Haines, Alaska offers an experience of a liftetime
Many people have a “bucket list” of places they want to visit in their lifetimes, and I’m no exception. This month my wife and I were lucky enough to visit one of the very special places on my list — the Chilkat Bald Eagle Preserve, north of Haines, Alaska. What a thrill it was.
According to the American Bald Eagle Foundation, the preserve is home to the largest annual gathering of bald eagles in the world. The height of the eagle congregation is in November when more than 3,000 of the birds crowd the banks of a five-mile stretch of the Chilkat River to feed on a late run of chum salmon.
What makes this part of the river so special for eagles is the availability of salmon and unfrozen water at this time of year. Beginning about 17 miles north of Haines, the flats of the Chilkat River remain open during freezing months due to a natural phenomenon known as an “alluvial fan reservoir.” This underground reservoir pushes warmer water up through the coarse gravel in the river bottom keeping the water from freezing until late in the year. For about a five-mile stretch of the river, the water remains free of ice permitting chum salmon to spawn late in the fall. The dying or dead carcasses of salmon create a feast for bald eagles.
Getting to Haines can be as much of an adventure as being there. There is no major airline service to the small town of a little over 1,800 residents, which is located in Southeast Alaska, on the other side of the mountains from Glacier Bay National Park. My travel plans included a flight on Alaska Airlines from Denver to Seattle, and then on to Juneau — with stops in Ketchikan and Sitka! If you like takeoffs and landings, this itinerary is for you. After staying the night in Juneau, we caught the daily auto ferry to Haines. The ferry ride was a pleasant, four-hour trip up a coastal waterway known as the Lynn Canal, which runs between Juneau and Skagway, and is the largest fjord in North America.
Once in Haines I worked quickly to take advantage of the limited daylight. The sun came up just before 8 a.m. and set around 3:30 p.m. The mountains surrounding Haines and the Chilkat River trimmed the useable shooting time to 9:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. Add to that the escalating winter weather and you get some challenging shooting conditions.
It rained the first day and then snowed every day thereafter, sometimes very heavily. High winds cancelled ferry service one day, causing visitors to scramble to find accommodations. There were only a few moments of what I’d call “sunlight.”
But the eagles didn’t mind and neither did I. The snowy weather made a great backdrop for the birds’ struggle to have a meal in peace. Any eagle with a salmon is a marked man — uh, bird. Some of my best photos show eagles stealing salmon from one another or fighting talon to talon over a fish carcass. It was a privilege to observe and photograph this natural drama.
To see the eagle photos I made on this trip, please go to my eagles photo gallery. Please let me know what you think of these photos. My next task is to decide which of these photos to print for upcoming shows.
