Boats in Alaska/Yukon

Alaska is a Mecca for paddling. Here the Inuit and Inupiat developed kayaks using skins, bones and driftwood along with double-ended paddles. These personal, form-fitting little boats are ideal for cold water fishing, whaling and hunting. The museums proudly display authentic, historical kayaks I studied for their elegant lines and use of highly skilled sewing and assembling. Sewing was indeed the early high tech that made artic and sub-artic life possible. Traditional kayak skills and materials are still in sporadic production of these boats.

The Tlingkit dugout is a sleek beauty and the picture here of a fiberglass racing reproduction is testimony to the timeless heritage of this design. Its difficult not to find harmony with the Tlingkit art whether functional like these boats or ceremonial and decorative.


French voyagers plied the rivers and lakes in larger voyager canoes based on even earlier first nations war canoes. These large canoes were designed for hauling furs and supplies all across much of North America. The photo shows a design (new to me) for sturdily seating the steersperson in the back of a voyager replica. Its unlikely tractor seats were traditional in this position! This long craft took 6th place in the Yukon River Quest this year. That’s a 400 mile + race from Whitehorse to Dawson!



I had to include another photo of my inflatable kayak on Moon Lake for this collection as well as some Tupperware kayaks in seen in the modern exploration by tourists. My green inflatable kayak is not traditional but it will satisfy my need to paddle. I rented a kayak at Glacier Bay after leaving mine in Anchorage. I paddled cutoff, passable only at high tide. The tide currents through that close passage kept me alert in time and space. I had to make sure I passed back across the cutoff before being stranded on the mud for 6 hours awaiting the next high tide flood.

Incidentally, you can double click these photos or right click them and they should expand to get larger!