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Duncan Murrell - A Whale of a Time

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Duncan Murrell - A Whale of a Time

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  • Kayaking-Bacuit-Archipelago11.tif
  • Cape Fanshawe was always one of my first anchorages after leaving Petersburg, either in one of my boats, Avalon and subsequently Selena, or in my kayak. It’s on the mainland and at the entrance to my favourite place for vegetation in Southeast Alaska, Port Houghton. Although there are some safe anchorages in amongst the small islands there, and there used to be a fur farm situated there, the actual cape is very exposed to the full power of the elements as can be seen by the way these rocks on the shore have been sculpted; they have been sculpted like waves and are extremely slippery to walk on.<br />
I always remember being trapped there in my kayak late in the summer because the sea conditions were so rough. I was trying to get back to Petersburg at the end of a trip, and when the weather eventually cleared for a while, I had to make a dash for town and paddled continuously for 14 hours to make it back there. I had nearly been out of food, and to add to my torment my tent was being constantly bombarded with cones by a very petulant and territorial squirrel: it developed into squirrel wars!
    Southeast-Alaska-coast12.jpg
  • Sculpted shoreline rocks in the fog near Point Hayes, Chichagof Island, Southeast Alaska, USA.<br />
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This is not far from my regular campsite at Point Hayes. There was always so much to explore along that stretch of rocky coast, and I spent a lot of time beach combing and photographing the intertidal life.
    coast-2.tif
  • With such sparse vegetation and the exposed geology, the sense of perspective, space and geological time is greatly enhanced. In the foreground is an elephant tree, one of the many plants perfectly adapted to surviving the extremely arid conditions prevalent in Baja. Standing water was virtually non-existent when I was there but the eroded streambeds created by the brief seasonal flash flooding were clearly evident.
    Kayaking- Gulf-of-California5.jpg
  • The main range of hills on Rum are called the Cuillin in the south of the island. They are rocky peaks of basalt and gabbro that are part of a core of a deeply eroded volcano that was active in the Paleogene era 66 – 23 million years ago. This view is looking towards Askival, 812 metres, and Ainshval, 778 metres, from Hallival. Hallival and Askival are formed from layered igneous rocks that accumulated at the base of a magma chamber. The chamber eventually collapsed, forming a caldera (crater). There are near vertical intrusions of basalt on the northwest coast, created by basaltic magma forcing its way into fissures in the pre-exiting rock.<br />
I hiked from Kinloch and up along the Cuillin from Hallival to Ainshval, which included some very steep and challenging scrambling on all fours, and then along a long undulating ridge with a fantastic view out across the sea, before descending down towards Glen Harris to the far right of this photo. It was unquestionably one of my favourite hikes that I have ever done anywhere in the world, with absolutely stupendous views in all directions across the island and out across the sea. I was travelling light, and I knew that I only had a limited amount of time to complete the circuit back to Kinloch, so it became an exhilarating sprint across the challenging terrain that kept my adrenaline pumping all the way. It takes pride of place in my top ten hikes in the world that I would like to redo one day.
    Kayaking-West-Coast-Scotland54.jpg
  • Ankarana National Park in north-west Madagascar is a spectacular eroded limestone fortress of sharp ridges, interspersed with patches of dense tropical rainforest, deciduous forest, gorges, deep caves and underground rivers. About 100 kilometres of cave passages have been mapped within the massif. It is a small, partially vegetated plateau composed of 150-million-year-old middle Jurassic limestone, with an average annual rainfall of about 2,000 mm that has led to the erosion that has created the classic “karst” topography, or locally known as “tsingy”.<br />
Ankarana contains one of the highest densities of primates of any forest in the world. Its dense forests supports large populations of crowned lemurs and Sanford’s brown lemurs, in addition to Perrier’s sifaka, northern sportive lemurs, brown mouse lemurs, fork-marked lemurs, eastern wooly lemurs, western lesser bamboo lemurs and fat-tailed dwarf lemurs, and also ring-tailed mongoose, fossa, tenrecs and Madagascar striped civet. There are almost 100 bird species, 50 reptile, including some endemic and threatened snakes and geckos, and 10 species of frogs. Inside the huge labyrinth of caves there are 14 species of bats, along with local endemic blind shrimps and the world’s only cave-living crocodiles.<br />
More than 350 plant species grow in the park; the luxuriant forests around the gorges are always green and are the richest in numbers of species.
    Kayaking-Madagascar-journey47.jpg
  • With such sparse vegetation and the exposed geology, the sense of perspective, space and geological time is greatly enhanced. In the foreground is an elephant tree, one of the many plants perfectly adapted to surviving the extremely arid conditions prevalent in Baja. Standing water was virtually non-existent when I was there but the eroded streambeds created by the brief seasonal flash flooding were clearly evident.
    Kayaking- Gulf-of-California6.jpg
  • Ankarana was a really special experience for me. I loved the marriage between the sculpted limestone rocks and the lush vegetation. The tsingy limestone formations are amazing but quite hazardous to walk around on because the rock has been eroded into vertical jagged blades. I discovered that some of the local crowned lemurs have become semi-habituated to visitors, and associate them with snacks, which is not usually a good thing, but unfortunately it is often inevitable, especially if the guides encourage it too. I was able to camp overnight in the forest on the way back to the park headquarters, and had a memorable soak in a cooling stream to listen to the nocturnal sounds of the forest – and to avoid the worst mosquitoes on the trip so far. <br />
I was really impressed with Ankarana, so it was with the usual mixture of wonderment and sadness that I looked back at the very finite perimeter of another protected area when I was driving away in the taxi-brousse. The abrupt transition from incredibly rich biodiversity to barren scrubland was painfully depressing and becoming too familiar in Madagascar.
    Kayaking-Madagascar-journey46.tif