Alaska's summer drama: Salmon, bears and lessons in life and death

WRANGELL, Alaska — The nation's largest national forest, the Tongass, blankets 17 million acres of southeast Alaska, in which everything is connected to everything else, with salmon the centerpiece.

This was apparent on a recent day as four of us motored up a bay of Alaska's Inside Passage, watching bald eagles carve circles in a cobalt sky while humpback whales rose from the ocean's depths to spout watery geysers before slinking again into the frigid sea, waving gracefully as they did with their huge tails.

Four of us — Terry Arnesen, from Stillwater; my wife, Jan; our older son, Trevor; and I — were canvasing Alaska's Inside Passage in Terry's 26-foot boat, "Do North." Terry had towed the craft from the Twin Cities to Seattle and launched it there before heading to the nation's 49th state.

Having found refuge on recent nights in the dank harbors of Ketchikan and Wrangell, where calm waters lapped gently against the hulls of timeworn commercial fishing boats, and where, beneath low skies and drizzle, we grilled halibut on rain-slickened docks, on this day we set a course for the Anan Creek.

Archaeologists believe Tlingit clans established summer salmon camps at the mouth of the Anan Creek and other rivers of the Tongass as far back as 3,000 years ago. Catching the fish in basket traps, the Native people carried their bounty in woven cedar baskets to be dried, smoked and stored for the coming winter, which they would spend elsewhere in larger, more permanent camps.

Connecting their lives to ours, the Tlingit fished alongside some of the same critters we had come to see: black bears especially, and also eagles and ravens, each abundant and free moving — wild in the wildest sense — and dependent for their existence on salmon.

Paradoxically, the pink salmon that migrate by the tens of thousands up the Anan Creek do so to die.

Before they succumb and complete their life cycle, they spawn, with their eggs and progeny dependent on the river's crystalline water, which in turn is dependent on the forest's 80 inches of annual rain to nourish its deep-rooted, old-growth western hemlocks and Sitka spruces. Some of the trees soar 200 feet into the sky while cementing river banks and preventing erosion.

"Let's anchor here," Terry said. "We can paddle to shore in the kayaks."

Two of the smaller craft were strapped to the pilot house of Terry's boat, and we quickly ferried ourselves to hard, albeit wet, ground.

Attempts to commercially exploit Anan Creek salmon beginning in the late 1800s failed due to overfishing, and in the centuries since Congress established Tongass as a national forest in 1907, protection of the river and its wildlife has grown.

Today, the U.S. Forest Service manages the creek mouth and surrounding watershed as the Anan Wildlife Observatory Site, complete with a tower-like observation stand, entry to which is limited to 60 people daily, admitted by $10 permits.

Relatively few visitors arrive as we did, by private boat. Most are passengers on large cruise ships that tie up in Wrangell, from which sightseers are transported in 15- to 20-passenger boats for the 30-mile ride to the viewing area (cost: about $300).

Often these tourists are accompanied by guides who carry handguns, but we had only bear spray for protection during the approximately 1-mile uphill hike from the shore to the river-viewing platform, which was initially constructed in 1965.

"We don't have problems with bears, typically, because we keep people away from bears and because the bears are generally used to people," said a young female Forest Service employee stationed on the platform that gives visitors an eagle-eye view of the river below.

"But we take safety seriously," she said.

The viewing stand has three levels, with the lower two constructed as photography blinds. Because we had arrived before the cruise-boaters, we had our pick of hideouts from which to watch waves of pink salmon, or "humpies," struggle upriver toward their last resting places while attempting to dodge a small phalanx of predatory bruins.

Some 251,000 2-year-old pinks were believed to have returned last year from the ocean to the Anan Creek, the most in two decades. The smallest of the five Pacific salmon species, mature pinks weigh between 2 and 6 pounds — just-right mouthfuls for black bears, as we witnessed.

"Look at the mother bear sitting against a tree, nursing her cubs," Jan said.

Sure enough, not 20 yards from the frothy river, which spilled and tumbled over huge boulders, a plus-sized bear sat nearly upright on her haunches, her back leaning against a stout tree, making herself available to her two little ones.

Nearby, hopping on the riverbank, a raven scavenged fish guts left by a bear that was making sport of catching salmon and devouring them head-first, but not completely cleaning his plate, as it were, instead discarding the half-chomped remains as easy pickings for others.

Soaring above this drama, as if able to pick and choose when they might belly up to their own private salmon feeds, a half-dozen bald eagles gathered the morning's warming currents beneath their wings before occasionally descending to vise-grip humpies in their sharp talons.

More research has been done on the number of salmon that Alaskan brown bears eat in a summer than on the number consumed by black bears. What is known is that males will eat more than females and that all bears must consume a year's worth of food in six months.

As noontime approached, cruise ship excursionists started to show up, and Terry, Jan, Trevor and I eased down the trail leading to our kayaks.

Paddling the small watercraft to "Do North," we clambered onto its aft deck and soon were underway.

We hadn't gone far before we killed the boat's engines, fired up our small grill and seared lightly the remaining halibut from our previous day's catch.

Intemperate seas were forecast for the next day. But for now, the sky was blue, the wind slight and the ocean mirror-flat.

The Anan Creek and its bears, eagles and ravens would sustain us for a long time, too, we all agreed.

Then we set a course for points farther north.