Cruise ships ply its sheltered waters almost hourly. Throngs of tourists eat splendid meals, gaze at panoramic wilderness through large picture windows, and finish up at Glacier Bay, where they videotape great chunks of ice calving off frozen walls. The Outside Passage is something else. Information about it is scarce, human habitation almost non-existent. The mountains that surround the Inside Passage have dwindled by the time they reach the outer coast.
Gentle hills allow the sun to penetrate from early morning till late in the evening.
Where the Inside Passage is like a clean knife cut, the Outside Passage is a maze of archipelagoes and crenellated shorelines, a place that begs to be explored by sea kayak. Here begins the Yuppie dilemma. I only have a week's leave. There are no airports on the outer coast. Floatplanes can't be relied upon to get a group of kayakers in and out at pre-arranged times, due to fog and other weather factors.