Chasing Alaska

C.B. Bernard's Chasing Alaska (Lyons Press, spring 2013) is the author’s account of the Alaska he found while following the trail left in the journals of his Arctic explorer ancestor. For more about the book, visit www.cbbernard.com. To be notified by email when the book is published, click here.

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May 25 2012
From a friend’s Facebook feed, taken this week on the Homer Spit. 

From a friend’s Facebook feed, taken this week on the Homer Spit. 

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Mar 20 2012

Sold

Maritime industry publication Tradewinds reports that the Oriental Nicety, a cargo ship built in 1986, has been sold for scrap. You may know the ship by its former name, the Exxon Valdez.

Three years ago, the  ship was converted from tanker to cargo vessel. It was involved in a second incident in 2010 near China. Cosco bought it in 2007 for $32 million, and changed its name to the Nicety last year.

As junk, it fetched $16 million. That’s a lot of money for you and me, maybe, but a shadow of the $15 billion-with-a-“B” worth of damages the ship is estimated to have caused when it ran aground on Bligh Reef in 1989.

UPDATE: In only tangentially related news, the cruise ship formerly known as the Pacific Princess—the one made famous in the opening credits of “The Love Boat”—has also been sold. A Turkish company paid about $3.3 million. Rough week to be a famous vessel. Watch your transom, Queen Mary 2.

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The Sun Also Rises

They’re gaining six minutes of daylight daily in Homer as spring arrives. Six minutes a day! Imagine what you could do with six extra minutes of daytime.

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Mar 5 2012
A British biologist vacationing in Southeast Alaska took photos of a molting brown bear using a barnacle-encrusted rock to exfoliate, apparently the first time a wild bear has been observed using a free-standing tool. Whether they’re evolving and will soon master other tools like firearms, iPads, and shaving razors, or are simply becoming more self-aware and vain, this seems like an interesting development. Read more about it here: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn21537-wild-bear-uses-a-stone-to-exfoliate.html It seems likely that other bears have already learned to use tools, but have yet to be observed doing so outside captivity. Example? Ninja bear.

A British biologist vacationing in Southeast Alaska took photos of a molting brown bear using a barnacle-encrusted rock to exfoliate, apparently the first time a wild bear has been observed using a free-standing tool. Whether they’re evolving and will soon master other tools like firearms, iPads, and shaving razors, or are simply becoming more self-aware and vain, this seems like an interesting development.

Read more about it here:

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn21537-wild-bear-uses-a-stone-to-exfoliate.html

It seems likely that other bears have already learned to use tools, but have yet to be observed doing so outside captivity. Example? Ninja bear.

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Feb 24 2012

Warrior Princess

“I’ve got three kids. My sole biological reason for being on this planet is to ensure that they can flourish, and they can’t do that in a filthy, degraded environment. We need to stand up while we still can.”

Thus spake Xena, Warrior Princess—or, rather, Lucy Lawless, the New Zealand-born actress who played her on TV. Lawless was speaking from atop a 174-foot drilling tower aboard the Shell-owned oil-drilling ship she’d “occupied” with a half dozen Greenpeace activists in an effort to prevent it from sailing to the Arctic.

Greenpeace spokesman Nathan Argent told the Anchorage Daily News that the ship was scheduled to drill five exploratory wells during the Arctic summer. ”The oil companies are pushing the frontiers in the Arctic,” he said. “There’s a relentless push to get the last drops of oil.”

Last week, the Interior Department approved Shell’s plans for responding to potential spills in the Arctic, where the frigid water presents different challenges entirely than spills in other regions. The move greased the path for the company’s plans to drill in the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas off Alaska’s northern coast, where Capt. Joe Bernard spent more than two decades of his life. 

I’m not sure the corporation’s contingency plans accounted for dealing with Xena.

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Feb 6 2012

The Nome Nugget produced this stunning YouTube video filmed aboard the Renda, the Russian cargo ship that recently teamed up with the USCG icebreaker Healy to deliver much-needed fuel and heating oil to Nome. The footage is stark, beautiful, and terrifying.

I give the crew of both ships a tremendous amount of credit. But watching this video makes me think about Capt. Joe Bernard and his peers, wintering well north of Nome more than a century ago. It’s one thing to be in the midst of Bering Sea ice pack in a massive, modern vessel. It’s another entirely to be holed up in a small wooden schooner gripped by the frozen jaws of the Beaufort Sea. 

Tomorrow, for a magazine article, I’ll be speaking with the Alaska Marine Pilot who led the Renda. He has my respect for what he accomplished, as do the crews and captains of the Renda and the Healy. This mission was a good reminder that, though there are fewer places left on the planet to explore, the kind of people who made such expeditions possible still live among us, and still do remarkable things.

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Feb 3 2012

Snow Business

Back in November, the Kenai Peninsula—home to Homer, my former home—was brutalized by a snowstorm. How bad was it? Bad enough for the governor to petition the feds to declare it a federal disaster. 

This week, the Obama administration assented, freeing up aid money and FEMA support.

It might be premature. More nasty weather is currently having its way with the area, with avalanches closing the Seward and Sterling Highways for a time. State workers are firing canons into the mountains and monitoring the situation.

Having lived in Vermont, Maine, New Hampshire, and Alaska, it never fails to make me laugh when the Portland, OR, meteorologists call for two inches of snow and the city hurls itself into panic.

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Jan 19 2012
On the road in one of the warm states, with palm trees and blue skies and ungainly birds and different fish entirely to catch and eat. All of which are making it difficult to put myself in the proper mindset to write about Alaska in the throes of a brutal winter. If there had been direct flights from Coronation Gulf to Key West in 1911, I wonder if Joe Bernard would have booked one. Even the most ardent men of stone-cold resolve can benefit from a few days R-and-R in a sunny place. To be fair, I picture the Bernard boys, Captains Joe and Peter, wrestling gators and spearing fish rather than sitting feet-up by the pool or chasing a golf ball down a fairway. And me? I’m not doing any of those things. It’s more or less a work trip for me. But God help any of those little cigar-sized lizards that cross my path. I may have to show my Bernard roots and wrestle one of them.

On the road in one of the warm states, with palm trees and blue skies and ungainly birds and different fish entirely to catch and eat. All of which are making it difficult to put myself in the proper mindset to write about Alaska in the throes of a brutal winter.

If there had been direct flights from Coronation Gulf to Key West in 1911, I wonder if Joe Bernard would have booked one. Even the most ardent men of stone-cold resolve can benefit from a few days R-and-R in a sunny place. To be fair, I picture the Bernard boys, Captains Joe and Peter, wrestling gators and spearing fish rather than sitting feet-up by the pool or chasing a golf ball down a fairway.

And me? I’m not doing any of those things. It’s more or less a work trip for me. But God help any of those little cigar-sized lizards that cross my path. I may have to show my Bernard roots and wrestle one of them.

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Jan 12 2012
UPDATED: Wanted to mention that Rossi was a Gov. Palin appointee who drew some opposition from other state officials who believed he’d been selected for his family ties rather than his qualifications, for what that’s worth. Alaska’s top-ranking official from the Division of Wildlife Conservation quit today amid claims he falsified big game hunt records while he was a licensed assistant big game guide. Bear regulations in the state are complex. It’s a big money industry, with expensive permits, mandatory guides for out-of-state hunters, and rigorous reporting requirements. Alaska State Troopers said the 12 hunting violations leveled at director Corey Rossi took place during an illegal 2008 bear hunt when he aided two non-residents in the killing of three black bears. When reporting the trip to the state, he claimed to have killed all the bears himself. The non-residents, he said, got skunked. A corrupt official? There’s news. In some ways, at least, Alaska is just like the rest of the country. That’s not him in the photo, by the way. That’s Jake, a remarkable guy I used to know in Homer, with a bear he took somewhere on the Kenai Peninsula. Scary as that bear looks, he didn’t stand a chance against Jake.

UPDATED: Wanted to mention that Rossi was a Gov. Palin appointee who drew some opposition from other state officials who believed he’d been selected for his family ties rather than his qualifications, for what that’s worth.

Alaska’s top-ranking official from the Division of Wildlife Conservation quit today amid claims he falsified big game hunt records while he was a licensed assistant big game guide.

Bear regulations in the state are complex. It’s a big money industry, with expensive permits, mandatory guides for out-of-state hunters, and rigorous reporting requirements.

Alaska State Troopers said the 12 hunting violations leveled at director Corey Rossi took place during an illegal 2008 bear hunt when he aided two non-residents in the killing of three black bears. When reporting the trip to the state, he claimed to have killed all the bears himself. The non-residents, he said, got skunked.

A corrupt official? There’s news.

In some ways, at least, Alaska is just like the rest of the country.

That’s not him in the photo, by the way. That’s Jake, a remarkable guy I used to know in Homer, with a bear he took somewhere on the Kenai Peninsula. Scary as that bear looks, he didn’t stand a chance against Jake.

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  Snow continues to trounce Alaska. Cordova’s deep in it. But it’s not the only town suffering. Elsewhere on Prince William Sound:  “Valdez normally has 149.7 inches of snow by this time of the year. This year, the National Weather Service says Valdez has received 318.4 inches of snow— or 168.7 inches more than usual.  Valdez resident Kathryn Hawkins says the scary part is it’s only mid-January. There’s three more months of snow to be had in Valdez, and she has no idea where it’s going to go.” —The Anchorage Daily News Out in the Aleutian Islands, a storm in the treeless Dutch Harbor area “spat so much sleet that ice-glazed seabirds couldn’t take off and bald eagles cracked as they spread their wings for a frigid, labored flight,” Alex DeMarban related over on Alaska Dispatch. I have an old friend working as a cameraman for one of the boats in the fleet being followed in that region by “The Deadliest Catch” TV show. I’m sure he’s cussing up a storm of his own right now—I’ll check in with him when he’s back on land. The supply barge and its ice breaker escort, the USCG Cutter Healy, are still making their way toward Nome, though the frozen seas are reluctant to let them through. The city and surrounding villages are in desperate need of the heating oil the barge is carrying. Want to see what it’s like to be on an Arctic icebreaker? Check out the Healy’s “Aloft” camera, pointed over the bow, to see what the crew sees.  Anchorage has passed 81 inches for the year (July 1-June 31), and is on track for a record snowiest winter ever. The Seward Highway southbound has been closed. Down on the Kenai Peninsula, even Homer, whose winter weather is usually comparatively mild, is getting brutalized. Gusts up to 70 mph have blown snow into drifts and banks as deep as 15 feet, closing town offices, schools, and roads.   “It was a day, I’ll tell ya,” Kachemak Emergency Services Chief Bob Cicciarella told my friend Michael Armstrong at the Homer News.  Michael took the photo above during the storm. After fighting his way out of his driveway and down the ridge into town, he got to work and found the power out. “I ran to the store and got flashlights and candles because I could only find one dim flashlight in the entire office,” he said. When I worked there, we had a generator the publisher bought as part of his Y2K preparations and that continued to be pressed into service during weather-related outages. “Someone stole it,” Michael said. You can prepare for Mother Nature all you want. But human nature will get you every time.

 

Snow continues to trounce Alaska. Cordova’s deep in it. But it’s not the only town suffering. Elsewhere on Prince William Sound: 

“Valdez normally has 149.7 inches of snow by this time of the year. This year, the National Weather Service says Valdez has received 318.4 inches of snow— or 168.7 inches more than usual.  Valdez resident Kathryn Hawkins says the scary part is it’s only mid-January. There’s three more months of snow to be had in Valdez, and she has no idea where it’s going to go.” —The Anchorage Daily News

Out in the Aleutian Islands, a storm in the treeless Dutch Harbor area “spat so much sleet that ice-glazed seabirds couldn’t take off and bald eagles cracked as they spread their wings for a frigid, labored flight,” Alex DeMarban related over on Alaska Dispatch. I have an old friend working as a cameraman for one of the boats in the fleet being followed in that region by “The Deadliest Catch” TV show. I’m sure he’s cussing up a storm of his own right now—I’ll check in with him when he’s back on land.

The supply barge and its ice breaker escort, the USCG Cutter Healy, are still making their way toward Nome, though the frozen seas are reluctant to let them through. The city and surrounding villages are in desperate need of the heating oil the barge is carrying. Want to see what it’s like to be on an Arctic icebreaker? Check out the Healy’s “Aloft” camera, pointed over the bow, to see what the crew sees. 

Anchorage has passed 81 inches for the year (July 1-June 31), and is on track for a record snowiest winter ever. The Seward Highway southbound has been closed. Down on the Kenai Peninsula, even Homer, whose winter weather is usually comparatively mild, is getting brutalized. Gusts up to 70 mph have blown snow into drifts and banks as deep as 15 feet, closing town offices, schools, and roads. 

 “It was a day, I’ll tell ya,” Kachemak Emergency Services Chief Bob Cicciarella told my friend Michael Armstrong at the Homer News. 

Michael took the photo above during the storm. After fighting his way out of his driveway and down the ridge into town, he got to work and found the power out. “I ran to the store and got flashlights and candles because I could only find one dim flashlight in the entire office,” he said. When I worked there, we had a generator the publisher bought as part of his Y2K preparations and that continued to be pressed into service during weather-related outages.

“Someone stole it,” Michael said.

You can prepare for Mother Nature all you want. But human nature will get you every time.


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Jan 10 2012
There are 616 named glaciers in Alaska, and nearly 100,000 anonymous others, most in the southern part of the state. Just 13,000 years after the last ice age, too brief even to be measured by geologic time, they’re still receding—and with haste. Some, like those in Glacier Bay, have moved as far as 70 miles in the past century alone. Icy Bay’s Tyndal Glacier averages a third of a mile a year. Others clock more modest paces, but in 2005, an aerial survey monitoring 2,000 glaciers found 99 percent of them in retreat. Though they look static, ancient, permanent, they’re anything but. Ice flows through them like water through the world’s great rivers, and the ice you see in them now is not the same ice you would have seen 100 years ago. Which means Alaska is still changing. Even when you can’t see it. But it’s changing, too, in ways far more visible. And those changes are not limited to the land. More has happened to affect the nature of Alaska in the past century than in the hundred centuries before it. The climate and the wildlife. The cultures of its people. Its accessibility to the rest of the world. In this age of technology, even the definition of remoteness is evolving. Alaska may be changing faster than ever. There are those who work to instigate that change, to facilitate the transition into the new Alaska—to mould it into what they think it could be, rather than embracing what it already is—while others fight to keep things as they were. In that way, our relationship with Alaska seems no different than with the people we love. PHOTO: Childs Glacier, Cordova, AK/Bernard

There are 616 named glaciers in Alaska, and nearly 100,000 anonymous others, most in the southern part of the state. Just 13,000 years after the last ice age, too brief even to be measured by geologic time, they’re still receding—and with haste. Some, like those in Glacier Bay, have moved as far as 70 miles in the past century alone. Icy Bay’s Tyndal Glacier averages a third of a mile a year. Others clock more modest paces, but in 2005, an aerial survey monitoring 2,000 glaciers found 99 percent of them in retreat. Though they look static, ancient, permanent, they’re anything but. Ice flows through them like water through the world’s great rivers, and the ice you see in them now is not the same ice you would have seen 100 years ago.

Which means Alaska is still changing. Even when you can’t see it.

But it’s changing, too, in ways far more visible. And those changes are not limited to the land. More has happened to affect the nature of Alaska in the past century than in the hundred centuries before it. The climate and the wildlife. The cultures of its people. Its accessibility to the rest of the world. In this age of technology, even the definition of remoteness is evolving.

Alaska may be changing faster than ever. There are those who work to instigate that change, to facilitate the transition into the new Alaska—to mould it into what they think it could be, rather than embracing what it already is—while others fight to keep things as they were. In that way, our relationship with Alaska seems no different than with the people we love.

PHOTO: Childs Glacier, Cordova, AK/Bernard

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Jan 9 2012

Snow

Friday, Cordova got 20 inches of snow on top of what had already fallen. That’s 59 inches on the ground so far, and it’s just early January. More’s coming tomorrow. In places, drifts are more than 18 feet deep.

Roofs are collapsing. The road to the airport—the only way in and out of town other than boat—is closed. Avalanches are “imminent,” according to experts. The National Guard sent troops to town by ferry to help shovel. 

Elsewhere on Prince William Sound, Valdez—often America’s snowiest city—has so far gotten 252 inches, or 21 feet. That’s about 70 inches shy of its average winter, but winter’s just begun. In 1989, 46 feet of snow fell.

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Nome, Alone

Summoned by his uncle Peter to help with a gold claim, Joe Bernard landed in Nome in 1901. Though they were in good company—novelist Rex Beach, Wyatt Earp, and thousands of others chased their fortunes there—the pair failed miserably as prospectors, leaving holes all over Nome as well as in their own pockets.

Somewhat wisely, they decided to return to what they had known growing up on Prince Edward Island: the sea. But Nome served as Joe’s home base for his Arctic explorations. He sailed when he could—Arctic summers are short, and in winter the seas are frozen and impassable—and enjoyed his time in Nome.

Rough and tumble, it truly was the frontier then. More than a century later, it’s still out there on the edge of civilization. There may be roads and gas stations and restaurants, but people who live there are smart enough to not take them for granted. An early season storm delayed the delivery of supplies, including fuel, and by the time the weather had improved, Nome was iced in. Supply barges could not reach the city.

“In late November, when a plan to fly fuel into Nome was being considered, a gallon of gas was selling for $5.98, but that plan was scuttled when estimates showed it could cause a spike in prices to $9. … A plan was adopted for an icebreaker to escort a tanker to deliver fuel to Nome on Monday, but because of the icy conditions that arrival date is off. Coast Guard officials are not saying when they expect the vessels to arrive, if at all.” —The Anchorage Daily News

The ADN story is here. The Alaska Dispatch has an inside scoop on life aboard the Russian vessel the town is waiting for. Both sites have stunning photos.

Puts the $3.30 you’re paying at the corner Shell station into perspective, doesn’t it?

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Dec 13 2011

Occupy Icebox

The Occupy Wall Street movement is not without a presence in Alaska, as we saw before, but in the state’s bigger cities—it’s difficult to call any of them “big” without qualification—it’s even got some momentum. The numbers don’t compare to, say, those who camped out in Zuccotti Park, or even here in downtown Portland. But then, those who did stay are facing weather that’s far more extreme.

The Alaska Dispatch’s Amanda Coyne spent the day with these folks.

The ever-contracting media scrum showed up in mass — at least a dozen of them, which pretty much accounted for one journalist per protester. We all huddled and shivered in post-blizzard Anchorage while organizer Brian MacMillan, AKA B. Mac, began what was a long walk from downtown to Ship Creek, close to the Anchorage Port.

 You can read her full account about protesting in the cold here.

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Nov 8 2011
Today my friend Jonathan would have turned 41. Not a day goes by that I don’t think of him since the Mississippi River took him and Mark in 1997. He would have loved Alaska. I wish I’d had the chance to bring him there. Happy birthday, Brother. 

Today my friend Jonathan would have turned 41. Not a day goes by that I don’t think of him since the Mississippi River took him and Mark in 1997. He would have loved Alaska. I wish I’d had the chance to bring him there.

Happy birthday, Brother. 

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