route, including the bus line.

A few notes about it: the device logs more waypoints when I am on foot, while bus waypoints are pretty sporadic (it can’t get a good lock inside a vehicle). The seldom waypoints get connected by a straight line, giving an approximation of my route.

If mountain goats were anywhere steeper, they’d be flying….

While a logged location may be off somewhat, more points provide for a better picture. You can see that, according to the map, I walked on the glacier itself - but I did not. At that point I was near the glacier but not directly next to it. The satellite imagery is old, so I walked where glass used to be a few years ago. The next time I will get much closer to the glacier, to see how far it really retreated.

This time I didn’t feel like exploring much of it - when I reached for my satellite messenger to send a triumphant cosmic signal of success, I realized that my cellphone took a permanent walk in the rain forests of Alaska. The silver rat bastard jumped belt somewhere, while I was spending time on my all fours climbing to the glacier glass.

Bummer. I had so many things tied to my belt it was difficult to keep track of everything - a sat messenger, foldable knife kit, GPS rescue beacon, and the now gone cellphone. That’s nothing to discourage Crawlmeister, however - I am crawling right back to take a closer look, since this place is positively awesome.