In Awe on the Inside Passage

I was transfixed. A colossal vertical wall surrounded the entire tree-covered island in the distance, making it look like an otherworldly fortress. As I strained to get a better look, Lee Burrows, our shipboard naturalist, explained: “It’s a fata morgana.”

Named for Morgan le Fay, King Arthur’s legendary fairy half-sister and sorceress, this type of marine optical illusion conjures up strange visions and distortions, like a mirage created by heat waves in a desert. As our ship moved I began to see through the illusion, which had transformed the watery reflection of the island’s trees into an apparition of a huge stockade.

But I had already fallen under the spell of Alaska’s Inside Passage, and halfway through our eight-day cruise nothing surprised me anymore. The fata morgana was just another of the daily marvels on this magical filigree of land and sea stretching from Vancouver, Canada, to Skagway, Alaska. The inland waterway meanders past mountains, dazzling glaciers, fiords and islands, some inhabited only by bears, bald eagles and other denizens of the far north.

Our cruise aboard the Safari Quest, a 120-foot, 21-passenger yacht, began in Juneau and ended in Sitka, about 100 miles southwest as the raven flies. Bill Gates and Chuck Norris have chartered these comfortable, well-appointed vessels, which are operated by the Washington state-based American Safari Cruises. Though we’re not in same tax bracket, my husband, Aubrey, and I decided on a splurge trip last May to celebrate a promotion and a second honeymoon.

Our trip was expensive (about $3,500 each), though it was a good value for the money and combined all the things we wanted: physical activity, adventure, luxury, nature interpretation and wildlife viewing but without crowds, cruise ships or mass tourism. The price also included all shore excursions, meals and snacks and a 24-hour open bar. I have taken less expensive cruises on which many of those things cost extra and greatly inflated the base price. And now, with so many ships relocating to Alaska after Sept. 11, the yacht would be a good way to avoid waters crowded with cruise ships.

Our small craft could go into quiet coves and inlets that no big cruise ship could negotiate, and could stop or change course at will to observe wildlife. We could paddle every day in the yacht’s fleet of sea kayaks or explore in its motorized Zodiac. Best of all, we would have the wilderness to ourselves.

Given the cost of the trip, I worried that we might be cruising with a bunch of snooty upper-crusters, but our shipmates turned out to be working people with not a snob or movie star in the bunch. Among them were four couples from Jackson, Miss., who had been friends since college. They were continuous sources of entertainment, especially Beau Whittington, with his stand-up comedic Cajun monologues. Also part of the “Mississippi eight” was an attorney, appropriately named Crymes Pittman, who always seemed to have an insightful comment or amusing observation. The Lokeys, a Florida couple, had brought their college-age son and daughter, whose vegan diet seemed to present no challenge to our chef.

Although the atmosphere was intimate and the yacht small, we didn’t feel crowded, since the ship had four decks. On top was a large observation deck with chairs and a hot tub; below were smaller covered outdoor decks and a library. A roomy main salon with the bar served as the social center and was lined with large windows and comfortable upholstered seats. The salon, where Lee gave daily nature lectures, had a built-in video screen and a sizable video library.

The staterooms, which varied in size and price, were not spacious but were still comfortable. The smallest and least expensive were on the lower deck, where we stayed, and had tiny windows that required a person to stand on the bed to look out. The largest, the “admiral’s staterooms,” were on the upper deck and had sliding glass doors, small balconies and twin or queen-size beds.

The ship’s crew members were bright, well traveled and sophisticated. They knew our names within minutes of meeting us, and after a few days we learned theirs too.

After a night’s stay in Juneau we met our 19 fellow passengers and together motored in an antique touring car to the inspiring 700-foot-high Mendenhall Glacier. Late that afternoon, Safari Quest cruised out of Juneau’s busy harbor, our trim vessel dwarfed by huge cruise ships. We were headed for a night’s anchorage at Taku Harbor. Unlike other cruise liners, the yacht cruised only during the day so passengers could view the scenery and wildlife along the way. We weren’t covering great distances, but rather weaving in and out of coves and inlets.

The next morning, after about an hour’s journey, we entered Tracy Arm, one of Alaska’s most beautiful fiords, 30 miles long and only a half-mile wide at its upper end. We were the only vessel in this sheltered finger of calm water favored by kayakers and too narrow for large cruise ships. (In fact, other than in Juneau, we never saw a cruise ship during our voyage, although one day we passed the Alaska State Ferry.)

I felt as though I was in a trance as Safari Quest glided silently up the channel. Near-vertical granite walls rose 2,000 feet out of the green water. Silvery cascades of snowmelt tumbled down immense rock faces. Blue icebergs, sculpted into graceful shapes, drifted past. Arctic loons fluttered above the water’s surface, and murrelets bobbed like ducks. Clouds shrouded the rocky, domelike peaks, and rust, tan and green tinted the rocks at the water’s edge.

Aubrey and I were a little dismayed when our first two days dawned gray, cloudy and occasionally drizzly, typical Alaskan weather. Luckily, we were blessed with blue skies and sunshine for the rest of our voyage.

Tracy Arm dead-ends at Sawyer Glaciers, and when we arrived there late in the morning, harbor seals were basking on the ice floes. “Seals are safe from killer whales here because of glacial till in the water,” Lee told us. “It’s like driving in fog, so the whales rarely venture near the glaciers.”

But we did. In the motorized, inflatable Zodiac, we slalomed around icebergs up to blue walls of ice hundreds of feet high--but not too close, because chunks could calve at a moment’s notice, creating large waves.

Lee, who had abandoned a graduate degree in biology, had a special interest in birds, and her breadth of knowledge was fascinating. Aubrey and I are casual but semi-serious, longtime birders, and thanks to Lee we learned to distinguish arctic birds that we had never seen and barely heard of. But birds weren’t the only wildlife we became more familiar with.

A hushed alert quickly spread from stem to stern: a bear! Capt. Travis Stephens edged the boat 30 feet from shore, where a coal-black bear ambled across the rocks. Just out of hibernation, he was hungry and clawing up clumps of barnacles and seaweed, undisturbed by the clicking of a dozen cameras. As the day progressed we spotted more bears, some on ledges, others on beaches.

That evening at our anchorage in Snug Cove, Aubrey and I luxuriated by ourselves in the hot tub, sipping wine and watching grizzlies, which seemed to be having a good time of their own onshore.

Life aboard ship was relaxed. Every afternoon we munched on freshly baked cookies in the salon. We had a large selection of fine wines and spirits along with Alaskan and other microbrews at the bar. Daily cocktail hour was always popular since it included a variety of savory appetizers--giant shrimp, miniature quiches or a platter of olives, fresh veggies, hummus, baba ghannouj and pitas. With so much to do and see each day, people rarely frequented the bar, except perhaps to have a beer after a hike or kayaking. Our trip was thankfully free of any heavy drinkers or barflies.

Salads of field greens, vegetables and herbs grown in the ship’s galley preceded every dinner. We had a choice of entrees, usually seafood, chicken or red meat, but vegetarian dinners were also available. One night at a stop, the chef bought enough salmon for the next night’s dinner. And dessert--chocolate mousse, cheesecake or fresh fruit with sorbets made on board--never disappointed. Our days began with freshly baked croissants and other pastries at the bar, followed by full breakfasts in the dining room.

(We were surprised to learn recently of a Centers for Disease Control score of 68--below 85 is considered not satisfactory--in an inspection of the Safari Quest last May. The low rating was due to several factors--including on-board water facilities and food storage--but from our observations, the ship and everything on it appeared immaculate. American Safari president Don Blanchard says the company had already made alterations on board to comply with CDC requirements and more would be made before its next sailing season in May.)

In Frederick Sound the next day, in the middle of lunch, a cry of “orcas!” rang out. We left the table in mid-bite, racing for our cameras, coats and binoculars. From the ship’s deck we spotted our first two orcas, also known as killer whales, then four, then eight, their smart tuxedo markings bright against the steely waters as they leaped, dove and spouted. A mother and baby swam past, followed by a big male, his dorsal fin like a tall black sail. On the lowest deck, just above water level, we could practically reach out and touch them.

One day Crymes said he spotted some Sitka deer. “There are seven or eight of them on the beach,” he said. “I can see the white of their [tails].” We looked through our binoculars and, to everyone’s amusement, realized that Crymes’ deer derrieres were the heads of bald eagles. By the end of the cruise we had seen so many of the regal birds that we lost count.

Kayaking, one of my favorite daily treats, brought us closer to wildlife. One day in a cove, Aubrey and I paddled our double kayak near the shore and watched a foraging grizzly and a capering mink within a stone’s throw of each other--and us. Though the bears are shy and often retreated into the brush when they saw us, we kept our distance.

“The strongest muscle in the animal kingdom is in the tail of a humpback whale,” Lee said, and for days we had been scanning the water for them. Finally we saw some of the huge but graceful flukes as a pod of humpbacks, each adult the size of a bus, dove to feed. They seemed to move in slow motion, but I still had difficulty trying to capture them on film.

Our next stop was Petersburg, a village of about 3,300 people settled by Norwegians in the 1890s on Mitkof Island, which is accessible only by boat or plane. The small port was packed with bright fishing boats, and veils of cloud trailed below the snowy peaks surrounding it. Our excursion included a visit to a shrimp cannery; fishing is Petersburg’s chief industry. “My father opened the cannery in 1906,” owner Patti Norheim told us. She said she has lived in Petersburg for 71 years. “But that’s no indication of my age. I had a hip replacement and it took 20 years off my life, so now I’m 51,” she said.

Late that afternoon some of us headed aloft in a De Havilland Beaver float plane--the workhorse of Alaska--over Le Conte Glacier. The iceberg-choked Le Conte Bay ends at this behemoth tongue of tormented ancient ice and snow. “You felt like you were suspended in time,” Crymes remarked afterward. “It was surreal.”

As our cruise continued we saw thundering waterfalls, hiked to hot springs and took in a stop at Murder Cove. Site of an abandoned whaling station, the cove’s ominous name gave us pause as we climbed out of the Zodiac onto the gravel beach. A lone figure carrying a shotgun walked toward us.

The gun-toter was Leeann Keeler, a former hospice nurse and home health care worker from Oregon. “Now I’m packin’ weapons,” she said. Not for us, she explained, but for bears. “There are five 500-pound grizzly sows wandering around here,” she said.

Keeler and her husband, Dale, “a Wyoming cowboy,” are the sole human inhabitants of this remote Alaskan cove, where they are building a small guest lodge.

All too soon we pulled into Sitka. That night was our shipboard “last supper,” the only slightly dressy occasion we had, complete with a moving reading from retired professor Sol Kimerling’s personal journal. Then crew and passengers headed to a local bar filled with smoke, music and lively Alaskans.

The next day, after heartfelt farewells, we disembarked. Aubrey and I set off to explore Sitka for several days on our own, during which we fantasized about buying a boat there and spending our lives exploring the Inside Passage.

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Guidebook: Close Quarters

Getting there: Alaska Airlines has connecting service to Juneau from LAX. Restricted round-trip fares start at $413.

The cruise: American Safari Cruises sails Alaska’s Inside Passage May through Sept. 24 aboard the 21-passenger, 120-foot Safari Quest; the 105-foot, 12-passenger Safari Spirit; and the 12-passenger, 105-foot Safari Escape.

Inside Passage cruises range from seven to 11 days and leave from Juneau or Sitka, Alaska, or Vancouver or Prince Rupert, Canada, and include a 24-hour open bar; meals; use of kayaks and Zodiacs; and a flight-seeing excursion and shore excursions. Air fare is extra. Rates from $3,695 to $7,995 per person, double occupancy; discounts offered for early booking.

For more information: American Safari Cruises, 19101 36th Ave. West, Suite 201, Lynnwood, WA 98036; (888) 862-8881, www.amsafari.com.

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Reed Glenn is a freelance writer based in Boulder, Colo.