Colross Pass

The Discovery. Once a missionary boat and now an Eco-tour cruise boat with a mission to spread the vision and the spirit of the Alaskan wilderness, abeit with gourmet cooking and very gracious guides.

Sam and Sarah fetching the skiff to pick us up after a hike up over the ridge and through the sphagnum bog. Of course, warm soup and lots of food was waiting in the Discovery.

Kittiwake Colony. The sheer number of them and the tenacity at which they glue their little nests onto sheer rock cliffs is amazing. Of course, if you had bears, eagles, ravens, hawks and just about everything else trying to eat you, you'd live on sheer cliffs too.

Should you doubt that I was totally in awe of the huge number of kittiwakes, here's a closer picture of the colony..

Now, a true birder would be asking right now, "...but are they black footed or red footed kittiwakes?" Remember, if you look back at the whittier dock picture there were both feasting out of Great Pacific's bait well. Well, this little kittiwake is a black footed Kittiwake. That does not prove that the ENTIRE COLONY is black footed, just this one.

This kittiwake found dinner in the waves. You would see them skimming along looking for food for their chicks, particularly if there was something below (dolphins, whales, etc.) driving up the herring and other food sources to the surface.

Oh but you are so tired of kittiwakes by now, here are some blueberry flowers. The blueberries bushes were everywhere! I suspect that they provide food to a huge number of animals including bears and birds that spread the seeds widely. There were also nearly identical bushes with white flowers and lighter pink flowers which I am told give different types of berries (that taste different too).

The Discovery viewed from above the falls.

The falls taken from a little ledge alongside. You can see the wildflowers in bloom on the edge of the falls.

This is a close-up of the flowers blooming in the moss on the right hand side of the picture above. I had looked them up in the Discovery Library of nature books but I have, unfortunately, long since forgotten. 

This tree had toppled over from it's precarious perch on the harsh slate and granite shoreline. You can see the orange seaweed below it.

The view of the pass as we boated in earlier.

One very lonely Canada goose. Most of his friends were in pairs but this guy was hanging out all by himself looking at the seaweed for food.

I found this pigeon guillemot swimming along side the boat. You can identify him by the black lines into the white on his wing. Guille is a Spanish word, apparently meaning crazy or something of that sort. Mot is French for word. Only in Alaska would the two words meet and marry!  (I have also been told that the name may derive from the French translation for William: Guillaume).  You decide.

This is reindeer moss if I recollect (or perhaps a lichen...). There were huge tufts of it all over the bog and people used to collect it and dry/paint it for use as trees in little model cities.

This is a picture of this really cool yellow lichen. It was not very common and seemed to only be on these little twigs along the path. There are truly lemon drop yellow and when you shake the branch they wiggle like jello.

This is an Alaskan Mountain Goat. I went looking for them on the web and found all sorts of nasty pictures of people holding dead ones that they had shot. Leave the goats alone...

There were waterfalls everywhere. It helps you understand just how much snow and glacial melt is going on, not to mention the general drizzle. If you love waterfalls, you will love Alaska.

We saw this humpback whale on the way through the Colross pass heading towards Nellie Juan. It hung around for a good while allowing a few decent shots.

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