We awoke this morning to find typical southeast Alaska weather: clouds, wind, and steady rain. The National Geographic Sea Lion cruised into Pavlov Harbor on the south side of Chichagof Island and dropped anchor. We geared up in layers and boarded expedition landing crafts to check out the shoreline in search of brown bears. Near the waterfall, we sighted a female brown bear with her two cubs that were in search of migrating salmon.
After breakfast, we raised anchor and began cruising south along Chatham Strait, looking for things of interest. Chatham Strait is a fault-controlled very deep linear fjord, with evidence of at least 120 miles of offset between rocks on either side of the fault. The direction of offset is to the right, just like the San Andreas Fault in California.
In the afternoon, we pulled into Hanus Bay, the anchorage for the Lake Eva trail at the northern end of Baranof Island along Peril Strait. We made a shore landing and we hiked through the temperate rainforest, where we marveled at the lush vegetation, large trees, migrating salmon, and abundant wild berries. We also found recent evidence of bears and those of us on the long hike made it all the way up to the lake where we experienced a rare stand of old-growth rainforest.
Later during recap, everyone enjoyed all the wonderful pictures taken on the trip and displayed during the guest slide show. Then undersea specialist Jared Berg showed us his spectacular underwater video of his scuba dive he did today into these productive Alaskan waters. It was interesting to see how rich the marine life really is beneath the waves.
After diner we searched for more wildlife in Peril Strait, then headed into Sergius Narrows, which is the narrow passageway toward our disembarkation port, Sitka. Spirits were high as we all remembered our incredible trip together in southeast Alaska.
