Aleutian Islands - 2014

Someone once said when describing travel, that its about the journey, not the destination.  For the last 2 weeks, we have been experiencing the essence of that description, and our trip map below shows where we have been and it has consisted of a smorgasbord of new experiences.  You will note there are multiple straight lines departing Anchorage... the reason is explained further on.

Off down the Aleutian Islands

Many of you may have heard of a TV show called ‘Deadliest Catch’ which is based out of a place called Dutch Harbour.  The locals however just call it ‘Dutch’ and it is actually located on the island of Unalaska, the last community near the end of the Aleutian Islands chain and 1,282 kms as the crow flies from Anchorage.

So why come here in the first place?  Apart from it being one of those, ‘because it’s there’ destinations, the Aleutians have fascinated us for a while and if you study say google maps or an atlas, here is a chain of hundreds of islands over 2,000 kms long, from the coast of Alaska stretching almost to the international dateline and within a whisker of reaching Siberia.  

There are only 5-6 communities along the entire chain, many inhabited by the indigenous Aleuts, so it simply seemed an interesting place to visit due to its remoteness.  

The Aleutians are part of the ‘Ring Of Fire’ stretching to and including New Zealand, and a very dynamic member, with 48 volcanoes in total throughout the chain, and 5 of them currently more active with raised alert statuses and two of those belching smoke.  

A few days before our departure to Dutch, a 7.9 level earthquake rattled the Aleutians, centred further south amongst the last few islands and triggered a tsunami warning back along the chain which was quickly rescinded.  

The Aleutians are also sometimes called ‘The Cradle of Storms’ due to the cold Bering Sea being on one side and the warmer Pacific Ocean on the other.  Due to a collision of weather influences by these two oceans, this island chain is often than not under cloud and weather impacts of an almost permanent Aleutian low weather system bringing ever changing or stormy weather.

So to Dutch is where we flew, or at least tried to fly from Anchorage.  We turned up at the airport, went through all the check in processes, boarded the fairly small twin prop plane, you know the ones where they check the weight of everything, including ourselves and you have to bend over constantly when boarding, then took off.

After almost 2.5 hrs of flying, we suddenly descended and landed at very small remote airport at Cold Bay, located on one of the islands in the Aleutians about 160 kms from Dutch.  Back to the weather in the Aleutians, Cold Bay holds the record for most qvercast town in America.  

We were told the cloud ceiling in Dutch had suddenly dropped and all landings stopped.  So there we sat in a small shed for 2.5 hrs getting to know our some locals on the flight like Alvin and Chris who told us a lot about how tricky landing into Dutch can be, and at one point I said to them, “wish I had never asked the question”.  Eventually we were all informed we were returning back to Anchorage and again the locals told us this is quite normal.

Once we landed back in Anchorage, the race was on to find accommodation because the salmon fishing season had filled almost everything.  We found somewhere but only had a few hours sleep before having to be back at the airport by 5am to try again.  Everyone from yesterdays flight were placed on standby but extra flights had been added, so there we were, back in the queue, again chatting with Alvin and Chris learning more about Dutch. We got lucky, we were confirmed on a flight out at 8:30am, but would we be able to land?

The plane took off and this time we were advised we would be landing at King Salmon for refuelling BUT after landing, we were told the Dutch airport had been closed and we would be waiting… again.  There was a collective groan from everyone!  We only waited about 1hr before heading again towards Dutch, and this time we landed BUT before disembarking were told none of our checked baggage was on the plane and should arrive later that day on a freight plane.

We had learned a lot from Alvin and Chris about Dutch, including how unreliable flights into Dutch can be due to the famously changeable Aleutian weather, and how often bags don’t fly with people or don’t turn up for days, “yep, very common” they informed us.  Well, that’s all very nice if you’re staying awhile, we’re now only going to be here for 2 nights, having lost one due to the first aborted flight.  Knowing there is nothing we could do about it, might as well start exploring and learning about Dutch.

fishing boat returning to Dutch

A huge amount of fishing goes on around Dutch, especially for pollock in both oceans and there are two massive fish processing plants and an enormous number of stacked freezer capable containers waiting to be loaded to ship the fish overseas.  

Yes there is a lot of crab caught during the winter months also but pollock is the largest catch by volume.

Because there is so much fishing around Dutch, one of the first things we noticed was the incredible number of bald eagles perched all over the place, 600 of them live here year round.  Around our hotel there were more than 20 within a few hundred metres, perched on roofs, street lights and multiple other buildings.

If you waited for 10 minutes or so, whoosh, one would fly past and then shortly later, another and on it would go.  Didn’t take too long for our cameras to get into action.

Later that day we went back to the airport to see if our bags had arrived and thankfully Rob’s was there, but they had no idea when mine would arrive or if any more planes would be landing at all this day due to the slow drop of yet another layer of misty cloud towards the runway surface.  We had been told that Dutch gets quite a bit of fog in early summer as things warm up, currently a balmy 10 C.

We fortuitously met two very interesting fellow travellers named Susan and Marty who first caught our eye at Anchorage airport whilst waiting in queue on the second day.  They had decided to learn new dance moves whilst waiting much to the entertainment of fellow travellers and as it turned out, they were also staying in the same hotel in Dutch.  

We had dinner together the first night and learned more about each other.  Susan is a forensic psychologist and Marty a book publisher, both fun and adventurous people we learnt a lot from.

pigeon guillemot

The following day we had booked a 4hr tour around Dutch and Unalaska with Bobbie Lekanoff of The Extra Mile Tours who did a great job showing us some of the plants/flowers, explaining how some were used for medicinal purposes.  We also saw some of the local wildlife like ‘old man’ sea otter, pigeon guillimots and one of her favourite pastimes, monitoring bald eagle nests.  

baby bald eagle in nest

Bobbie took us all over the place, teaching us a little about the indigenous Aleuts who are believed to have inhabited the island chain after the last ice age, some 9,000 yrs ago, but who suffered badly during the war when forcibly relocated from their homes and away from the islands.  

Large numbers of them then perished due to the very poor conditions they were sent to, the USA Government later having to apologise for their poor treatment.  Bobbie’s husband is an Aleut who had been out fishing the previous day and had caught 80 salmon which he was now smoking to preserve them.  

The Aleutians were originally grabbed by the Russians in the late 1700’s when fur trading generated large $’s and whilst animals were plentiful, for a while at least. Sea otters were made almost made extinct as were other fur bearing animals and the fur trade declined.  When Alaska was sold to the USA on 30 March 1867, the Aleutians also became a part of the USA, however the Russian Orthodox church influence still remains.  

Aleut Memorial to the displaced

Bobbie also took us through World War II’s influence on Dutch, which was the only other part of the USA bombed by the Japanese following Pearl Harbour.  Additionally, the Japanese not only bombed Dutch over 2 days, they also invaded then occupied the Aleutian Islands of Attu and Kiska near the end of the island chain for more than a year, before over 30,000 US and Canadian troops in fierce fighting regained the islands.  

This was kept secret for a long time because Japan had actually invaded territorial USA.  Dutch has a rich history and very much has the feel of a frontier town with a large transient fish processing population.  Before leaving Bobbie, she took us to the airport and to our relief, my bag was now there.

We had a wonderful experience on our last day in Dutch after taking a long walk along a very rocky beach.  Sitting alone on the ground near drying fishing nets was yet another bald eagle, so we headed its way to take photos. We moved closer and closer and it just sat there on one leg, very relaxed so we kept moving even closer.  At about 3m away from it, the other leg slowly came down and it stretched one wing, but you could see it was becoming a little nervous.  

So for a good 15 minutes with us kneeling or standing and clicking away, we all watched each other and got the photos we wanted.  Simply fantastic and yet another privilege for us!

getting very close!

But it was time to head north again and time to try a different highway, The Alaska Marine Highway (AMH).  This marine highway stretches the entire length of the Alaskan coast and is a network of ferries which transport people, vehicles and goods to numerous communities, many without any road access to them at all.

So in Dutch we boarded the MV Tustumena, found our studio cabin… well cabin minus the studio… well a narrow utilitarian cabin and our little home for the next 3 nights.  This ship is only one of two classified as ocean class ferries in the fleet, and is used because our journey takes us into the Bering Sea and then the Gulf of Alaska.  A few statistics of the ship, it is 296 ft long and displaces 3,067 tons, we were in one of 25 cabins and carries a maximum of 160 passengers, so not very big at all.

MV Tustumena

After a pleasant dinner and passing Larva Point, we arrived at our first port of call, Akutan.  Whenever we stop at any port on this trip, passengers can disembark briefly if they wish and explore which is what we did here.  Akutan, a very small indigenous village spreads along the shore with large mountains behind it.  There are no roads but there are timber boardwalks throughout, used for walking or by the locals on their ATVs (small all terrain vehicles) to get around on.

Akutan community

There was a delightful yet small closed Russian orthodox church and its graveyard to look at, the school and most of the locals homes to walk by using the boardwalks.  We climbed a small hill to get an overall photo of the town and then headed back towards the ship.  On the way back, we noticed the church was now open, so headed into the doorway to have a look.  Ooops!  We almost walked in on a funeral service complete with an open coffin, the deceased and attending priest having just been delivered to Akutan by our ship!

The bunk beds, although narrow, were quite comfortable, so much so that we didn’t wake next morning until 8am, unusual for us.  We also think this was due to the night sky actually getting dark for the first time in many weeks because of our distance west from mainland Alaska and on the final day of this trip, we even experienced a sunrise, a first in 6 weeks.

typical scenery from the ship

The ferry trip back north along the Aleutians was relaxed, almost languid in pace, with the crew and captain interacting with the 40 or so passengers in a very casual and friendly manner.  Most of the other passengers had sailed down to Dutch from Homer, had the few hours in Dutch whilst the ship was prepared for its return trip, and were now sailing straight back to Homer.  

The passengers were generally a very warm and chatty group of people enjoying an adventure and some were even sleeping in tents for this journey, set up near the top deck’s solarium. 

both tents were occupied for 3 nights

We called into a number of other communities like Cold Bay, King Cove, Sand Point and Chiqnik.  After arriving into Chiqnik, most of the remaining passengers disembarked and a virtual stampede took place to the local donut hut.  The donuts were fabulous and only $1 each, so many bulging brown paper bags were seen being carried back to the ship, including ours.

The trip also included constant sightings of wildlife, with numerous large pods of humpbacks in the distance and many puffins performing various movements to avoid the ship.  These little birds are great at flying under water but struggle to actually fly in the air without a lot of effort.  So if they popped up to the surface after a dive with our ferry bearing down on them, well let’s just say they panicked a bit.

aerial battle for the fish above larger bird

The weather and seas had been very kind during the entire trip, and even the clouds opened up enough for us to get a good look at the blackened cone shape of Pauloff volcano.  It had been very active the previous week, hence the reason for it being black compared to the many snow capped mountains elsewhere.  As we cruised past, just the faintest wisp of smoke was still wafting out of its tip.

Pauloff Volcano

basalt columns on island we passed

The coastline scenery of the various islands we passed was at times quite dramatic, with plenty of clear evidence of their formation through major volcanic activity, including sighting the familiar 5-6 sided basalt columns usually found following big lava flows in the past.

We arrived into our next destination at 1:45am to be greeted by Beth who owns the accommodation we’re staying in for the next 6 days  Here we will explore and experience a totally new part of Alaska, one we have been waiting to visit for many years.  How all that pans out and what happens however will need to be the subject of our next post.

Plenty more pictures… including the performing Puffins, so just click the link:

CLICK HERE for more photos - The Aleutians 2014