Bore Tide at Turnagain Arm

Corinne Alaska No Comments

The time and date dependent destination I mentioned in the blog post about Whittier was Turnagain Arm. It was only a short distance away from Whittier.

I feel obligated to insert a geography lesson at this point. My apologies, but I think it will help explain what is going on.

The city of Anchorage is at the end of Cook Inlet. On either side of Anchorage are “arms.” These are narrow bands of water that were formed by glaciers. Note Turnagain Arm is long and very narrow.

We had driven along Turnagain Arm three times at this point. The first trip was with Janelle when she visited and we went down to Seward.

It was a beautiful day when Janelle was with us. If you get lucky, you can see Beluga Whales in Turnagain Arm. We were not lucky.
The Alaska Railroad goes along the Arm. This one happens to be a tourist train with glass dome viewing car.
Janelle checking out the scenery.
Happy Goeke Girls.

It was this trip along the arm with Janelle in early June that clued us into the fact that Turnagain Arm can have a Tidal Bore. Note, there only approximately 60 locations in the world that experience a bore tide.

Borrowing from Wikipedia, a bore is….

…a tidal phenomenon in which the leading edge of the incoming tide forms a wave (or waves) of water that travels up a river or narrow bay, reversing the direction of the river or bay’s current. It is a strong tide that pushes up the river, against the current.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tidal_bore

So, Turnagain Arm is such a narrow bay. We realized during our visit with Janelle in early June, that we would be in the vicinity of the Arm during a time (late June) when the incoming tide would be larger than normal. There would create a bore tidal wave! And people SURF that wave!!!!! So we could witness not just a bore tide, but the surfers. This we had to see, so we arranged our various excursions to put us at Turnagain Arm at the appropriate time.

Here we are in late June on our final trip along Turnagain Arm. The weather was not as nice as when Janelle was here. But we weren’t here for the weather. We had scoped out the pulloffs along the highway to find one big enough to fit our massive setup. Pulloff #4 did nicely, with the plan being to get here early to secure a parking spot (2:00 in the afternoon after our visit to Whittier) and spend the night here.

Things were quiet at first, but closer to 5:00 and the start of the bore tide, the pulloff started filling up with bore tide spectators. A lot of them, all waiting for the tide to come in. My closest analogy to this whole experience is waiting for a solar eclipse, there was lots of excited anticipation.
And then the surfers started showing up. Woah! We had picked an excellent spot to view the bore tide.
We had around twenty surfers in their wetsuits at our location, using it as a starting point. These adventurous types had to navigate the rocks to get down to the water.
They then paddled down the Arm to meet the incoming bore tide, the idea being to meet the tide as it comes into this section of the Arm and ride it back down to your vehicle.
You have to be patient awaiting the bore tide and its accompanying wave. We had found the approximate time of its arrival on the Internet. But where was it? James talked to one of the surfers and was told the wind direction, wind speed and the air temperature (causing more water flow into the arm due to snow melt) all play a part. Eventually, we were rewarded. You can just see some of the surfers riding the wave.
“Hang 10!” Isn’t that what surfers day? The water was around 49 degrees Fahrenheit. Brrr.
Some of the surfers didn’t quite catch the wave and got left behind. I kind of felt bad for them, all that work to paddle towards the tide only to miss the wave.
These two guys did an excellent job riding the wave for a mile or so.
It felt like no time at all and the wave was past us.

We were truly amazed at the number of people that showed up to watch and surf the bore tide. If felt like it was over in an instant, but I would say it took about 15 minutes to go past us. Once it passed, the parking lot emptied out immediately of spectators (just like a solar eclipse event). The surfers hung around a while longer to strip off their wetsuits and discuss the how it went.

It was such a cool experience to view this event. We are very glad we planned around it. After a peaceful nice in the pull off, we headed out towards Anchorage and saw a few morning surfers out, even though the tide wasn’t as big. They are true diehards!

Once again, I’m giving you some YouTube videos to see how this all works. Video does a better job than pictures to show you what is going on.

What is a bore tide, 2 minutes long: https://youtu.be/C_g4KCRcz-s?si=oYLEwS5uo0leJ3dB

Surfers talking about riding the bore tide, 5 minutes long: https://youtu.be/PM3y6gVKSEs?si=a8TJ_XSKMiOAb-8N

Leave a Reply

Translate ยป