Plan B

This trip to Alaska has been in the planning stage, on and off, for about three years. The original attraction was to paddle The Lost Coast, a 900 km section of open coast between Cape Spencer and Cordova in Prince William Sound. As we are west coast junkies such a stretch of wilderness coastline proved irrestible but it was extremely hard to find any information, particularly info from people who had paddled it before. We eventually discovered two people who had, a US paddler who didn't respond to the email address I found and Paul Caffyn. 

I emailed Paul and he was extremely helpful, sending us his detailed diary of his trip along The Lost Coast in 1990. 

The fact that we could only find two previous trips along the coast and one of those was Paul's made realise how serious it was. In 900km there are only two bays, Yakutat Bay and Icy Bay the rest is 100's and 100's of kms of beach, steep beach too so dumping surf. 

Loaded double, big dumping surf - gulp.

 

Planning continued though, based on our ability to cover much greater distances than in a single kayak, particularly with a sailing wind so reducing the number of times we would have to land. Also in recent years the coast has seen many fat bike and pack raft trips, the videos on You Tube are worth watching, importantly for us they also showed the surf. And it didn't look too bad. So planning continued but not without a lurking shadow in the back of my mind that it would be touch and go whether we would reach Cordova with us or the kayak in one piece. 

Then only a couple of months ago totally by chance I came across an article in a local newspaper of two paddlers from Montana who had paddled part of The Lost Coast last summer. 

http://www.flatheadbeacon.com/articles/article/voyaging_the_lost_coast/35051

It took a while but I eventually got in contact with them and a flurry of emails full of questions and responding answers ensued. The lurking shadow got darker particularly on reading they had spent 24hrs in their kayaks as the surf prevented them from landing. 

So we hatched Plan B. 

We'd continue with our plans to paddle the west coasts of Baranof and Chichagof Islands to get a feel of the west coast conditions and if we didn't like it we could head east through Cross Sound and Icy Straight to Juneau and catch the ferry north to Prince William Sound.

We then discovered, literally only a few weeks ago, that one of this team was 29yrs old, a Grade 5 whitewater paddler who loved paddling big waterfalls. 

I knew then, why, as our planning had progressed and we learnt more about The Lost Coast the lurking shadow had become bigger and darker. 

If a team with that sort of ability had the troubles they did, The Lost Coast would make mincemeat of us. 

And they only paddled half of it.