South OZ Adventurers - Adventure, Travel, Expeditions


Hoonah to Pelican

Hoonah to Pelican is a trip of not much more than 60 miles, three reasonable days of paddling.

We had spent 2 days in Hoonah relaxing and resupplying for our trip around to one of the best parties in Southeast Alaska. We had been told that we should try and get to Pelican for the 4th of July, and had allowed ourselves 3 days to do it.

We left Hoonah in the early afternoon making for Point Adolphous, which is known for humpbacks cruising right along the shoreline. The day out of Hoonah was relatively uneventful, meeting a couple of longliners at about 7 o'clock who told us about a forest service shelter which was just around the next point, about 2 mile back from Point Adolphous. With the prospet of a cabin we decided to make it a day and pull in for the night, just as we were pulling into the beach I saw a bear cruising along the shore line about 200 metres away. We were a bit nervous and made sure that we made plently of noise as we unloaded the boats. The bear didn't seem to be too bothered about us, so we made our camp in the shelter, which only had 3 walls, not too much protection for a bear, but better than a tent...

We had planned to head around to Elfin Cove the next day, but getting up was pretty hard in the morning, and by the time we had dragged ourselves out of bed we had missed the right tide to get through the treacherous South Inian Pass, which can have up to 7 knot tides and whirlpools if you catch it on the wrong tide. So we decided to rest up for the day, and to leave the next morning and paddle the whole way through to Pelican.

Just as we were about to start cooking Kim saw a bear ambling past the cabin less than 50 metres away. We wandered down the path to get a better look at the bear. He was just chilling out being a bear and we made plenty of noise so that he knew where we were. As I turned around to look back up the beach I saw another bear about 200 metres up the other end of the beach. So here we were, camping in a 3 walled cabin, with two big Alaskan Brown Bears about 200 metres from us on either side, with a lake and the ocean on the other 2 sides. It was a pretty restless sleep that night. Good thing that we were leaving at 2 the next morning.

We were pretty happy to be out of the cabin at 3 o'clock the next morning, heading to South Inian Pass. Inian Pass is at the entrance to Icy Straight, and most of the water from the northern inside waters of Southeast Alaska has to push through a gap which is less than 200 metres wide. It is important to hit the pass on the right tide, we didn't like the idea of getting sucked down into a whirlpool, or fighting against the 7 knott tides. So we had to make sure that we hit it at slack water

The tide was at about midday, and we were there at about 8. We set up the tent and crashed out for a few hours to wait. We made it through without any problems, and had caught the beginning of the outgoing tide and got a bit of a push through.

From Inian we had some of the best paddling of the trip so far. The coast underwent an almost instant transformation from gentle forest rolling down to the water, to jagged cliffs and islands jutting out of the water with gnarled trees clinging to the edge. It was an hours paddle dwon to Elfin Cove where we stopped for a hamburger, some coffee and to wait for the tide to turn. Elfin Cove is a small boardwalk community, which means that there are no roads or cars, the streets are all boardwalks which connect the buildings. The town was busy gearing itself up for the 4th of July celebrations the next day. We stopped in at the local grocery store for a couple of chocolate bars, while we were in there I asked the owner whether Pelican was big. "Oh yeah Pelican's big. They've got 12 foot boardwalks and we've only got six foot boardwalks. Yeah Pelican's big." Uh huh right so Pelican's big. With this in mind we left Elfin Cove for the 17 miles down to Pelican.

About an hour after we had started out from Elfin Cove it started to rain. It was the first real heavy rain that we had had for the trip, and it reminded me of Forrest Gump, when he says that they had the rain that came up from underneath... with the drops bouncing back up off the water into our faces!

After about an hour of rain it cleared up and as we were paddling the last 5 miles down Lisianski Inlet the sun came out and we paddled the last couple of hours into Pelican. We managed to make it to Pelican, and more importantly Rosie's by about 10 o'clock, just as the party was starting to get into full swing. In all we had paddled about 43 miles that day, and had been in our boats for almost 14 hours.

But it was worth it all to get to the best party in Southeast Alaska. Which you can read about on the Pelican 4th of July page....