Alaskan Girl and The M/V Little Patch of Heaven
Photography: Trip #3
By: Jay Beedle
Quote from the author: “This wasn’t our first photography trip, but it stuck out in my mind so distinctly because we just saw an incredible amount of amazing things that day.”
Hop aboard; join Jayleen as a teenager living on Shelter Island and the M/V Little Patch of Heaven on a quest for the perfect photograph in Northern Southeast Alaska.
Jayleen and the M/V Little Patch of Heaven have enjoyed many voyages together. Innumerable waves, itty-bitty to big and scary have passed under the hull of the Little Patch in search of world-class photos. When Jayleen and her father reminisce, often the voyages involving photography are deemed to have been fantastic; the memories of spectacular wildlife and beautiful scenery are recaptured, relived and enjoyed for years.
Jayleen grew up and lives in one of the most beautiful locations in the world, at the northern end of the Inside Passage in Southeast Alaska. The Tongass National Forest surrounds the family’s cabin; at 16.7 million acres, the Tongass is the largest national forest in the United States and teems with wildlife and magnificent scenery. Brown, black, and occasionally glacier bear, Sitka black-tailed deer, mountain goats, moose, mink, marten, eagles and many more animals make the Tongass their home. Magnificent glaciers cascade out of the 1,500 square-mile Juneau Icefield in the Coast Mountain Range and descend to lower elevations. The Mendenhall, Herbert, and Eagle Glaciers along with numerous hanging mountain glaciers are within a 20-mile radius of Jayleen’s home and make for great photo opportunities. The protected waters of the Inside Passage have hundreds of miles of passages, channels, fjords, bays, inlets, canals, sounds, straits, coves, and harbors waiting to be explored and they are home to an abundance of wildlife: humpback and orca whales, seals, sea lions, porpoise, salmon, halibut, herring, trout, cod, surf scoters, harlequin ducks, marbled murrelets, pigeon guillemots, and other sea birds, all begging to be observed and photographed.
The Power of Photography.
Family photographs taken in 1999 reveal Jayleen with a film camera at the age of six. On a beautiful summer day in 2003, Jayleen and her father departed Shelter Island with a wad of hard earned cash (they had saved for a long time) and headed to the Fred Meyer store in Juneau to purchase two-newfangled digital cameras, digital cameras were the new craze. Jayleen’s father refused to pay the high cost of developing prints from film cameras. It didn’t cost anything to look at a digital picture on a computer screen. Jayleen and her father considered Fujifilm, Panasonic, and Olympus cameras before buying two Fujifilm cameras, spending more money than planned-Jayleen around $200 and her father around $280. What a revelation. For the first time, they could afford to take quality pictures and evaluate the image instantly on the small screen on the back of the camera or on a big computer screen after downloading; wow, so cool, so fun! As Jayleen and her father’s addiction to photography grew, their camera equipment was upgraded, both becoming professional photographers. Jayleen has become well-known for her photography and wildlife trips offered through her business Jayleen’s Alaska, based out of Juneau, Alaska on her 26-foot boat the M/V Alaskan Girl.
June 19, 2008. “Looks like a pod of orca whales off Favorite Reef heading north in Saginaw Channel,” Jayleen’s mother excitedly said to the relaxed trio-Jayleen, Jason, and Merlin. Jason and Merlin were concentrating on a game of chess on the floor by the wood stove while Jayleen indulged in Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austin, for the fourth time on the bench seat in the living room.
Everyone quickly shuffled out the sliding glass door and onto the front deck, binoculars in hand. Merlin didn’t bring binoculars, but he did show lots of enthusiasm by barking and running around. “The weather is perfect, I’m going to tell dad about the orcas,” Jayleen exclaimed with binoculars pressed against her eyes. She then headed into the forest behind their cabin to find her father cutting firewood rounds from an 80-foot hemlock with a Stihl chainsaw.
“Here we go again,” Jason sighed.
The same game has played out over and over for years; Jayleen, her father, and the M/V Little Patch of Heaven in search of the perfect picture pitted-against-unpredictable wildlife, weather, darkness, Mother Nature, and slow/full memory cards. During nice weather or anytime someone spotted activity on the water, an eagle, sea lions, whales orca or humpback, or imaginary sightings, it was game on. Typically things unfolded like this: Excited people hurriedly asking and answering, zipping around, and Merlin restively wondering. Jayleen’s mother quickly filled water bottles and packed a lunch, Jayleen gathered her father’s and her professional camera equipment, Jayleen and her father put on layers of warm clothes, or packed extra clothing. While her father gathered plastic totes, life jackets, coats, rain gear, seat cushions, extra fuel, and safety gear from the shed, Jayleen kayaked out 50-yards to the M/V Little Patch of Heaven, lowered the 20-hp outboard into the water, pumped the fuel primer bulb, pulled the choke knob out, twisted the throttle handle to full power and back three times then braced herself and telepathically sent encouraging thoughts to the engine as she pulled hard on the rewind rope starter. With good luck the outboard fired on the second pull, with bad, up to 15-frustrating back jerking pulls were needed. Once the outboard started Jayleen continued to coax it by working the throttle and at the same time easing the choke back in, letting the outboard warm up a bit before unclipping from the mooring buoy and heading in to pick up father and gear.
With the Little Patch underway and the outboard at full throttle Jayleen and her father traded places, one captained while the other donned layers of clothes, rain gear, life vest, then swapped back. The goal was to get underway as fast as possible; one never knows when Mother Nature will do something spectacular.
By the time Jayleen and her father caught up with the orca whales, the orcas had rounded Point Retreat and the lighthouse at the northern tip of Admiralty Island (remember Admiralty Island is home to the largest population of brown bear in the world) and were headed southeast in Lynn Canal, three-miles southeast of Jayleen’s favorite mountain, Mount Golub, in The Chilkat Mountain Range. At 4,194-feet, Mount Golub is one of the taller mountains in the area and sports a large distinctive rounded summit. This means the glacier that flowed over and ground down the smooth summit must have been over 6,000-feet thick.
Lynn Canal, named by Captain George Vancouver in 1794, is incorrectly named; it isn’t a canal, but an inlet/fjord (a fjord is a glacier carved body of water). Lynn Canal is a long narrow body of water, less than 10-miles wide and about 90-miles long; its waters run from Haines, Alaska in a southeast direction toward Chatham Strait and the Pacific Ocean. Both, the Chilkat Mountain Range on your right as you face southeast in Lynn Canal and the Coast Mountain Range with the Juneau Icefield on your left have beautiful snow capped peaks, multiple salmon rivers, and voluptuous forested ridges and valleys. Lynn Canal is the deepest fjord in North America (not including Greenland) with depths over 2,000-feet and one of the longest and deepest fjords in the world.
The weather/water conditions in Lynn Canal can be flat calm to mega bad. The 245-foot SS Princess Sophia sank on October 25, 1918 in Lynn Canal after she ran aground on Vanderbilt Reef during a freak early winter snowstorm. All 364 persons on board perished, making the wreck of the Princess Sophia the worst maritime accident in the history of British Columbia and Alaska.
After observing the orcas for some time, Jayleen surmised they were a large pod (family) of resident orca whales searching for salmon. The two names used to describe/identify orca whales in the Inside Passage are resident and transient. The names resident and transient are ill-named, misleading, and confusing. To make it more challenging, resident and transient orca whales look exactly alike. To help keep the two names straight remember, resident orcas eat fish, like salmon, halibut, cod, and herring and transient orcas eat mammals like seals, sea lions, porpoise, and whales. Resident orca whales live in family pods and tend to be more social, vocal, prone to breaching, spy hopping and tail lobbing; and in spite of their name, (resident orcas) do not reside permanently in Juneau-their home range can be huge. Transient orcas tend to be in smaller pods, serious, quiet, and spend less time wasting energy doing extra activities like breaching, spy hopping, and tail lobbing. (A short celebration sometimes happens after a kill is made.)
Jayleen, her father, and the Little Patch cruised along with the family pod of resident orcas at about 6-mph and by 10:00 am started photographing, Jayleen in the bow, her favorite location for taking pictures, and her father in the stern.
The pod of resident orca whales was spread across Lynn Canal from the Admiralty Island shoreline to the Chilkat Mountain Range shoreline. The daughter and father team decided to follow the orcas along Admiralty Island and after a few miles noticed a magnificent brown bear feeding in tall grass along a rocky stretch of shoreline. With all the brown bear on Admiralty Island you might think it’s common to see one, but in truth it is rare to see a brown bear on the beach in the middle of summer. Brown bear are generally nocturnal and are legally hunted part of the year in Southeast Alaska. Admiralty Island is mostly covered in huge trees; spruce, hemlock, alder, and cedar from the beach to alpine, making it extremely difficult to see the big wily coastal brownies. Jayleen’s father has a rule, “Never step on Admiralty Island without pepper spray or a weapon big enough to kill a brown bear.” But they forgot to bring a firearm in the mad rush to get out of the cabin as fast as possible, so… Jayleen agreed to drop off her father on the rocky beach and stay nearby in the Little Patch, but stay far enough away not to scare the bear, but… close enough to rescue her crazy father-if needed.
After photographing the brown bear, they continued south, hoping to meet up with the pod of orcas again and finally noticed blows off the entrance to Funter Bay on Admiralty Island.
Jayleen and her father joined the family of orcas for a couple more miles and captured many world–class photos before turning north and heading home.
But the day wasn’t over.
The 20-mile trip home might offer photo opportunities, so the two photographers kept an eye out for wildlife and noticed a playful pod of Dall’s porpoise begging to have their picture taken at the entrance of Funter Bay; Jayleen thinks the Dall’s porpoise are celebrating because the pod of orca whales were resident orcas, not transient.
If you haven’t had the experience of being in the bow of a boat with Dall’s porpoise playing, zipping in, out, and under the bow at arms length, and being sprayed in the face-it is fantastically fun.
After a wonderful time with the Dall’s porpoise at Funter Bay, they continued on their journey. Good luck prevailed and another photo opportunity presented itself at Point Retreat, a second pod of photogenic Dall’s porpoise appeared. Jayleen and her father took turns hanging over the bow of the Little Patch; watching the porpoise zip around and play.
Did you notice the writing on Jayleen’s hat? It reads “ALASKA”.
Before arriving back at the family cabin, Jayleen noticed splashing off the south end of Shelter Island that needed to be investigated; you never know what surprises Mother Nature might come up with in the state nicknamed, The Last Frontier.
The photographers were not disappointed; a humpback whale calf was putting on a grand show, breaching, chin slapping, and tail lobbing. It is rare to get a picture with an Alaska State Ferry and a whale in the same picture, but Jayleen and her father were able to get pictures of the M/V LeConte and the M/V Fairweather with the whale!
With twilight approaching, an extremely happy but tired Jayleen, downloaded her photos onto her computer and backed them up on an external hard drive. Then everyone; mother, father, brother Jason, Merlin, Jayleen, and maybe a little popcorn, gathered around the computer for a slideshow and stories of the day’s events. The electricity used to power Jayleen’s computer came from the sun and was harnessed with solar panels and batteries from her families’ off grid power system.
For Jayleen, more likely than not-the next day started at 5:00 am when her father, M/V Little Patch of Heaven and she traveled to the Auke Bay dock to bring customers on a photo tour in one of here father’s larger tour boats.
Fantastic Memories-Thank You Jayleen!
Love,
d
To take a break while writing this article, Jayleen’s father walked out onto the front deck of their cabin and took this picture with his Apple iPhone. February 25, 2019.
Saginaw Channel, Favorite Reef, Lynn Canal, The Chilkat Mountain Range and Mount Golub are in the picture.
While Jay wrote part of this article on March 8, 2019 at 10:33 pm the night was totally calm, no wind, no sound, no waves breaking on the beach, a pitch black starless night. Then a familiar sound-the blow of a humpback whale. Four blows total. This humpback is one of the first to return for the summer. Welcome home humpback whale, and thank you.
Jay is the author of South Shelter, a book about raising a family on a remote island in Southeast Alaska, it can be purchased at Hearthside Books in Juneau. A kindle version without pictures can be purchased on Amazon.
This article could not have been written without help from: Eileen, Judy, Jack, and Margie. Thank you everyone!