Petersburg Creek-Duncan Salt Chuck Wilderness

Petersburg Creek flows down through a typical U-shaped glacier-carved valley on Kupreanof Island in the Alexander Archipelago. The high point in the area is at 3,577 feet and the drop is all the way to flat grass plains at sea level. The Duncan Salt Chuck is a large, tidally influenced salt marsh with a set of rocky rapids constricting its entrance to the sea. That means that slack high tide periods are the best time to try to get a small boat across the rocks and into the marsh.

This is the Tongass National Forest, a zone of temperate rainforest where rainfall generally runs around 160 inches per year while snowfall generally drops about 200 inches per year on the peaks. The forest is a thick mix of cedar, hemlock and spruce with an almost impenetrable understory. There is a 14-inch-wide plank walkway that covers part of the 6.5-mile Petersburg Lake from the saltwater wilderness boundary to a USDA-FS cabin on Petersburg Lake. There's a more primitive trail from Petersburg Lake to another USDA-FS cabin on the Duncan Salt Chuck.