Endicott Arm and Fords Terror

Day 40 – June 19 Endicott Arm and Fords Terror

It was a sunny morning. We (Glen, Liz, and Nicole) headed out in the dinghy on an adventure while the Miner’s stayed to go fishing.

We went up Endicott Arm all the way to the Dawes Glacier. We could get right up next to the glacier (if we’d wanted to) this time. We watched as the glacier calved small to medium chunks, but no really big ones. Wish we could have gotten some of it on video. We did get some great glacier photos. There were a couple small cruise boats in there at the same time. They had passengers in small boats as well as in kayaks going up fairly close. The sun was shining and made this a spectacular sight. We could also see the glacier to the north which no longer reaches the water. Very near the beginning of Endicott Arm is another glacier high above the water called Sumdum glacier, it was very visible today and beautiful.

The side hills only had a few clouds which only added to the beauty. Virgin snowfields, large cornices, evidence of recent avalanches, smaller slide paths, and lots of waterfalls; all backed by sunny skies. Endicott Arm is a bit wider than Tracy Arm and its walls are not as steep.

Again there were lots of seals with pups. Not as many as in Tracy arm, but these pups seemed to be smaller/younger.

I highly recommend this place!

Fords Terror is amazingly beautiful. Steep side walls, with large cracks from top to bottom, some narrow and some quite wide. There were lots of waterfalls. The narrow sections had rapids for Glen to play in. In a couple places there were rows of bubbles coming to the surface. Not sure what those were from but the water temp was not different and there was no noticeable smell.

Came back out and found the Miner’s still fishing, stopped to see how they were doing. They reported, one Halibut on board and “another on the hook” being reeled in. That one turned out to be a small cod rather than a Halibut. Continued back to Magic anchored in Tracy Cove. Saw that the Reed’s and there two traveling companions anchored in the same bay, so we ventured over to say hello and catch up. They were going to do at least one of the ‘Arms’ tomorrow. Gave them all the info we could and then back to Magic. Made lunch, pulled anchor and headed for Juneau.

A group of 2-3 Humpbacks just around the corner but they were shy and would not cooperate for photos.

Tomorrow was going to be the day of fishing with a commercial guide (Nick Newbury’s brother in law Louis), but when we talked to him yesterday he said that they had been out for the last two days and no one got even a bite in 6 hours. The salmon just weren’t there or weren’t biting. He wasn’t sure that we really wanted to go with that kind of fishing. So after talking it over we all decided to cancel the fishing trip for now. We might try again later in the trip. So instead of going into Juneau we went to Taku Bay and tied to a public dock. There were 3 other boats on the dock so including us there were 5. One of them was a brand new 90’ Delta.