Chapter One: North Coast

The brash ice and bergy bits had almost closed around her, the path to clear water growing steadily thinner. Miles to the east, the air over the Stikine Icefield was growing heavier as it cooled, settling into crevices, filling depressions on the ice and flowing to the next low spot. Except for the movement of a few small mists, the gathering wind was invisible as more air was pulled down from the sky and slid across the theoretical line that divided Canada and Alaska, down the slopes of the ice that funneled out between the mountains, accelerating as the floes came together to tumble down the Dawes Glacier to tidewater.
Grace had broken camp early and paddled as close as she dared to the glacier’s face, taking pictures of harbor seals, something about the misty light bringing out the blue of the ice. The face of the Dawes was over two hundred and fifty feet high, over thirty stories tall. Chunks occasionally calved off, the sound like thunder rolling across the water to her, the following swell lifting her kayak and causing the ice to hiss and growl around her. She could feel the wind starting to build, cold even now in late June. It was starting to shift the ice and grind it together. The granite walls on either side plunged into the water, and she knew the first decent campsite was a fifteen-mile paddle. Reluctantly, she decided it was time to start the long trip home, twenty miles back down Endicott Arm and another forty-five north to Juneau.
As she was leaving, she saw another kayaker on the far side of arm, also paddling away from the glacier. Their courses slowly converged until she could see it was a young man, the first person she had seen in two days. He paddled closer and waved his paddle at her. He had long blonde hair and a thick German accent. The wind was blowing hard now, snatching away parts of the conversation as they shouted back and forth between the boats, “Did you see . . .? Amazing! Schön! Mother seal and two pups . . . Like a building calving off and crashing down into the water . . . Wunderbar!” He was heading toward the same campsite, and they agreed to paddle together.
The wind was at their backs, helping them on their way. They paddled hard up the backs of each wave, holding up their paddles as they crested to catch the wind and surf down the front, hooting and hollering with exhilaration. About five miles from the glacier, a large, white yacht passed them, coming up the far side of the arm. Endicott was over a mile wide here, and Grace didn’t pay the yacht any attention other than being glad she’d left the glacier before it came. The man was a fast paddler, and she pushed herself, keeping pace. Even with the favorable winds and the tide helping, it was a long paddle, but they made the campsite sooner than expected.
“So, Kurt, how long have you been out paddling?”
“Since 30 May. I start in Ketchikan, stop. How do you say . . . reprovision? I reprovision in Petersburg. I’m going to Juneau, reprovision there and then go to Glacier Bay. Maybe down outside of Chichagof and Baranof Islands, depending on weather. It’s incredible, ya?”
“It is incredible. You get any pictures of the big bergs calving off the glacier this morning?”
Above the tiny beach, the inward curve of the rock walls provided a break from the wind, and they fired up Grace’s camp stove in the shelter of a huge drift log that had lodged here, half out of the water. They continued to talk while they boiled water for tea and shared freeze-dried beef Stroganoff. Kurt snapped a picture of Grace as she knelt beside the stove. Grace thought that Kurt was probably several years younger than she. His English was heavily accented, but fine for them to communicate. He kept gesturing around saying, “Can you believe? It is so beautiful!” The campsite was not really big enough for two tents, and Grace wanted to avoid any conversations about “Why don’t we just share a tent?” She said that since they’d made such good time, she was going to push on the extra five miles to the mouth of Ford’s Terror.
“There’s a campsite above the mouth of the entrance that I used on the way in. It has a view over a little tide flat and the channel. When I stayed there the first time, I counted seventeen waterfalls, and there were snowcapped mountains all around,” she said.
Kurt had also figured out there was really only room for one tent. “You’re sure? This is nice campsite. Long paddle already.”
She was sure, and Kurt said the next site sounded like a great place, and if it was OK with her, he would paddle along with her. He seemed like a nice guy, and after several days by herself, Grace was enjoying the company. She told him he was welcome to come, emphasizing that the next site had room for both of their tents.
They did the dishes at the edge of the water and repacked their gear, then headed out. The wind was still blowing hard. The waves here had been building down the fifteen miles of fetch from the head of Endicott Arm and were much bigger. Grace and Kurt alternately lost sight of each other as they slid down into the troughs. Grace was glad they weren’t paddling into it and told herself it was only another five miles.
They paddled along the southern shore of the arm, where the waves seemed a bit less steep. Just before they turned to angle across the channel toward the entrance to Ford’s Terror, they saw a sow bear and two large cubs on a little ledge above the water. Grace and Kurt both watched for a while, bracing with their paddles as the waves swept under them and back-paddling to hold position in the wind. Grace debated taking her camera out of its waterproof case but decided that she would probably get it doused with saltwater.
After a few minutes, Grace motioned to Kurt to stay and watch if he wanted. Even with favorable winds and tide, twenty miles was a long day in a kayak. It was starting to get dark, and she was ready to get to the campsite. He wanted to watch the bears longer, so motioning back and forth, they agreed she’d go on and he’d catch up with her. When Grace was almost across the channel, she stopped for a minute to rest and look back. Kurt had finished watching the bears by then and was paddling across as well. He was about a third of the way across the mile-wide arm. Up the arm, the big yacht they’d seen earlier was coming back down, toward Kurt. It was still distant, but seemed on a course that would take it uncomfortably close. Grace knew the height of the waves made it hard to see his kayak, and it was past sunset, the clouds hurrying the twilight.
She fumbled in the pocket of her paddling jacket and pulled a small pair of binoculars out of a Ziploc bag. The telescopic effect of the binoculars compressed the distance and increased the impression that the yacht was bearing down on Kurt. When Grace rode up on top of a swell, she could see him and the yacht. Then she’d go down in a trough and couldn’t see anything. The waves made it difficult to brace with the paddle and look through the binocs at the same time. When she and Kurt were both on wave tops at the same time, she waved to him, trying to attract his attention and get him to look back over his shoulder. Kurt saw her and seemed to think she had changed her mind and was waiting for him. He waved back to her enthusiastically. Grace pointed to the yacht, trying to get him to look, but they were out of synch on the waves, just able to catch glimpses of each other.
She didn’t know whether it was her frantic pointings or the sound of the yacht’s motor that caused Kurt to turn and look, but when the next wave crest rode her up, she could see Kurt waving his paddle in the air so the yacht’s driver would see him.
Through the binoculars, she couldn’t see anyone on the bridge; it looked like it was on autopilot. Kurt was much closer to the yacht, and he must have seen the same thing, because Grace could see him suddenly turn the kayak and dig in, trying to get away back toward the southern shore. Just then, through the yacht’s windshield, Grace could see a figure walk into the bridge with a cup of coffee or a drink in his hand. Unable to do anything, she watched the person standing there looking around, not seeing Kurt as he frantically tried to paddle out of the way. Grace’s kayak slid down into a trough, and she lost sight until the next wave lifted her, just in time to watch the man see Kurt and lunge for the wheel, the yacht lurching in a violent turn.
It looked like Kurt might have been hit by the side of the boat or just flipped by its huge wake. The yacht slowed and about a hundred yards farther, stopped and came about, jogging in place against the waves.
It was difficult for her to see through the water-spotted lenses of the binoculars, and the sudden salt of tears mingled with the spray hitting her face. She couldn’t spot Kurt at first, but then as a wave lifted her up, she saw the bottom of his kayak floating upside down and thought she saw a flash of color near it from his yellow paddling jacket and red life vest.
The yacht worked its way back up beside the kayak, and several men came out on the back deck, peering down into the water.
“Pull him out you bastards! Get him out of the water!” Grace’s shouts were snatched away by the wind and she knew there wasn’t a chance of the men hearing her. She started to paddle back towards them. She hadn’t made it more than three or four strokes when the men went back into the cabin, and the yacht suddenly throttled back up, leaving the scene, heading out Endicott Arm.
She hesitated for a moment, not believing they were just going to go off and leave Kurt and then continued paddling back towards him, fighting the wind and waves. If they were going to leave him, she wanted to get to him as fast as possible, to get him to shore somehow. As she topped a wave, a man walked out on the yacht’s back deck and, by chance, looked straight at her.
He stared for a moment before disappearing back into the cabin. The yacht throttled back and lay among the waves for a moment before turning and accelerating straight at her. Grace turned and fled back toward the entrance to Ford’s Terror, paddling harder than she ever had. When she looked back, she could see the yacht at full throttle, smashing through the waves, explosions of spray sometimes obscuring it from sight as it bore down on her.
She made for the entrance of Ford’s Terror, praying for the growing darkness to hide her, trying to reach the part of the entrance channel where it suddenly shallowed, and they wouldn’t be able to follow. At the crest of each wave, she glanced back over her shoulder. The yacht was rapidly closing when they throttled back and stopped. The skipper must have been watching his fathometer and knew about the large boulders and rock peaks that hid under the water’s surface as the channel narrowed. Grace felt a rush of relief, immediately canceled when she saw they were using the yacht’s crane to launch its tender.
The water was more protected here, and she reached out with each stroke, helped by the start of the incoming tide. Up ahead she could see more and more rocks sticking up through the water’s surface. She considered beaching the kayak and climbing up into the woods, but thought they would be able to catch her even more easily.
They had the RIB launched now, a rigid-hull inflatable boat. A spotlight swept back and forth and then fixed on her. She glanced over her shoulder again, but the light blinded her as the boat sped toward her. She could hear the approach of its big outboard as she dug in with her paddle, trying to reach the rocks. She thought they were going to run her down and tensed for the collision, but at the last moment, the driver slowed the boat to create maximum wake as he wrenched the RIB in a sharp turn just before they would have collided. The wake almost capsized her, and she realized that’s what they were trying to do.
The wake rolled her until her shoulder touched the water, but she used a high brace stroke to right herself as the men circled back for another run. This time the wake hit her, and the inflatable tube of the RIB bumped her kayak with a hard jolt, knocking her upside-down. As she went over, she grabbed a deep breath and fought the momentary burst of panic as her head went beneath the black water. Anger kicked in, and she used the paddle to lever herself up in an Eskimo roll.
Just as she came up, their wake hit again, and she went back over, this time without being able to get a full breath. She tried to roll back up, knowing that as soon as she did, they would hit her again with the wake. It was dark now, too dark to see underwater. Something brushed her cap and then caught her braid, tugging. Breath running out, panic threatened to burst within her. Her shoulder and arm brushed something hard, and she realized that is was the top of a boulder. The tide and the boat’s wake were continuing to push her into the entrance’s neck.
Hanging upside down in the water, Grace pulled loose the spray-skirt that had kept her in the kayak. She shoved herself down, out of the capsized kayak, and somersaulted under the water, her life jacket buoying her back up. She surfaced with her head in the air pocket under the overturned kayak so they couldn’t see her. It was almost July, but the water farther up the arm was clogged with glacial ice. The neck, wrist, and waist seals of her paddling jacket kept most of the water from her torso, but it was still so cold it was hard to breathe. She tried to steady her breathing and then ducked back under water as the beam of the spotlight swept toward her and found the overturned kayak.
Looking up from just below the surface, Grace could see the spotlight glowing through the translucent fiberglass of the kayak’s hull. The light moved on, looking for her, and she came back up with her head under the kayak again. Her feet, hanging down, brushed the bottom. Underwater, she’d lost her orientation on which way was into the channel, but she assumed it was away from the spotlight. She tried to assist the drift of the capsized kayak in the current with subtle pushes from her feet on the bottom. She could feel the bottom starting to slope up, and her legs hit rocks. She bent her knees so she wouldn’t come out of the water. One end of the kayak banged into a rock, and it slowly pivoted as it was swept farther into the channel. The current was accelerating as the channel shallowed. The kayak scraped along another rock.
Grace ducked out from under the kayak so she could see where she was. By now it was dark enough that she didn’t think they could see her unless the spotlight hit her. She could hear the men talking to each other.
“Damir, see if you can wade over there and check.”
“Fuck. Cold water, and you know I don’t swim. She doesn’t come back up. She’s drown for sure by now. Both of them capsize and drown. It happens up here. End of problem.”
“It’s shallow, just wade over there and check the kayak. I want to see her body.”