Ealue Lake

We have spent the last few weeks on a little sliver of paradise called Ealue Lake. From Ketchikan, it was a 7 hour ferry, 8 hour drive, and 2-hour stop for $995 worth of groceries to get here. There are two sets of cabins on the lake- one belongs to Wade Davis, who has spent every summer here for the last 25 years. The other belongs to David Suzuki, which has generously been opened for our use. Unfortunately, last winter, in one of the dozens of hurricane-force storms, a micro burst hit Suzuki’s property and toppled over 300 trees. The mess immediately around the two cabins has been cleared, but the ½ mile driveway is impassable, even on foot. Of course we felt the need to confirm this by attempting the scramble ourselves.

Being able to drive right up to the cabin would be just to simple, though, wouldn’t it… Instead, we park our overladen van at Wade’s cabin, shuttle camera gear, aviation fuel, generators, and humans into a 10’ tippy boat with an underpowered 5 horsepower engine to put-put across the cove and unload. This, in addition to the lack of cell, satellite connection, and electricity has certainly added ‘excitement’ to this leg of the expedition.

Like a pit crew, with more practice has come more efficiency. We have perfected the process of rigging the plane for a flight, and every time Mike flies we are collecting some of the most unbelievable aerial video of this area. Deep canyons carved by millions of years of raging water, snow-capped peaks set on fire by the setting sun, abrupt ridges speckled with remarkable goats, butting and playing without concern. But it’s not all sunshine and rainbows. We also have footage of clear cuts, unhealable wounds strangling powerless mountains, obscenely large trucks loaded with fuel, concrete, and backhoes barreling up narrow switchbacks, huge concrete structures diverting the flow of an ancient river, undoing thousands of years of river progress, like suddenly forcing an 80 year old to walk only with one foot. 

On the ground, we get up close and personal. Trip and John spent a week on a high plateau in the company of stone sheep, grizzlies, tarmagins, and ground squirrels. I spent a day luring trout to an underwater camera trap. In the evenings we paddle down to the end of the lake and watch for moose tromping through the swamp.

Summer has most certainly come to a close here. The leaves are falling, the hillsides are fire-red, I’ve added two layers and a winter hat, and it’s raining/sleeting more often than not. That means it’s almost time for us to move again- we will spend another week on Ealue Lake, then ferry our abundance of gear back across the lake, somehow shove and squeeze it -and ourselves- into the van, and trek further north and east, on a quest to document this amazing area and expose the plans to pillage its every resource.