By Juan Montoya
One of the most popular post we've had on this blog has been the pictorial we did on our trip to southeast Alaska a few years ago.
At the time we visited Petersburg, a beautiful town inside the Tongass National Forest in southeastern Alaska. The Tongass is the largest national forest in the United States at 17,450,578 million acres. Petersburg is on one of more than 1,000 islands within its boundaries.
You read right. There is a rain forest in Alaska.
Tongass is part of the "perhumid rainforest zone," and the forest is primarily made up of western red cedar, sitka spruce, and western hemlock. It is the Earth's largest remaining temperate rainforest.
Most of its area is part of the temperate rain forest WWF ecoregion, itself part of the larger Pacific temperate rain forest WWF ecoregion, and is remote enough to be home to many species of endangered and rare flora and fauna.
In the morning one wakes up to the bellows of sea lions. Flocks of bald eagles hunt the waters over the islands. Bears hunt for salmon in the island's streams as the fish make their way back to the place they were born and where they return to spawn. Whales swim in the channels between the islands and the coast of Canada.
Tongass encompasses islands of the Alexander Archipelago, fjords, glaciers, and peaks of the Coast Mountains. An international border with Canada (British Columbia) runs along the crest of the Boundary Rangers of the Coast Mountains. The forest is administered from Forest Service offices in Ketchikan, south of Petersburg.
In fact, just south of Petersburg is the Stikine Icefield is one of the few remnants of the once-vast ice sheets that covered much of North America during the Pleistocene age.
It covers 2,900 square miles along the crest of the Coastal Mountains that separate Canada and the U.S., extending 120 miles from the Whiting River to the Stikine River.
Near the south end of the Stikine Icefield, LeConte Glacier is the southernmost active tidewater glacier in the northern hemisphere.
Since first charted in 1887, it has retreated almost 2.5 miles.
Today, LeConte is considered in a stable position.
Due to the deep water (810 feet) of the bay, LeConte calves instead of advancing.
Beginning in 1983, measurements of LeConte's terminus (the point farthest from the head of the glacier) have been taken by Petersburg High School students. Results show the glacier generally moves forward in the spring after the cold winter weather decreases melting.
In the fall, after warmer summer temperatures, it retreats. Harbor seals choose LeConte's protected water and abundant icebergs as a breeding, birthing, and rearing area.Humans are warned not to disturb thepups because abandonment of a young pup by its mother is a common occurrence, particularly if they are disturbed by hunting or other activities by humans.
We even learned that Petersburg was the site of a John Wayne movie and there are pictures of the film at a local tavern, although to be honest we can't remember the name of the film or the place now. It was a long night after a hard day at the fisheries!
In fact, the restaurant/lounge was owned by an Hispanic family who own a salmon fishing boat and unleaded at the Icicle Fisheries there. Hispanics in Alaska. Imagine that.
Here are a few of our favorite photos of those dream-like days.
The snow crabs cover a window, they're so big, as are the salmon and the halibut, which resembles a Gulf of Mexico flounder except 300 or 400 pounds bigger. Workers need a forklift to pack them in boxes for processing.
No comments:
Post a Comment