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Landslide in Turnbull Cove
by Bob Duke
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Turnbull
Cove
Photo by Bruce Evertz |
Much of the geology of the
Inside Passage is the history of glaciers that scoured
the land of its life-sustaining soil during the last ice
age. Yet today we cruise among the wooded peaks of submerged
islands and along British Columbia’s great mainland
forest All about us there is an overwhelming impression
of permanence and stability.
Yet when a section of mountainside
collapses into the sea around your boat, as happened to
us in Turnbull Cove, in July 2005, we were shaken to the
core by the display of earth-shaping forces.
My wife Shearlean and I
were cruising the Broughtons in our Mainship 34, Sweetie
Pie, when we anchored in Grappler Sound’s Turnbull
Cove for the night of July 11, 2005.
It was the proverbial “dark
and stormy night,” with an all-day rain still pounding
on deck when we crawled into our berths. About midnight
an ominous, penetrating roar jerked us from bed and dropped
us toe-to-toe between the vee berths, staring into each
other's wide, wild eyes. “What is that!” I
shouted over the roar. We both grabbed for a handhold
as the boat rolled hard to starboard and then back to
port.
Though the dense rain reflected
most of the light back into my eyes, my handheld light
revealed a pile of broken, twisted trees in the water
about 100 feet from our port bow. Going on deck to raise
the anchor I saw the water around the boat full of debris
and heard a powerful waterfall nearby that hadn't been
there when we anchored.
We moved out into the middle
of the cove, re-anchored, and finally went back to bed
around 2 a.m. The next morning we discovered that a landslide
had stripped the wooded hill above our anchorage to bare
rock. A 25-foot diameter mound of broken trees, boulders
and black earth partially filled the inlet where we had
anchored.
With our eyes opened by
the experience and the realization that only a thin veneer
of soil enabled tenacious trees to take root on sheer
rock cliffs, we saw our surroundings through different
eyes.
During the remaining weeks
of our cruise in Kingcome Inlet, Simoom Sound, Knight
Inlet, Tribune Channel and the entire way back to Bellingham,
we now recognized old and new landslide scars everywhere
we looked.
Though we’d had quite
a scare we agreed that having our eyes opened to the reality
of our surroundings was well worthwhile. It brought the
remoteness of geology, glaciers and erosion—formerly
concepts of ancient, slow, primordial processes—into
the here and now for us.
We can say that we have
acquired a whole new interest in their natural surrounding.
No Inside Passage cruise will be the same again.
Editor's Note: Bob Duke
is the author of Cruising to Alaska: Tips & Tactics
from 20 Skippers. He and first mate, Shearlean, have accumulated
6000 miles of Inside Passage cruising since 2001.
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