Part 4. Juneau in Alaska .... copied from an e-mail broadcast 28.12.08

Dear Friend around the World,

I wish to share with you some experiences of a recent trip we did overseas in May 2008 through the medium of photography and blog sites or recommended websites. On the 8th May we flew from Brisbane to Sydney and boarded a plane which flew straight to Vancouver in Canada …. A long fourteen hour trip!! However this was a lot simpler than flying via Los Angeles (USA customs etc.).

The next day we boarded our ship for a week long cruise to Alaska. Here are some photos of our week long trip in the Veendam operated by the Holland America cruise line. It had 1200 passengers and 600 crew to look after you.

We stopped at two places for excursions right up in Alaska ...... Juneau and Skagway. Juneau is the capital of Alaska and Skagway was the dropping off point over 100 years ago for the Klondike Gold Rush. The overall excursion was very stable as the ship travelled up the Alaskan Inside Passage. The Inside Passage of the Alaska Panhandle and coastal British Columbia is a coastal route for oceangoing vessels along a series of passages between the mainland and the coastal islands. Ships using the route can avoid some of the bad weather in the open ocean, and visit the many isolated communities along the route. It is heavily travelled by cruise ships, freighters, tugs with tows, fishing craft and ships of the Alaska Marine Highway and BC Ferries systems. The name Inside Passage is also used to refer to the ocean and islands around the passage.

The Alaskan portion of the Inside Passage, in the north, extends 500 miles (800 km) from north to south and 100 miles (160 km) from east to west. The area encompasses 1,000 islands, 15,000 miles (24,000 km) of shoreline and thousands of coves and bays. British Columbia's southern portion of the route is of similar extent, with up to 25,000 miles (40,000 km) of coastline, and includes the narrow, protected Strait of Georgia between Vancouver Island and the B.C. mainland, the Johnstone and Queen Charlotte Straits between Vancouver Island and the mainland, as well as a short stretch along the wider and more exposed Hecate Strait near the Queen Charlotte Islands, though from Fitz Hugh Sound northwards the route is sheltered via the various large islands in that area such as Princess Royal Island and Pitt Island.The Juneau mining district is a gold mining area in the U.S. state of Alaska. In 1880 a local inhabitant, Chief Kowee, revealed to prospectors Joe Juneau and Richard Harris the presence of gold in what is now named Gold Creek in Silver Bow Basin. The city of Juneau was founded there that year.

The strike sparked the Juneau gold rush which resulted in the development of many placer and lode mines including the largest, in their time, gold mines in the world: the Treadwell complex of lode mines on Douglas Island (across a narrow sea channel from Juneau) and the AJ lode mine, in Juneau itself. The steep, wet, timber-covered, seaside mountain setting provided water power, transportation, and lumber such that, "extraordinarily low costs of operation make available low grade ore that under conditions only slightly different would be valueless."The first claims of what was to become the Treadwell complex were staked in 1881. Mining the Treadwell site began by sluicing residual placers over the lode deposits. Underground mining began with a five-stamp mill operating in 1883. In the mid-1910's, with 960 stamps grinding ore and tunnels reaching as far as 2400 feet below the surface and extending under the sea, Treadwell was one of the most technologically advanced mines of its day. Up to 2000 people worked at the mine before a collapse allowed the rising tide to flood the tunnels in 1917. All operations at the Treadwell ceased by 1922.

As the Treadwell mines declined and closed, the AJ mine rose in prominence. After years of losses and labour problems, the mine became profitable in the mid-1920's: with 600 workers it was setting production records. Through the decade, it was the main economic engine of Juneau. In the 1930's, with 1000 workers, it was an important factor in softening the impact upon Juneau of the Great Depression.

Economic pressures of WWII lead to the closure of the AJ in 1944; this was the end of the dominance of mining in the Juneau economy.

Although those two mines are long-since closed, as late as 1980 one of the hydropower plants built to power the AJ was still in use. [5] Fires and time have destroyed most traces of the Treadwell complex; the AJ mine buildings still tower over the Gastineau Channel south of Juneau.

The Juneau mining district; comprising the area between the Canadian border, Lynn Canal, Admiralty Island, and Frederick Sound, has produced over 7 million ounces of lode gold and 80,000 ounces of placer gold.

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See the following website on Alaska as one of the states of the USA. This website gives an overall view on Alaska. Our goal on the excursion were one day stop offs at Juneau and Skagway. 1200 passengers were assigned into one of several groups. Our group was going on a nature walk to teach us about to take better digital natural camera photographs. There were only 14 people in a our group led by Brandon. See the photographs and detail below.

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…… The ship docking at Juneau ….

...... Harriet with our group walking through the

National Park on the track to the Mendenhall Glacier ....

.... Brandon, the leader of our group

striding ahead of the group ....

... Ken and Harriet at the mighty Mendenhall Glacier ….
in the background with the surrounding snow covered mountains.
The Glacier is a moving mass of ice with rugged crevasses.

.... Brandon, the leader of our group ....

was there to teach us about how to take better digital natural camera photographs ...... I am still on an e-mail connection with him in Alaska from Australia. Brandon had done a digital camera course in the USA and had come up to Alaska to be an apprentice to Mark Kelley. See Mark’s website .

I just had an e-mail from him in January 2009 where he said: I completed my work in Alaska at the end of September and returned to New Hampshire to be with my family. Before I left I made a contact with a National Geographic Photographer named Flip Nicklin. Now I am living in Maui and working with a non-profit whale research company called Whale Trust. I will be here until the end of April and will then return to Alaska. I have recently updated my website if you would like to view some shots from Alaska and around the USA.

The walker viewing platform overlooking the mighty Mendanhall Glacier ........

..... Our group walking to where a bus will take us to

a boat where we went to see whales in the nearby Bay .....

..... Mendanhall Glacier and its Lake is freshwater and is not open the sea .....

..... The interpretation sign for the mountains around Mendanhall Glacier .....

...... Harriet, my wife who has just arrived from the bus that

brought our group of 14 people to the boat who were going out to see the whales ....

..... The boat we went on to see whales in the Bay .....

..... Seals asleep on the level platform of the bouy ....

..... Several of the whales seen our boat trip .....

...... Coming back into the Harbour ......

..... See breath-taking photographs of whales and other Alaskan wildlife at:

Brandon Hauser's (Our Group Leader) photography website ....

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..... When we were on the ship going up to Alaska and back again over one week, the only physical exercise you could gain was by walking on the timber deck going around the whole ship several times in the walking time. You would to get to see people like Bob Silverman below. We got to know Bob & ElaineSilverman out of 1200 people on the ship when we had dinner with them each night in the Veendam Formal Dining Room …… See the Photographs here

See this website for more detail on Juneau

(Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

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