Forest Service ranger Ethan Kelly at camp Photo by Tim Lydon

Navigating Alaska's Shores

The Forest Service uses kayaks for a couple of reasons. First, they facilitate access to Alaska's relentlessly steep shores, enabling rangers to land in nooks too steep and narrow even for skiffs. And kayaks can be hauled out of the water at night, whereas skiffs have to be anchored, often an impossibility in fjords hundreds of feet deep and filled with drifting ice.

"Another advantage of working from kayaks is that we blend in with the wilderness we manage," says Malinda, who has been with the program for three years. "We can visit campers and observe wildlife without disrupting them."

While non-motorized travel is consistent with wilderness management objectives, it can be dangerous in Alaska's harsh elements, and the Forest Service holds its employees to the highest safety standards. For instance, in Juneau each ranger is trained in a variety of self- and assisted-rescue techniques, first in pools, then in Alaska's frigid waters. While on the job, they are required to carry a marine radio, paddle float, bilge pump, spare paddle, towing system and PFDs equipped with survival kits that include flares, strobes, space blankets, knives and magnesium strikers.

However, immersion suits are not required. Rangers go ashore frequently to inventory impacts, talk to campers and conduct other duties, and in the region's constantly changing weather, such suits would be impractical. Instead, rangers always travel in pairs and are required to make radio contact with a dispatch office every 30 minutes while away from shore. Some programs even require carrying EPIRBs (emergency position-indicating radio-beacons).

The downside to kayaks, of course, is that they are slow, especially against Alaska's powerful tides, weather and ice. So occasionally we do use skiffs. But with tour boats frequently visiting the area, kayak rangers near Juneau and Ketchikan have established a barter system with the tour operators and share their knowledge and experience in exchange for quick transportation.

For instance, the morning I got stuck in the ice, I had an appointment with the MV Sea Lion, a 70-passenger vessel providing weeklong tours of southeast Alaska. As the waves from the calvings subsided, I found they had loosened the ice near my kayak, enabling me to paddle a mile through sporadic bergs to where the boat had stopped at the edge of another thick ice pack.

Forty passengers in raincoats braved the drizzle and cold breeze on the boat's bow, cameras ready for the next calving. But as I approached, steering around icebergs many times my size, they turned their attention to me.

"Aren't you cold?" one of the passengers called from the top deck, 40 feet above.

"Where did you come from?" yelled another.

We visit about 40 tour boats each summer, and the passengers usually react with the same surprise.

I paddled to the boat's stern, where the crew lowered a ladder and helped me aboard. After helping pull my kayak onto the rear deck, they led me inside and offered me hot chocolate.

Before greeting the passengers, I hung my soaked rain gear near the ship's galley and pulled my Forest Service shirt and hat from a dry bag I'd carried aboard. Although we usually wear sturdy rain gear, wool hats and synthetic layers while on the water, we carry clean uniform shirts for our more formal duties. In minutes, I had transformed from dripping kayaker to uniformed ranger.

A Captivated Audience
Education is an essential part of wilderness ranger projects and usually addresses minimizing physical and social impacts. However, the volume of tour boat passengers, Alaska's spectacular scenery, and the fact that its two national forests are the nation's largest provide kayak rangers a unique opportunity to educate on a broad range of topics.

Shortly after I boarded the Sea Lion, the vessel began its 30-mile sailing back to Stephens Passage, where it would leave our wilderness for its next destination. The trip would take three hours, and along the way, we would pass between high mountains and hanging glaciers.

For the first half-hour, passengers gathered in the lower lounge where I provided a talk about the Tongass, wilderness management and our specific projects. Afterward, I answered questions on a wide array of topics, including past and present cultures, natural history, logging and mining on the Tongass and specific wilderness issues.

These wide-ranging discussions provide rare communication between the Forest Service and boat-based visitors to the Tongass, making the program popular with both the public and the agency.

But the exchange also creates mutually beneficial dialogue between the Forest Service and tour operators. The topic of seals provides a good example: Ship naturalists receive current and accurate information about seals from rangers who help study them, and rangers have an opportunity to educate boat operators on low-impact ways of observing seals.

"While education and research are more stimulating, removing garbage is an equally important part of our job. But it's not always fun."

Between visiting boats, rangers also visit campers to share their Leave No Trace (LNT) expertise and information about the area. And in Whittier, Alaska, at the edge of Prince William Sound, rangers maintain an education yurt where kayakers and other boaters headed for the Nellie Juan-College Fjord area can find LNT, safety and logistical information. All three kayak ranger crews provide education in local communities by speaking to outdoor groups about LNT camping and wilderness management and helping train naturalists and kayak guides who bring visitors into the wilderness.

After three hours, the Sea Lion powered down to drop me off in a large bay surrounded by mature rain forest and glaciated peaks that mark the wilderness boundary. A few dozen passengers leaned over the rails as I descended the ladder and settled into my kayak. They waved and took pictures as I backed away, turned with a broad sweep stroke and paddled south.

Ten minutes later, I landed on a small island with lush rainforest growing right to its edges, the location of our primitive base camp. My co-workers Kevin and Jenny had arrived a few hours earlier, after paddling six miles from their last camp, and helped me carry my boat from the water.

"Dude!" exclaimed Kevin as we pulled lunches from our dry bags, "We were five feet from a humpback whale! It made a beeline toward us from a half-mile, then swam under our boats."

"Wow," I responded. "I'd say that's the record, Kevin. Congratulations!"

It's not uncommon to see humpbacks during our travels, and they occasionally get pretty close.

After lunch on the beach, we loaded rope, Pulaskis (axes with a hoe-like digging tool opposite the blade) and trash bags into our boats, then began a four-mile crossing to the mainland, where we would break apart an abandoned fiberglass skiff. Weather permitting, a barge would arrive the next day to haul the debris away.

Like much of southeast Alaska's Inside Passage, steep hills surround the bay, keeping its water flat and calm. Humpbacks sounded in the distance as we paddled, and the low clouds common to the region broke apart and clung to the mainland, creating fractured views of ocean, glaciers, forest and rocky peaks.

Ninety minutes later, we arrived on a small beach overhung by green forest and dragged our boats over wet sand dotted with mink and bear tracks. At the head of the beach, a winter storm had driven the abandoned boat halfway into the forest. Our job was to break it into manageable pieces with our Pulaskis, then drag it closer to the water where the barge could winch it aboard.

"We're glorified janitors," a former co-worker used to say of rangers.

While education and research are more stimulating, removing garbage is an equally important part of our job. But it's not always fun. We've had to remove plenty of soiled toilet paper from stream sides to protect fresh water sources, and we commonly pack out food scraps so bears don't become accustomed to human food. We also find clothing, broken equipment and food wrappers and break apart fire rings in an effort to maintain unspoiled beaches for wildlife and campers.

We spent two hours demolishing the boat and filling garbage bags with debris, then set up our camp just above the high tide line. After a big dinner of pasta with pesto, artichokes and Greek olives, we watched sea lions feed in a nearby kelp bed. As night slowly fell, wolves howled from the mountains behind our camp.

The next morning, Kevin and Jenny would wait for the barge, then paddle 10 miles to visit a group of kayakers on a commercial tour of the area. My next assignment was a four-mile paddle toward the bay at Stephens Passage, where I'd catch a ride back to Juneau on another tour boat. That night, I would be relieved to be back in town, where eating out, sleeping indoors and listening to music would be welcome novelties.