These are the Chronicles of Famous Surf Writer Ben Marcus and his trip into the Wilds of the Alaskan Frontier.
Latest Update: October 10, 2000

4:30 PM ALASKA TIME ALONG TURNAGAIN ARM, AGAIN NEAR ANCHORAGE, ALASKA.

Okay, time to do a little math. Where's that Joanne Ottone when I need her?

My tide chart says this for Anchorage, Knik Arm, Alaska for October 10

Low tide: 12:51 0.5

High tide: 6:43 29.2 (!!!!!!)

The correction for Sunrise, Turnagain Arm is

Low tide +1:12 -0.2

High tide +0:32 +4.2

So what that means is, the low tide for Turnagain Arm was:

0.3 at 14:03

The high tide is

33.4 (!!!) at 19:15

About 10 minutes ago, at 16:30 or so, I saw the bore come through again. That means it came through 2:30 after low tide, and 2:45 before high tide. And that makes sense. The bore comes through at mid tide.

I am at the highway turnoff just after the Tesoro Station, a little different then the place I was last time, I think. The bore came in but it was smaller than last time, not a rideable wave, although it threw up an absolutely perfect, six-inch left along one sandbar.

I took some photos and MPEGS with the digital camera. I wish I had a good quality video camera, because I'd like to show this to people.

The tidal bore does all kinds of weird things when it comes through, because it has a lot of different landforms to bounce off. After the tidal bore passed I saw a for-real whirlpool swirling along some rocks. It wasn't strong enough to drown an adult, but a kid or a dog stuck in there would have been in trouble.

I also saw backwash waves heading back up Turnagain Arm, in opposition to the flow of the tide, and I also watched the Tidal Bore from behind, moving slowly up the Arm, eating up the mudflats, so slow it looked like it had stopped. In fact, I jumped in the car and caught up with it.

There was a lady from Hawaii watching who got all excited.

I've seen some extreme tidal changes in my day-Ireland, for example-but this place takes the cake. I mean, 35 feet???!!!!

I'm wondering if there is going to be a second tidal bore, but I think that was it. Not so good. I've heard it gets as big as six feet.

Again, a very eerie thing. Eerier now that I know all the rumors/stories about Turnagain Arm, and imagine people getting stuck in the mud (glacial silt) and getting ripped in half by helicopters, or letting themselves drown because they didn't want to lose their legs.

So now it's 16:46 Alaska time and the tide is filling in in a big hurry. I'm listening to the Yankees and the Mariners on the radio.

I think I left my phone card at the Tesoro Station. I lost it just after adding 120 minutes for $27. Shoot. Maybe I should call and cancel it.

Talked to Evan briefly, and he said they're having big glitch problems with swell.com. Sorry I'm not there.

Now I'm off to Anchorage, I guess, and then I have to figure out what I'm doing from there.

The weather is getting stinky and if I'm going to drive back, I'm thinking about all the terrain I have to cover, and how stinky it was on the way in. It will be stinkier on the way out, I'm pretty sure.

Seeing this tidal bore inspired an idea. Maybe the Outdoor Life Network would like a series called Bored!, in which a combined surfer/camera crew dedicates itself to riding all of the world's great tidal bores:

Turnagain Arm.

The Bay of Fundy in Newfoundland.

The Amazon.

The Severn River in England.

The Yellow River in China.

Exotic adventures in exotics places. Bored! would be part adventure, part action, part travel, part science and a lot of comedy.

Brad Gerlach could be the host, and different surfers would go on each adventure.

I'm going to call Pezman tomorrow and see if he has a contact at the Outdoor Life Network.

10:24 PM ALASKA TIME ROOM 1213 AT THE LAKE LUCILLE BEST WESTERN

Another semi-luxury hotel, another night of TV and the Internet.

I ended up in room 1213 of the Best Western Motel near Lake Lucille after driving from Turnagain Arm through Anchorage, and deciding there was no reason whatsoever to hang around Anchorage. Once again, the place reminds me of San Jose. Of old San Jose, before the boom. That's not good or bad. It's just a comparison.

I drove around and around Anchorage, listening to the Yankees versus the Mariners, and trying to figure out what to do. I found a pretty cool monument to Captain Cook and the voyages of the Resolution. It was after sailing south from Alaska that Cook was killed in Hawaii. I almost stayed in an RV park in the middle of the city, but that just felt stupid, so I pushed on.

I left Anchorage on the Glenn Highway, the same road I came in on from Valdez, but split off around Eagle River, and headed toward Denali. Around Wasilla the wind was really blowing, and I figured the wind chill factor had to be down near zero.

So I checked into a Best Western. In the lobby there is a huge stuffed brown (grizzly) bear that puts the Fear of Clawed into you, when you think that people actually get chased and mauled by these 10-foot monsters.

This bear is huge, and the girl at the desk said it was kind of thin for a grizzly.

Now I'm in my hotel room. I watched Seven, a disturbing movie I like, and now I'm watching sports highlights.

I did a little research on that Bored! idea: Doing an Outdoor Life Network series that would travel to the world's greatest tidal bores to ride them.

It would be fun to do and fun to watch: a bit of comedy, a bit of science, a bit of travel.

I'm going to push on to Denali tomorrow. It's only a couple hundred miles away. I'll probably go to Fairbanks after that, and then I'm going to head south out of Alaska to warmer climes, with all the other geese.

Aloha and mahalo.