I’D NEVER HEARD OF Ketchikan until the morning I woke up there. This cheerful fishing town clings to the chilly, rocky shores of Alaska – North America’s Final Frontier. Ketchikan is supported on wooden pilings, with boardwalks heading in every direction – and a zillion salmon come here each year, fighting their way upriver, spawning with a passion, then dying in their droves.
You can see them everywhere … and you can smell them!
But the last thing I was thinking about as we headed into the dark, spooky woods surrounding the town was salmon. No, we were too busy chanting:
We’re going on a bear-hunt!
We’re going on a bear-hunt!
We’re not scared. We’re not scared.
Uh-oh …
Actually, the rainforest wasn’t that dark and spooky (just a bit wet). And we weren’t scared (well, maybe just a little). But this place is home to lots of big black bears. These wild, free-to-roam animals show up in large numbers, gorging themselves on the dead and dying salmon that flood the streams.
We, for our part, weren’t roaming freely: these powerful beasts weigh in at 100 kilos – or up to 400 kilos for fully grown males. And females with cubs can be especially grumpy! Instead, we followed an experienced guide along dirt tracks where fresh skat (droppings) told us that bears had recently been … and across elevated swing-bridges that led to viewing platforms high in the trees.
We spotted one big female, fishing in the fast-flowing water … then another … then a couple more … And, for the next two or three hours, they just kept coming – staring up at us occasionally with their beady eyes, but mostly content to pursue their wading and splashing and sniffing and feasting and climbing and snoozing while we marvelled at them from above.
A mother appeared at one stage, two cubs in tow, and we watched as first the cubs, then Mum, climbed high into an old tree for some playtime and a nap. From a distance, they looked kind of roly-poly cute – but Alaska’s black bears are much bigger and stronger than us. We just felt awed and honoured to be allowed briefly into their world.
We weren’t the only ones in the treetops that day. Bald eagles were watching from way up high – or fishing from their waterside perches below. These graceful birds (they’re not bald, by the way) were once on the brink of extinction – but today, while-capped adults and their brownish juveniles are as common as seagulls in this area.
A little further to the north, tucked away at the end of a fjord and overlooked by the massive Mendenhall Glacier, is Juneau: Alaska’s capital city. And tourists aren’t the only ones who come visiting. These inky-black island-studded waters are also visited, twice each year, by hungry humpback whales and their oversized babies!
A jet-powered catamaran took us out to their feeding grounds, and, before you knew it, we were right amongst these giants of the deep – as they came to the surface for air, nostrils gaping and signature humps showing proudly, then dived oh-so-gracefully for food, tail-flukes waving wetly.
It was magic. Pure magic. And while they never came as close as we wished, they got close enough for us to spot the barnacles on their tails and smell the fishy stink on their breath!
To add icing to the cake, one energetic adult off in the distance performed a crashing leap into the air … and, even further out, a big group of other humpbacks were spotted ‘bubble-net fishing’, working together to drive fish to the surface, then following through with a massed, open-mouthed feeding-frenzy.
I don’t know what the whales thought of us humans, rushing madly from one side of the boat to the other, searching, shouting, pointing, and aiming our cameras in all directions at once. But we were utterly captivated by these majestic mammals …
