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On our last full day we waited for Ford's Terror to subside from the out-going tide and at slack tide we shoved off and had a slow relaxing paddle through the Terror. It was the biggest and best surprise of the trip. This place is known for stark power and extreme danger when approached at peak tide but at slack tide it revealed a soft unexpected fairyland spectacle. We spread out and hugged close to the granite walls. Each time we rounded a new bend in the cliffs the sounds of cascading waterfalls would change. I was totally blown away by the quick changing sounds. One moment we could look up and see two or three small waterfalls breaking up into a fine mist as they fell a couple thousand feet onto the smooth flat rock at the edge of the cliff. Around the next bend might be something similar but the water was falling directly into the fjord. The next bend was a thundering huge waterfall gushing thousands of gallons water in crashing symphony of sound that engulfed all noise to your ear but yet as you rounded still another bend the sound of the huge waterfall
was gone almost with the flip of a light switch. On a few occasions we were like little school kids intentionally guiding our kayaks directly into small cascading waterfalls and letting the water pour down on us for our first shower of the week. The whole trip through the Terror we were assisted by the incoming tide thus we almost didn't need to even hardly paddle. It was like an Alice in Wonderland adventure. In some ways it was sensory overload but in reality it was purging us of the final remnants of bile of the asphalt world we live in.

 

 

 

Ford's Terror is named after a boatsman that got caught in the narrow walls of the Terror during tide change with a large flow of icebergs. Yikes!


List of other John & Patti adventures

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Last revised: December 15, 2007