14 images Created 9 Feb 2014
Tongass National Forest
Although I spent so much time trying to find and keep up with the whales in my kayak out on the water, I was also completely absorbed by the amazing Southeast Alaskan landscape bordering the sea, from the wave-sculpted shoreline, abundant inter-tidal life, colourful flower meadows, rich and diverse sphagnum bogs (muskeg), up through the lichen and moss-festooned temperate rainforests populated by huge trees, tidewater glaciers shimmering with ancient ice and the backbone of snow-capped coastal mountains rising so abruptly from the sea.
The Tongass National Forest is the largest in the USA at 17 million acres (69,000km2) and the largest remaining temperate rainforest on earth. It encompasses islands of the Alexander Archipelago, fjords and glaciers, and the peaks of the Coast Mountains. More than 80% of Southeast Alaska is in Tongass and with its thousands of islands, fjords and bays the forest has 11,000 miles of coastline, about half of that of North America. Though its land area is huge, about 40% of Tongass is composed of wetlands, snow, ice, rock, and non-forest vegetation, while the remaining 10 million acres (40,000 km2) are forested. About 5 million acres (20,000 km2) are considered “productive old-growth”, and 4,500,000 acres (18,000 km2) of those are preserved as wilderness areas. The vast coastal forest includes towering hemlock, spruce and red and yellow cedar. Beneath the massive conifers are young evergreens and shrubs such as devil’s club, skunk cabbage, blueberry and huckleberry. Moss and ferns cover the ground, and lichens drape many trees.
The coastline is punctuated by tidewater glaciers from the Hubbard Glacier in the north, the world’s longest and easily Alaska’s most active, to the Le Conte Glacier, a short boat ride from Petersburg or Wrangell, the southernmost tidewater glacier on the continent. In between is the crowning jewel of Southeast Alaska, Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve.
The Tongass National Forest is the largest in the USA at 17 million acres (69,000km2) and the largest remaining temperate rainforest on earth. It encompasses islands of the Alexander Archipelago, fjords and glaciers, and the peaks of the Coast Mountains. More than 80% of Southeast Alaska is in Tongass and with its thousands of islands, fjords and bays the forest has 11,000 miles of coastline, about half of that of North America. Though its land area is huge, about 40% of Tongass is composed of wetlands, snow, ice, rock, and non-forest vegetation, while the remaining 10 million acres (40,000 km2) are forested. About 5 million acres (20,000 km2) are considered “productive old-growth”, and 4,500,000 acres (18,000 km2) of those are preserved as wilderness areas. The vast coastal forest includes towering hemlock, spruce and red and yellow cedar. Beneath the massive conifers are young evergreens and shrubs such as devil’s club, skunk cabbage, blueberry and huckleberry. Moss and ferns cover the ground, and lichens drape many trees.
The coastline is punctuated by tidewater glaciers from the Hubbard Glacier in the north, the world’s longest and easily Alaska’s most active, to the Le Conte Glacier, a short boat ride from Petersburg or Wrangell, the southernmost tidewater glacier on the continent. In between is the crowning jewel of Southeast Alaska, Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve.
![If I wasn’t kayaking at sea looking for humpback whales then the Stikine River was one of my favourite place to be. What an amazing, breathtaking river that is, which provides a valuable natural highway for wild animals from the interior and opens out onto a spectacular river delta. When I remember Alaska, it is somewhere that I always return to in my dreams, to feel the vastness of open vistas that Alaska provides.<br />
The Stikine River is a river, historically also the Stickeen River, approximately 610 km (379 mi) long,[1] in northwestern British Columbia in Canada and in southeast Alaska in the United States. Considered one of the last truly wild major rivers in British Columbia, it drains a rugged, largely pristine, area east of the Coast Mountains, cutting a fast-flowing course through the mountains in deep glacier-lined gorges to empty into Eastern Passage, just north of the city of Wrangell, which is situated at the north end of Wrangell Island in the Alexander Archipelago.](https://www.duncanmurrell.com/img-get2/I0000KkO7NrXyEaU/fit=/fill=180x180/g=G0000YfEgIamG6Tc/I0000KkO7NrXyEaU.jpg)
