Approaching Cape St. Elias from the east.
Most small boat mariners northbound at this point elect to chart a course directly from Icy Bay to Cape St. Elias at the southwest tip of Kayak Island, which is 95 nm west and slightly south of Point Riou. It’s possible, however, to take small boats between Kayak Island and Controller Bay. The coastline west of Yakutat Bay makes a long arc to the north near the mouth of the Kaliakh River before curving southwestward toward Kayak, and there is little along that arc to attract a transiting boater. This region is poorly charted—only the Dixon Entrance to Cape St. Elias chart shows it, with little detail and very few soundings indicated. The shoreline is steep and rugged, backed by 3,000–6,000 foot mountains, and exposed to the full force of ocean swells. This coast is totally uninhabited by humans for most of the year, with only a few sport fishing lodges and commercial fishing camps operating during the season. After clear-cutting some 30 square miles of uplands in the Cape Yakataga area on Mental Health Trust and University of Alaska lands, the timber industry abandoned the area in 2007.
Yakataga Reef at the old White Alice site of Cape Yakataga is a narrow row of rocks offering little if any shelter. The abandoned defense site has an airstrip and a few houses. A deteriorating road parallels the coast for 50 miles linking clear-cuts to log dump sites at Icy Bay, but access from the water at Cape Yakataga is difficult at best even under the most benign sea conditions. The Yakataga River, Duktoth River, Kaliakh River, the combined Tsivat and Tsiu Rivers (usually referred to collectively as Tsiu), and the Seal River, draining Vitus Lake at the base of Bering Glacier, all enter the sea on this stretch of the coast. But they are small and shallow and their mouths are guarded on the seaward side by shifting sandbars, making them impassable except possibly by outboard skiffs during calm sea conditions.
A low range of coastal mountains ends at Cape Yakataga, and west of them lies the Yakataga Forelands, an expanse of low, gently rolling forest and sand dunes making up the glacial outwash plain of the massive Bering Glacier. The Yakataga State Game Refuge encompasses most of the forelands aside from a mile-wide strip along the beach, and the area is rich in moose, brown bear, waterfowl, and streams loaded with salmon in late summer, notably in the Tsiu and Kaliakh Rivers mentioned above. The western margin of the forelands is the Bering Glacier and Vitus Lake, a tidally influenced, aquamarine blue body of water made up of meltwater from the glacier. Harbor seals congregate on icebergs in the lake and transit to and from the ocean via the aptly named Seal River. The lake is stratified with cold freshwater on top and relatively warmer saltwater near the bottom. The river is deep and slow enough to be entered by boat but the ever-changing floating ice in the form of growlers big enough to damage a boat make it an unsafe refuge.
Bering Glacier, at 2,000 square miles and 120 miles long, is the largest glacier in area in continental North America, and flows ever seaward from the extensive Bagley Ice Field in the heart of the Wrangell–St. Elias Mountains. The glacier is of great interest to glaciologists in part because it dramatically surged at least six times during the 20th century alone, and because it is melting and ablating at a rapid pace, causing more than 7 miles of terminus retreat and hundreds of vertical feet of thinning.
As extensive as Bering Glacier is, however, from 20 miles offshore it appears as little more than a smudge of white and gray at the foot of the mountains.
The next coastal feature to the west is Cape Suckling, after which things start to get interesting, and not necessarily in a good way. Although depths aren’t charted around the cape and for some distance to the west, there are two wash rocks a couple of miles west of the cape and the chart notation advises staying west of Southwest Rock. Where soundings start appearing on the chart toward the western half of 7-mile-long Okalee Spit the news isn’t good. Extensive shoals begin there and continue through most of Controller Bay. Though the chart indicates a channel of sorts with depths of at least 2 fathoms all the way in to the northeast side of Kayak Island, it also contains a warning that depths may be in error due to uplift associated with the 1964 earthquake. (This warning should be heeded since the same chart totally omits an exposed rock shelf extending nearly a half-mile from shore along the southeast side of Kayak Island that apparently emerged from the sea during the earthquake.) However, fishermen who use the area report that there is sufficient depth to navigate the channel in Controller Bay, and the main channel is very much as charted. It is reported that the bay is considered good anchorage in severe southeast weather and the charted channel will take a boat far enough into the bay to find refuge from a storm. Consult a current edition of Coast Pilot 9 for details on Controller Bay access and anchorage.
Heeding the warnings of the Coast Pilot, prudent transiting mariners lacking detailed local knowledge will avoid Controller Bay, the approaches to Katalla, and the Copper River flats, and instead chart a course to Cape St. Elias. To round the cape, pass to seaward of the red can buoy just southwest of Southwest Rock, about 2 miles south of Pinnacle Rock.
Cape St. Elias lighthouse.
Kayak Island, 17.5 miles long, looks on a chart or satellite photo like an exclamation point, with Pinnacle Rock off Cape St. Elias appearing as the dot at the bottom. Cape St. Elias is the location of a remnant Coast Guard lighthouse, built in 1916 and automated in 1974. It is still maintained by the Cape Saint Elias Lightkeepers Association and rented out to overnight visitors. The lighthouse is a National Historic Landmark. The distinctive 500-foot-high Pinnacle Rock at the very tip of the island lies a short distance southwest of the lighthouse at the base of the mountainous ridge that comprises the spine of the island. Approaching from the sea the rock appears separate from the island but actually is connected by a low spit.
Among the remarkable features of Kayak Island is the uplifted rock shelf up the east side of the island, mentioned above, that was submerged prior to the 1964 earthquake and which does not appear on charts published as recently as 2012. (Check it out on Google Earth.) Exposed and wash rocks appear several hundred yards offshore of most of the southeast shore of the island, making approach hazardous. The emerged reef creates a semi-enclosed embayment immediately to the east of Pinnacle Rock in which some fishermen anchor in calm weather to bait gear or go ashore, but in general it is not considered a safe place to lay at anchor.
Small bight suitable for anchoring, northeast end of Wingham Island.
Better in most cases, is to continue to Wingham Island, where there are west wind anchorages off the east side of the southern and northern tips, or to check out the small bight behind Cape St. Peter. Watch out for the shoal at Sea Ranger Reef about 3 miles northwest of Cape St. Elias.
The small cove behind Cape St. Peter, about halfway up the west side of Kayak Island, at the foot of 1,100 foot Pyramid Peak, provides shelter for small boats from east and south weather in 2 to 4 fathoms, but an unnamed shoal in Kayak Entrance to the north of it merits close attention on approach—a west swell sometimes breaks or humps up sharply just to the north of the tip of the protecting reef.
The marginally suitable overnight anchorage for small boats in south and west winds at the east side of the southern tip of Wingham Island is close up to the shoreline in about 2 fathoms. Access from the south is via Kayak Entrance, which shallows to 1 fathom in the narrows between the two islands, and to a half fathom farther into Controller Bay. The southern tip of Wingham was the site of a long-abandoned Eyak village called Kayak, and some remnant debris can be found within the spruce forest now taking over. Another small bight with a pleasant curving beach in 4-5 fathoms on the east side of the north tip of Wingham also provides small boat anchorage from south-southwest-west, again with the proviso that a stiff easterly isn’t blowing because it backs on the open Controller Bay. For an easterly, an open and minimally sheltered bight about halfway up the west side of Wingham, called Lutus Lee, would do in a pinch. Avoid the extensive shoal reaching to the southwest from the south end of Wingham.
Approaching Cape Hinchinbrook from the south.
Having left Pelican or Elfin Cove some days earlier and faced the brunt of the North Pacific, even in summer conditions, mariners may want to see the bright lights of the city of Cordova. If so, they would be well advised to pass around the southwest side of Hinchinbrook Island, or if time allows, avail themselves of the wonderful anchorages and superlative scenery of that island (Chart 16709). Cape St. Elias to Cape Hinchinbrook is about 65 nm.
Notes
Although placer mining began in the late 1890s, oil exploration in the 1950s, and logging between the Yakataga and Duktoth Rivers lasted through the 1990s, human industry is stilled on this coast. Not even currently inhabited Native villages mark the maps. This is the domain of the brown bear, moose, wolf, wolverine, beaver, and the brown toad.
White Alice was a Cold War era chain of radar relay stations strung along nearly the entire coast of Alaska plus some inland sites. The name White just refers to the frozen north and Alice is an acronym for Alaska Integrated Communications and Electronics.
Cape Suckling is notable not for its physical attributes but for its place in Alaska and federal resource management. Positioned at the base of the Suckling Hills at almost 144 W longitude, Cape Suckling is the western boundary of the entire Alaska salmon troll fishery, as it has been since the implementation of salmon fishing limited entry in the 1970s. More recently, it is the dividing line under the federal Endangered Species Act between the ESA designated endangered western Distinct Population Segment and the merely ESA designated threatened eastern DPS. The distinction is important for a number of reasons, one of which is of concern to mariners: virtually all known wDPS sea lion rookeries are protected by legally defined but not charted 3 mile vessel exclusion zones. Skippers who enter those zones, intentionally or otherwise, are subject to hefty fines. The no-transit zones don’t apply to eDPS rookeries, although ESA and Marine Mammal Protection Act prohibitions against disturbance do pertain. The eastern stock currently is being considered for de-listing under the ESA due to a steep and prolonged recovery of sea lion numbers.
The beach on Kayak Island where Steller is believed to have landed.
The St. Elias name comes from the nearby mountain, which Vitus Bering and his men first sighted on St. Elias Day in 1741. It earned its place in history that day when Georg Steller, scientist with the Bering expedition, first set foot on Western Hemisphere soil by landing on Kayak Island. He was credited, from a European perspective, with discovering Alaska. After doing so Steller attempted, unsuccessfully, to establish contact with Native people living on the island, though he did steal some items he found in a village on its northwest side and left some items of his own. Whether the occupants considered this a fair trade is not recorded. The presumed site of this non-encounter is about a third of the way up the west side at what is now called Watering Place Creek, and Steller continued on to Cape St. Peter, considered the possible anchoring place for the ship St. Peter. A small boat can be tucked behind the cape, which forms a small bight that has all the earmarks even now of a likely location for a former village, although nothing has been found to confirm it. The area is encompassed by a State Marine Park. Most of the island comprises a rugged spine of mountain with peaks 1,100 to nearly 1,700 feet, and Pyramid Peak presides over the cove of the encounter. Vegetation is too dense to allow hiking across the spine of the mile-wide island, which is noted for its brown bears. Much interesting history and lore of the area is found in the contemporary book Steller’s Island: Adventures of a Pioneer Naturalist in Alaska by Dean Littlepage.