Category: Inside Passage 2025

But the map tracker should work when we are paddling

LINK

We had a very pleasant ferry trip aboard the M/V Columbia.

Including dinner and breakfast in the restaurant. Contrary to custom in North America the restaurant was full of signs with “tipping forbidden”!

When we asked why, the answer was that sometime in the late nineties the waiters had stated earning more than the captain. And that could not be!

We got ashore and checked in to the Sportsman’s association campsite, complete with a shooting range. And VERY conveniently located just 500 m from the ferry terminal and run by a friendly man called John.

After having parked the kayaks, we took the once per hour bus toward town to shop ten days supplies.

The bus driver was a friendly guy and explained that we pay by dropping dollars into a box. He asked where we were going and suggested we pay for all three trips we’d need at once. But no tickets?? No need this line had just one driver.

Shopping took a couple of hours and then it was time for a bit of food from the adjacent fast food place. There you can have any food you like as long as it is deep fried chicken

We managed to pitch the tents under a tiny roof, just as well because the rain sounded like a train passing as it hit the roof during night.

We were a bit apprehensive because both at the ferry terminal and the bus driver warned us that there was a bear with two cubs hanging around.

We slept tight anyway, but in the morning the dustbins were turned over. So there had been a nightly visit…

Tomorrow we paddle off.

We expect to be out of communication except satellite for six to nine days.

The map tracker in the menu of this site should work and give our location when we are on the water.

We had tickets to Sitka on the 1930 departure M/V Columbia.

Joe drove us over and dropped off us and the equipment. A handshake and a hug for farewell and we had mentally left Haines, focus forward.

We leave Haines with a very positive impression.

Our impression is that it is a place where people look out for and help each other. Like so many other small distal communities we have paddled by both in Scandinavia and Russia.

These are places where one person doing well -at least well enough to stay- is the foundation for other people’s opportunities. And the other way round, if people start leaving opportunities evaporate.

It seems that this fosters a culture of collaboration and maybe also select for people who relate to that, like Joe who moved there from Michigan with his wife 15 years ago.

Haines largest employers according to the brochure at “rusten compass” cafe is: Tourism, Local Government, Health Care and fisheries.

It may not be the most robust of foundations, but they make it work.

Long may it last, we leave with fond memories

Monday morning we were up three hours before the first breakfast place opened, so we had ample time to make the wrong pick among the two options.

We chose the bakery. Turned out it was more of a patisserie. No fresh bread. But they did serve breakfast both omelets and eggs Benedict. We asked them to go light on the potatoes and long on the tomatoes.

Breakfast came and was long on potatoes and devoid of tomatoes.

As a compensation coffee was served by the pint.

Next stop was the test paddle. Good to be on the water. No surprises with the kayaks a little back and forth with paddles but we were very happy in the end.

Now we were seriously ahead of schedule and serious tired from jet lag. Same solution as yesterday walk up and down Main Street.., all 650 m of it

Then something totally unexpected happened: The sun came out! Main Street sprung to life! The challenge now was: where to get an ice cream??

Not so easy – even though Haines is among the driest places in SE Alaska with barely 1500 mm rain per year, ice cream wasn’t a common commodity.

Finally we found a small selection at “Olerud” the main grocery shop. The situation was under control!

Speaking of selections: we noticed there were several empty baskets in the vegetable section. The explanation was straight forward: fresh produce only came to Haines once a week on Tuesdays. Today was Monday and supplies were running low.

This explained the breakfast tomato debacle: There are no tomatoes in Haines on Mondays.

On Sunday morning we had an 0530 Uber lift from the airport to the ferry terminal and the ferry M/V Hubbard which left Juneau at 0700 and arrived in Haines at 1145

The Alaska Marine Highway System ferries are what “Hurtigruta” used to be along the Norwegian coast: The primary means of transport of people and goods among the commutes here in SE Alaska.

As an example: The Alaska state capital of Juneau does not have a road connection, so it is ferry or plane.

In Haines we were picked up by Joe Osterling of SEAK Expeditions, our kayak renter and outfitter.

Joe and his company is the reason we went to Haines. They have a strong reputation and first class equipment, and we don’t want any compromises on equipment, that is about safety.

Joe first took us to the Helsingland hotel to drop off luggage and then to his warehouse to look at the boats. (For the kayak nerds: Two Cetus high volume and one NDK expedition).

We agreed to take a test paddle Monday and then Joe dropped us off for lunch.

The rest of the day was about fighting jet lag by walking up and down main street (all 650 meters of it) doing some window shopping -and some real shopping in the well stocked outdoor shop.

Eventually it was dinner time, but even after an excellent halibut fish & chips dinner it was still too early to call it a day.

We took a detour through the harbour, along way we became aware of what looked like an abandoned graveyard, we later learned it was and old graveyard for the Tingit tribe.

From what we could read people died young around here a hundred years ago.

No one had looked after this graveyard for years or maybe rather decades. The inscriptions were hardly readable, the souls resting there apparently forgotten by all.

It was a somewhat sinister end to the day, but at least it was an end: By the time we were back at the hotel it was almost 2100 and we could finally call it a day and declare lights out in our small suite in Hotel Helsingland.

We all arrived safe and sound to Juneau and so did all our luggage

One of Erling’s IKEA bags was torn, but as a precaution the IKEA bags were packed in “double Kamprad” fashion. That is two bags, one outside the other. And the inner bag was undamaged, so no trail of dry sacks from Seattle to Juneau

Mikko arrived last, one hour after midnight, and we had to leave for the ferry at 0530.

Mikko had done some research and reported that Juneau was a very good airport to sleep in…, as sleeping in airports go that is.

And the alternatives were both cumbersome and expensive. So we decided to try the “Finnish” way.

And we were not alone. Apparently planes arrive and leave Juneau at just about any hour. And tens of people were sleeping on the couches in a “lounge” area. Well ordered and quiet.

We all got some decent sleep.

But if happiness equals “outcome divided by requirements”, then one reason why the Finns consistently score top of the global happiness index could be a quite modest approach to the requirement side and a low comfort threshold…

Mikko Suominen, is a very experienced and well travelled paddler from Finland.

For all of you fluent in Finnish you can read more about it in the book “Kajakki kapsäkissä LINK”, “With the kayak in suitcase”. Mikko has paddled along the west coast of Canada and Alaska four times previously

Erling first met Mikko in Helsinki in May 2018 en route to Russia with Stein Kynø, LINK. Ever since Mikko has spoken often about his dream to paddle here in the Inside Passge again.

Meanwhile we have paddled together in Norway, Sweden and Finland. So we know the team works well.

Mikko is also a geologist and an ornithologist (even if not formally qualified)

He did part of his studies at Erling’s “Alma mater”; the university of Oslo, a few years after Erling.

As far as Erling can tell from his acquaintances there – no one has any recollection of this young Finnish student.

Maybe because he spent most of the time skiing on Hardangervidda and paddling along the south coast of Norway.

In spite of this extensive extracurricular activity the studies went well, and Mikko is now looking after the literal foundations of Helsinki as the city reclaims land and grow out into the Bay of Finland.

Karianne Fønstelien Vintervoll lives in a paddling neighbourhood close to Blindern in Oslo, midway between Stein Kynø and Erling ca 50m from each and we had kids in the same class at school. So, maybe she didn’t have much option but to take up paddling.

Together with Stein and Erling and other paddling friends, she has paddled the entire Norwegian coast and large parts of the Swedish and Finnish coast as well.

When not paddling she is a busy chartered auditor at KPMG, this trip will be the first time she does not bring her job PC along

Erling Vågnes is a retired geologist/geophysicist/manager having worked 33 years in Equinor.

He has also paddled extensively, the longest trip being a 2018 attempt to circumnavigate Scandinavia from Oslo to Oslo via the Russian waterways LINK.

Erling is the trips “blog master” and will try to keep friends and family updated on this blog.