First Day in Lituya Bay

Our first full day in Lituya dawns magnificent. From our beach camp, we can see three of the Fairweather peaks rising directly out of the head of the bay. The water is smooth, the sky blue. Even simple things: Rick, washing his face in the stream, is outlined with gold sunlight.

We're alone, no people for possibly hundreds of miles. We have six totes, three of them food, one pack apiece, a set of fishing poles, and a little rubber dinghy that looks comically small against the magnitude of the terrain. It's just us three, and whatever wildlife we encounter. So far, I can see porpoises breaching, sea otters lounging on their backs, and seal heads poking up curiously.

We decide to circumnavigate the island in the center of the bay: a way to explore, get used to our new boat, and hopefully find a better site to make our basecamp.

We poke around on the island beach directly across from camp: good forage, fiddleheads, beach parsley, but no clear flat spot. At the east end of the island, the view of the mountains is spectacular, but there's no fresh water.

We know from the map that the south side is tall cliffs, three or four stories straight out of the water. In Rick's memory, these should be full of nesting birds, though others have no memory of them here. If they're here, we hope to climb for eggs: first climb, mark what's in the nest, so on the next climb, you know which eggs are fresh.

I'm expecting birds, but the reveal is extraordinary, beyond anything I had imagined. Dozens of gulls, orange-foot boobies, and long-necked gannets peel off the cliff at our approach. They wheel and call against the bright blue sky.

Nests litter the granite on improbable ledges: purchase small enough that though I step off the bow and onto the rock wall to check nests, I can barely climb above the tide line.

No eggs in the messy gull nests, but birds, everywhere. We play, gray rubber boat on teal water, wings across the sky.

At last, we continue on to the island's west side. We're looking for stream outlets, even small trickles down the beach. And there, on a cove with an inflatable-boat-friendly beach, water runs down in two little streams.

Stepping ashore, we find a broad beach with a flat strip of moss between woods and shore, and just one old set of bear tracks in the sand. Looks like our new home.

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