Lituya Glacier on the north arm of Lituya Bay. Note glacial retreat since charts were made.
The 22-mile route from Icy Point to Lituya Bay is not covered by a small scale chart, but no matter because there is nothing to navigate around as long as a vessel stays a half mile or more off the beach. The only point of interest along this stretch of rugged, mountainous coastline is La Perouse Glacier, which slowly flows down from the Fairweather Range, with mountains 10,000–15,000 feet high, to meet the sea 8 miles beyond Icy Point. The dirty rock and sand-covered cliff faces are 200–300 feet high and ice continually sloughs off, dropping some brash ice into the water but not calving large bergs like many tidewater glaciers do.
La Perouse glacier
This area is known to salmon trollers for good coho (silver) salmon fishing in late summer and is called the “Inner Bank” to differentiate it from the Outer Bank of the Fairweather Grounds (or simply “The Grounds”), a patch of relatively shallow water about 50 miles offshore. The Fairweather Grounds at times are the mother lode of king salmon to those trollers with the grit and gumption to fish them.
Troller working west of Icy Cape
The entrance to Lituya Bay lies another 15 miles up the coast. Use Chart 16762. A great deal has been written about the bay—the great wave of 1958 that demolished vessels and swept the surrounding shores of forest to an elevation of several hundred feet, the most recent contribution to the bay’s history, legends, and mysteries. This account is confined to a brief description focused on getting in and out safely.
The first thing to know about the Lituya Bay entrance is that it has killed many people. The Coast Pilot warns in no uncertain terms that “the entrance is dangerous and should never be attempted except at slack water because of currents.” When the tide is running, currents exceed 5 knots on the flood and 4 knots on the ebb. That ebb, pushing against an onshore wind or southwest swell, builds potentially deadly breakers. The entrance is passable on a flood but the current is swift enough to make vessel control difficult, and should only be attempted with local knowledge. Daunting to mariners, the entrance is no barrier to humpback whales, which enter the bay to feed.
At slack tide with mild ocean conditions it is easily and comfortably transited. The opening between La Chaussee Spit and Harbor Point is about 350 yards wide, but only about 50 yards of that are free of rocks and shoals, with a depth of 5 fathoms. From the sea the channel angles to the north-northeast (007deg 30min magnetic). A range marker indicates the safe approach and if the boards are kept in alignment the channel is easy to tackle, although there may be swirls and eddies even at slack tide.
Inside the bay, Anchorage Cove lies immediately to the left (northwest) and offers good shelter from the sea, but the bottom is littered with sunken tree trunks from the 1958 wave and is not recommended for anchoring. One anchorage is across the entrance to the east of the twin peaks known as The Paps, and there is another in a small bight on the mainland just north of Cenotaph Island. Anchorage is available in a bight on the southwest side to Cenotaph Island (watch for a wash rock off the southwest corner of the island) and in a smaller bight on the northeast side of the island. Most of the bay is deep (50-80 fathoms) so anchorage otherwise is limited. The southwest Cenotaph bight provides the best apparent protection from another great wave coming down the bay (you can still see where the 1958 wave slashed through a low divide in the center of the island) but it was actually in The Paps anchorage where the troller Edrie survived. The bay is T-shaped with inlets to Lituya Glacier to the north and Crillion Glacier to the east, and Cascade Glacier snakes down the mountainside between the two to end as a hanging glacier far above the water. The glaciers are receding and solid ground fronts both Lituya and Crillion.
Notes
Looking up Lituya Bay toward the site of the 1958 landslide. Note the line of young timber most of the way up the hill on the left, denoting the height of the great wave.
The most remarkable feature of Lituya Bay is the “bathtub ring” of young timber extending from the beach to elevations of 200 feet or so in the outer part of the bay and up to 1,700 feet on the head forming the west side of Gilbert Inlet. A July 9, 1958, earthquake centered in the nearby Fairweather Fault triggered a rock and ice slide of 40 million cubic yards that created the giant wave, called a “megatsunami” by some, considered the highest tsunami wave in history. The wave swept the timber from surrounding mountainsides. Three trolling boats were anchored in the bay at the time—one disappeared without a trace, and a second was destroyed after being carried right over La Chaussee Spit and dropped in the ocean, but the crew was rescued. The third survived unharmed.
The 1958 wave is only the most recent—it was preceded by similar events in 1853, 1874, 1899, and 1936. Oral history has it that Tlingit people had a village in the bay, which they eventually abandoned due to the recurrence of big waves. Scientists say the steep and unstable structure of the surrounding mountains assures that there will be more in the future.