South OZ Adventurers - Adventure, Travel, Expeditions


The Brutal Portage

Cape Ommaney is one of the most treacherous pieces of exposed water in Southeast Alaska. We had been told that it was a place that should only be tackled on slack water and with good weather. We weren't too worried about missing the weather window because there was a small portage between Port Lucy and Puffin Bay. It's a distance of only about 800 metres across and only 100 metres high.

The day that we were to tackle Cape Ommaney we had pretty good weather, however we missed the tide by about 45 minutes. We decided to try the portage across the island, rather than wait another 24 hours for the tide the next day, and we might not even get the right weather.

We pulled into the back of puffin bay at about 6:30 that afternoon and began quickly unpacking. Kim firmly said that once we started there was no way that we were turning back. I found what I thought wlooked like a bit of a trail and we set off.

Within minutes we were pushing our way throught some of the thickest toughest jungle that either of us had even tried to walk through. And as Kim pointed out we were carring heavier packs than we had ever carried before, and they weren't even packs. We each had a duffle bag over one shoulder and a dry bag over the other.

The first half of the trail followed a creek up to a saddle, which took us almost an hour of hard slog to reach. From there we headed out into an alpine meadow and make pretty good time down through to the other side. It was a pretty happy moment to finally reach the water at Port Lucy

However that feeling quickly passed when we realised that it had taken us over an hour and a half to make the crossing with our gear, and now we still had two sea kayaks that we had to bring back. We decided to go back and get Kim's boat that night while there was still a little bit of light left. After trudging back, and getting lost a couple of times, for 20 minutes we hefted the empty kayak up onto our shoulders and made started the trip all over again. At least this time we knew where we were heading.

It wasn't as hard with the kayaks as at first we had expected, however after about half an hour it was starting to get fairly heavy, and it didn't help anything when Kim fell down knee deep a whole while carring the boat on her shoulder. Thankful that she hadn't broken anything we continued on our way. By about 10:30 we had finally made it back to the other side and were ready for a big feed and to roll into bed. Only to realise that all of the fuel for the stoves was back in my boat on the other side. It was a hungry couple of Aussies that went to bed that night.

The next day was bright and sunny for the final run across to bring my boat over. Once again we got lost trying to make our way back, and it seemed to take us forever to haul my boat over, probably becuase we were so sore from the night before and wanted to keep on stopping and rest in the sunshine once we had made it out into the meadow. After 7 gruelling hours we finally had everything on the eastern side of Baranof Island in Port Lucy. Miraculously we had tail winds out and were able to site in our boats and sail the three and a half miles out into Chatham Strait where we could then start heading down into Port Alexander...