We left Bainbridge Glacier behind on a rainy yesterday and entered Bainbridge pass. The pass is amazing. Steep mountains on either side, hundreds of feet deep and sometimes as narrow as a few hundred yards, it winds for 15 miles or so. Waterfalls are everywhere. Our intent was to make it to Emerald that day and go to the Columbia Glacier the next day. Prince William Sound had other ideas. 25+ knots of wind directly on the nose made progress super painful. Given the forecast for sun and variable winds the next day, we elected to stop along the way, first finding an amazing cove with a sour, angry guy already anchored there and leaving to find another nice anchorage for the night near an old cannery.
This morning dawned clear and we began a great trip down to Emerald Bay on the Columbia Arm, our staging point for our glacier visit and…sob…our last anchorage of the trip. As we move through the sounds we see a pod of Orcas swimming close by. Two adults and a baby. They swim along quietly until I think the male gets tired of us and raises his tail way above the water and slaps it down. We alter course to put even more distance and they do as well.
Part of the way down we saw a couple of salmon boats off the point and quickly slowed to 2 knots and put some tackle down on the downriggers. A spoon and a cedar plug at 45 feet quickly produced two large pinks, one complete with roe. Satisfied that we had enough for dinner we moved on towards our anchorage in Emerald Bay.
We pass Glacier Island and come in close to see a beach with 100's of sea lions. We get some great shots and are about 50 yards past when a rockslide happens to fall on the beach behind the sea lions. In a matter of seconds, all but the largest sea lions flee into the water leaving only he largest on the beach. I'll post the video in a few days on the video page.
Talk about a beautiful anchorage. Mountains, a river cascading in, perfect holding…wow. We took the dinghy in to the river and were amazed to see literally 1000’s of salmon at the mouth. We sat mesmerized watching the fish work their way up the cascade. It is crazy to see how hard they have to work, and we only found them a few pools up from the bay. Seeing bear scat along the creek, we elected to head back to the boat and eat the salmon we’d caught earlier.
Tomorrow is the last day. I don’t really know how to deal with that…
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