The Few, the Proud and the Wet: Alaska’s Kayak Rangers

Navigating Alaska’s Shores

The Forest Service uses kayaks for a couple of reasons. First, they facilitate access to Alaska’s relentlessly steep shores, enabling rangers to land in nooks too steep and narrow even for skiffs. And kayaks can be hauled out of the water at night, whereas skiffs have to be anchored, often an impossibility in fjords hundreds of feet deep and filled with drifting ice.

“Another advantage of working from kayaks is that we blend in with the wilderness we manage,” says Malinda, who has been with the program for three years. “We can visit campers and observe wildlife without disrupting them.”

While non-motorized travel is consistent with wilderness management objectives, it can be dangerous in Alaska’s harsh elements, and the Forest Service holds its employees to the highest safety standards. For instance, in Juneau each ranger is trained in a variety of self- and assisted-rescue techniques, first in pools, then in Alaska’s frigid waters. While on the job, they are required to carry a marine radio, paddle float, bilge pump, spare paddle, towing system and PFDs equipped with survival kits that include flares, strobes, space blankets, knives and magnesium strikers.

However, immersion suits are not required. Rangers go ashore frequently to inventory impacts, talk to campers and conduct other duties, and in the region’s constantly changing weather, such suits would be impractical. Instead, rangers always travel in pairs and are required to make radio contact with a dispatch office every 30 minutes while away from shore. Some programs even require carrying EPIRBs (emergency position-indicating radio beacons).

The downside to kayaks, of course, is that they are slow, especially against Alaska’s powerful tides, weather and ice. So occasionally we do use skiffs. But with tour boats frequently visiting the area, kayak rangers near Juneau and Ketchikan have established a barter system with the tour operators and share their knowledge and experience in exchange for quick transportation.

For instance, the morning I got stuck in the ice, I had an appointment with the MV Sea Lion, a 70-passenger vessel providing weeklong tours of southeast Alaska. As the waves from the calvings subsided, I found they had loosened the ice near my kayak,

enabling me to paddle a mile through sporadic bergs to where the boat had stopped at the edge of another thick ice pack.

Forty passengers in raincoats braved the drizzle and cold breeze on the boat’s bow, cameras ready for the next calving. But as I approached, steering around icebergs many times my size, they turned their attention to me.

Photo: Phil Dewitt, a kayak ranger in Tracy Arm-Fords Terror Wilderness near Juneau, boards the tour boat Sea Lion. Onboard, Phil will share his knowledge of the area with visitors to southeast Alaska. Copyright Tim Lydon

“Aren’t you cold?” one of the passengers called from the top deck, 40 feet above.“Where did you come from?” yelled another.

We visit about 40 tour boats each summer, and the passengers usually react with the same surprise.

I paddled to the boat’s stern, where the crew lowered a ladder and helped me aboard. After helping pull my kayak onto the rear deck, they led me inside and offered me hot chocolate.

Before greeting the passengers, I hung my soaked rain gear near the ship’s galley and pulled my Forest Service shirt and hat from a dry bag I’d carried aboard. Although we usually wear sturdy rain gear, wool hats and synthetic layers while on the water, we carry clean uniform shirts for our more formal duties. In minutes, I had transformed from dripping kayaker to uniformed ranger.

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