Prince William Sound: Valdez to Cordova Ferry

Our ferry ride aboard the Chenega, the Alaska Marine Highway’s newest and fastest ferry, marked the beginning of our trip to Cordova. Cordova is a small fishing village inaccessible by highway. Would-be visitors must travel by boat or by plane. As a result, there is little traffic and few tourists in the area. From everything I had read, Cordova had the potential to be the highlight of our entire trip; yet upon hearing of our plans, someone who actually lived there wondered aloud about exactly what we would do for three days. I was really hoping they were just jaded locals.

Getting to Cordova by ferry is $50 per person. Not bad. The real expense is ferrying over an RV. The round trip cost us a total of $600. My parents left their rig near the ferry terminal since their cost would have been significantly higher given the size of their rig.

Everything was so socked in as we boarded the ferry that it was hard to tell the water from the sky. This left me a little anxious. Going to Cordova was a gamble in terms of both money and time. If it was like this for the next three days we were screwed.

The weather cleared as we got out into Prince William Sound. I took this as a positive sign despite knowing full well that weather conditions one minute were in no way predictive of what it would be like two minutes later.

The Chenega wasn’t called a “fast ferry” for nothing. It was essentially a giant catamaran propelled by two hydro jet engines. We zipped along at around 40 knots, making wildlife viewing a particular challenge. By the time anyone yelled out that they’d spotted something, it was usually already behind us.

The interior of the vessel was comfortable and roomy. The Forest Service deployed a ranger onboard every ferry to answer questions and help spot wildlife for visitors. They also handed out educational materials like the page Lewis recruited Mimi to help him color.

A series of ceiling-mounted displays charted our position as we wound our way through the different channels that would take us to Cordova. It was nice to be able to monitor our progress. It was also encouraging to see the weather continue to improve as we approached our destination.

The ferry arrived at Cordova’s terminal about fifteen minutes early. The two hour and forty-five minute trip was less than half of the duration of the same trip taken in a standard prop-driven ferry.

As we pulled into the terminal, Lewis made an exciting discovery. The water was full of jellyfish! They were floating right at the water’s surface with huge, colorful bells. Cordova made a great first impression as far as a certain Boy was concerned.

Cordova, Alaska

Baja Taco, behind the old ambulance, is a great little restaurant that would fit in nicely in Homer. They make awesome salmon burritos. But we were actually here to patronize one of Cordova’s two grocery stores. We had decided to have dinner up on Tripod Hill, a place that someone on the ferry had suggested for getting good views of the area.

While Darla made dinner, Mimi tossed balloons with The Boy, and Dad and I walked up Tripod Hill. (And, yes, I took my tripod…)

This is Orca Inlet from the top of Tripod Hill. Dad had turned around at an earlier viewpoint, anxious to eat dinner. I decided to continue on to the top.

On clear days this little pond enjoys a majestic mountain backdrop – but not now. The clouds were moving in quickly as 9:00 came and went. This worked for me because I preferred the scene with a platinum gray background. I ended up waiting for the mountains to completely disappear before taking this shot.

This pond would be more accurately described as a bog. My feet and my tripod legs continued to sink down into the muck the longer I stood and waited for the scene to develop. My Gore-Tex hiking boots were definitely my friends on this little climb.

This morning we had a decision to make. We could hang out in Cordova and explore, or we could set out on the Copper River Highway to the Million Dollar Bridge and Childs Glacier. We wanted to make the drive into the Copper River Delta on a nice day. It was nearly 11:00 am, cloudy, and only 54 degrees – not that nice. Yet given the weather we had encountered recently, we decided we’d better grade on a curve. We decided to make the drive.

Copper River Delta

The Boy believed that cloudy days were no reason not to wear his red Spiderman glasses.

We hadn’t driven too far into the Copper River Delta when we came across this eagle surveying his domain from a lone snag. It has been my experience that eagles can be skittish even at this distance so I hurried to get off a couple shots. As it turned out, my haste was unnecessary; we ended up leaving before the eagle did. In retrospect, I wish that I had taken the time to set up my gear on a tripod. These shots are a little soft.

Childs Glacier

This is the reason most folks end up coming to Cordova. Childs Glacier is considered by many to be the best one in all of Alaska. It is miles wide where it meets the river making it difficult for visitors to appreciate how big this glacier really is.

The tidal waves that form when large chunks of ice calve into the river here are legendary; they are also very dangerous. People have been sent to the hospital after being thrown up into trees or struck by flying boulders. It is not uncommon to see salmon carcasses up in the tree tops – at least the tree tops that haven’t been broken off by these violent occurrences. Yet despite all the warnings, folks continue to wander down to the river’s edge where, every few years, one or two of them get washed down the river to their deaths.

In this image I caught a large chunk of ice calving off the top of the glacier. It is in the middle of the frame, right above the center line. We were told that it was somewhere between the size of a large tour bus and a small house. It didn’t seem that big until we saw the size of the splash it made.

Destructive waves like the ones I described earlier, while not uncommon, are not everyday occurrences either. Everything has to happen just right. The water has to be high enough, and an entire section of the glacier’s face has to slough off at one time. This may only happen once a summer. The camp host told us that right now the water was too low to generate a dangerous wave – assuming we were not standing right at river’s edge.

Inspired by the action, The Boy decided to send his own rock crashing into the river. It didn’t take him long to realize that he’d underestimated how far away the river actually was. Rolling it wasn’t going to work.

It was remarkable just how much colder it was at the viewpoint across from the glacier than the parking area just a few yards farther away. We had noticed this before at other glaciers but the difference had never been so dramatic. Several groups had built fires to help keep themselves warm as they sat in their lawn chairs waiting for the next chunk of ice to fall.

The picnic pavilion helped to provide a sense of scale to the wall of ice across the river.

After lunch, The Boy decided to try a different approach to creating his own tidal waves. Mimi agreed to take his picture while he tried throwing a rock into the river. That didn’t work either…

It was just after 4:00 when we decided to leave the glacier and head over to the Million Dollar Bridge, a short distance away. Darla would have been perfectly happy to spend the rest of the day here watching ice fall into the river. It was an impressive sight to behold. If we ever return to Cordova, we will definitely spend the night here.

The Million Dollar Bridge

The Million Dollar Bridge derived its name from its $1.4 million cost of construction. Built by J.P. Morgan and the Guggenheim family, it was only in use from 1911 to 1938, yet it more than paid for itself by enabling the transport of over $200 million in copper ore from Kennicott to the Port of Cordova. In 1964, one of the bridge’s spans collapsed as a result of the infamous Good Friday Earthquake. It remained that way until 2005, when $19 million was spent to repair the bridge and prevent it from collapsing into the river. It may seem like a waste of money to spend $19 million on a bridge that essentially leads to nowhere but the cost of repair was determined to be less than that of removing the collapsed bridge from the river.

As a side note, this is not the bridge to nowhere often referred to during the course of the 2008 U.S. Presidential campaign. Alaska has more than one of them.

The bridge offered grand views of Childs Glacier downstream and Miles Glacier upstream. Miles Glacier was equally massive – maybe more massive – and routinely sent large chunks of ice downstream past the bridge.

We continued to see (and hear) large chunks of ice calve off Childs Glacier from the bridge. It wasn’t as close to the action here but it was considerably warmer.

The Copper River Delta

A few sections of the road between Cordova and the bridge were no higher than the Copper River itself with a small berm being the only thing keeping the road from washing out. It seemed like a precarious situation but it wasn’t until we spoke to some campers at the glacier that we found out how precarious things actually were. Apparently the road had already washed out a couple times this summer. Everyone who checked into the campground was told to be prepared to pack up and leave on 30 minutes notice.

Haystack Trail

We decided to explore the lush Haystack Trail on our way back to Cordova. It was one of a number of trails along the Copper River Highway. The green ferns and mosses seemed to glow under a canopy of trees. I thought Mom did a good job of capturing this vibrancy in her close up of this fern frond.

Head nets were quickly deployed as we started down the trail. The mosquitoes were abundant and hungry in this soggy microclimate.

The view at the end of the trail was somewhat underwhelming – at least at this time of year. This is not to say that I wouldn’t recommend the trail. I would walk it again just to enjoy more time in these beautiful woods. I was looking forward to our walk back as I had made a mental note of a scene I’d hoped to capture. Meanwhile, The Boy just hoped to get his balloon down.

Darla and Mimi fixed dinner while Papa T and The Boy colored fish. I was still back on the trail calling down destruction on the swarm of mosquitoes that was mercilessly attacking my hands while I tried to stabilize my tripod on what seemed like 12 inches of moss. I was a little cranky when I finally got back to the camper.

Cordova, Alaska

We woke up the next morning to the sound of rain. I was grateful we had driven out to the glacier the day before. Mom grabbed these next two shots in front of, and of, their motel, the Prince William. Their room was clean and large but otherwise unremarkable. The free wireless internet access was spotty at best.

We spent the day exploring some of the sights in and near Cordova. I wasn’t keen to do much in the rain so Mom handled the picture-taking duties until later in the evening. While Mom was taking a few snaps, I also took a few naps. (Did you catch my clever rhyme?)

The weather finally started to clear around 6:00 pm leaving us plenty of time to do something before dark. I proposed driving back into the delta to eat dinner and look for wildlife. My proposal was adopted but could not be enacted until my mom went to visit the sister of a friend who lived here in Cordova. Despite having never met, my mom felt an obligation to meet her and say “hi” – an obligation, I should add, that she looked forward to fulfilling. (After years of fruitless contemplation I have concluded that it takes two ‘x’ chromosomes to understand this type of obligation.) They met at the Cordova harbor, where the grandchildren of my mom’s new friend had just returned from a fishing trip with a giant halibut. Now that’s a fish!

Alaganik Slough

We made it out to Alaganik Slough by 8:00 pm. This is where we would enjoy dinner. I’d wanted to stop here yesterday but we ran out of time.

The Copper River Delta is one of the world’s premiere wetlands. In May, this area is swamped (pun intended) with all varieties of bird life. By this time of year, the spectacle has come and gone. There were no birds hanging out in the area on this evening.

While there were no birds in flight, there were plenty of bugs in flight. The air was filled with them. The Boy didn’t seem to notice though. He had a balloon to pop.

After the demise of the orange balloon, a game of catch broke out between Mimi and The Boy using a freshly minted blue balloon. It had just enough water in it to make it easy to toss back and forth. This series of images capturing the event is one of my all-time favorites.

”Use the Force, Boy…” (in the voice of Obi Wan)

The game ended when Darla announced that dinner was ready. We all returned to the camper and enjoyed a good meal while watching an eagle in a nearby tree.

Cordova, Alaska

Our third morning in Cordova began with the same beautiful weather we had enjoyed the night before. It was perfect weather for exploring this little community.

In this image The Boy is examining one of Cordova’s many shiny black slugs. I’d first encountered these creatures on my hike up Tripod Hill. They were huge – as long as 7” – and there were hundreds of them on the trail, just as there were along the sidewalk here. Curious about their origin, I’ve since done a little research and discovered that they are not indigenous to the area. Some speculate that they were accidentally brought over from Asia in the 1940’s when Asian workers performed much of the work at the local cannery. Others are convinced they did not appear until the 1980’s. What no one debates is that they have become an unrelenting blight upon the community.

A November 2005 edition of the Alaska Master Gardeners Association Newsletter focused on the slug epidemic facing Cordova. One person wrote:

The big black slugs are such a problem one of my friends gave up on her garden all together. Another still gardens but gets quite discouraged as she counts the slugs and picks up over 200 per day during the gardening season!

Slug picking proved to be a good fundraiser for the Community Problem Solvers: 10,971 slugs were picked up and burned over the course of a week. I can attest from my own experience that they missed a few…thousand. It’s hard to see how this slug infestation won’t slowly spread throughout the entire region.

Earlier that morning Dad had asked us to join him and my mom downtown at the Copper River Fleece Company to look at some coats. After browsing through some nice fleece, The Boy, his new fleece hat, and I set off to investigate Cordova’s harbor.

Ironically, The Boy was sporting his new fleece hat on this, the warmest, sunniest day of our entire trip.

This moment could rightly be described as the most exciting moment of The Boy’s entire Alaska experience. I had taken him down here to see some of the big fishing boats but we ended up discovering something much more exciting: jellyfish!

These weren’t the jellyfish we’d seen from the ferry when we arrived in Cordova. These were much more interesting. They were transparent and some of them had rows of cilia that diffracted sunlight into all the colors of the rainbow as they pulsed in the water. The Boy, a huge jellyfish aficionado, could not believe what he was seeing.

Before long, The Mom showed up on the scene. The Boy took it upon himself to show her all the different kinds of jellyfish we had seen so far.

It’s worth noting that the Cordova harbor should not have been full of boats at this time of day. They should have been out catching fish – salmon specifically. Darla and I talked to a group of fishermen standing around on one the boats as a young lady mended their nets. They explained that there were just no fish this year. The entire fishing fleet went out on the “opener” and caught a combined twenty fish. The next day the season for that type of salmon was cancelled. It was a scenario that had already repeated itself this summer. The group talked about having to find jobs over the winter, something they did not normally need to do.

This is the view from the walkway leading to my parent’s second floor motel room. (Ironically, none of the rooms had a view.) We figured my parents might be ready for some lunch so we decided we’d better check in with them. It took some fast talking to convince The Boy to leave the jellyfish behind and come with us.

The Picnic Basket was a little street side eatery that we would have probably passed up were it not for the recommendation of a local. We arrived not a moment too soon. Within five minutes it became standing room only.

The Picnic Basket specialized in fish & chips and milkshakes. I tried both and can attest that their reputation for great food and friendly service is well deserved.

After lunch we drove a few hundred feet to the ferry terminal. The Aurora, a traditional (read: slow) ferry, was moored in anticipation of a late afternoon departure to Valdez. Back in May, we had considered making reservations for this trip back but opted instead to wait until the next day to ride the Chenega again. I was glad we did. It would have been disappointing to have to leave Cordova on a day like this one.

The Chenega arrived while we were at the terminal. Its design results in a shallow draught. This enables it to obtain higher speeds but also makes for an unpleasant experience in rough seas. When fall arrives, it is redeployed to the calmer winter waters around Juneau.

At the behest of a certain Boy, we soon found ourselves back at the boat harbor. He needed to show off the jellyfish to Mimi and Papa T.

It took a while for Mimi to get the hang of spotting them. They were, after all, transparent.

The Boy was not pleased when it was finally time to leave the harbor. He knew we would not likely be back.

We decided to end our day like the day before – with a drive out into the Copper River Delta in search of wildlife. As you can see, our efforts were rewarded when we spotted these two moose grazing in the distance.

Our final stop of the evening proved to be the setting of a rock tossing contest between Mimi and The Boy.

With no set rules for determining a winner, The Boy simply outlasted Mimi. As the size of his rocks increased, Mimi opted to hold on to him instead. The event concluded with Mimi, The Dad, and The Boy heading back to the truck for relief from the cloud of mosquitoes that called this spot along the road home.

The only stop of our final morning in Cordova was this quick snap in front of the Copper River Fleece Company. Mom, Dad, Darla, and Lewis were all wearing their new fleece apparel.

Our three and a half days in Cordova turned out to be my favorite part of our trip. Driving along the Copper River Highway was very much the American safari that I anticipated experiencing in Denali. We saw grizzlies, moose, eagles, seals, and swans, along with a massive calving glacier. The Boy got to see more jellyfish than he could have possibly hoped for. We enjoyed great food at some local eateries. And we were able to enjoy all of this without lines or crowds. Cordova felt like a truly authentic Alaskan experience.

Prince William Sound: Cordova to Valdez Ferry

The weather was overcast and cool as we boarded the Chenega for our return trip to Valdez, a return to normalcy after the previous day’s sun and warmth.

The Mom strong armed The Boy into a photograph with her on the back of the ship as Cordova disappeared into the distance.

The sky grew darker as the ferry cruised toward Valdez, making a break in the clouds over Columbia Glacier appear that much more dramatic. This icefield was engulfed in clouds on our way to Cordova; I was happy to see it on our way back.

The Columbia Glacier is one of the fastest moving tidewater glaciers anywhere. It releases so many icebergs into the sound that ships are unable to approach it. The thin blue line separating water and mountain in this image is all floating ice.

It was an iceberg from Columbia Glacier that led the drunken captain of the Exxon Valdez to alter his course and run the oil tanker aground, causing the largest environmental disaster in maritime history.

This buoy sits in the sound, marking the spot where the Exxon Valdez ran aground.

Oil tankers now approach Valdez one at a time, always accompanied by two tugboats. This one is actually leaving Valdez. My understanding is that this protocol was established as a result of national security concerns rather than environmental ones.

Solomon Gulch Hatchery

The forest service ranger stationed on our ferry suggested visiting this hatchery near the Valdez oil terminal. Bears were being spotted in the area feeding on the salmon. The one other place we had seen lots of salmon had also been a hatchery. Apparently, salmon runs originating from hatcheries are much more consistent from year to year than those from naturally occurring spawning grounds. The dark ripples in the water are thousands of salmon.

We had been parked at the hatchery for some time when this young bear snuck out of the nearby woods and down to the creek to grab a fish for lunch. He had one in his mouth before dropping it and running back to the woods. Something had scared him – actually, someone. It was The Boy, whose high pitched shriek had caused the bear to turn tail and run. The Mom, defending her Boy to the end, continues to insist it was something else.

The bear paused briefly at the edge of the woods before disappearing for good.

I would have liked to have had more time here. A sea lion supposedly showed up daily to feast on salmon. I also had no doubt that the bear would eventually return to the creek. Unfortunately, we needed to get going. My parents were already on the road.

Thompson Pass

Mom captured this image of Thompson Pass as my parents headed up the grade. The sky was darker and more ominous than it had been a few days earlier.

I arrived at the pass about half an hour after my parents, pointing my camera in the opposite direction. The clouds were higher than they had been the previous week, revealing the full rugged splendor of the Chugach Mountains.

The rest of our day was devoted to driving. By the end of this day we will have traveled 5,000 miles with 2,700 left to go. We were beginning the last leg of our trip which would take us to several different spots in Southeast Alaska, the state’s panhandle.

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