Tidal Flats - Anchorage

Comments from others about the tidal flats in Anchorage:

Although they look quite lovely they are as dangerous as quicksand as you will sink once you step on them..Many warnings are posted but at the time I was there we read in the paper that one tourist lost his life there and apparently this has happned many times before..Please heed the warnings!!

surround the city of Anchorage could be more than an inconvenience. To a few unfortuate souls it has been fatal.

Cook Inlet and Turnagain Arm have the second highest tides in all of North America, surpassed only by the Bay of Fundy in Nova Scotia. Each time the tide goes out it exposes extensive mudflats which are composed of glacial silt carried down by rivers to the sea. These mudflats exhibit a quicksand-like quality and if you venture out onto them during low tide there is a very real possibility of becoming seriously stuck. I heard one horrow story of a woman who was caught so firmly by the vice-like grip of the mud that the incoming tides covered and drowned her, in spite of the heroic but futile efforts of would-be rescuers from the National Guard. Only a fool would take such a chance.

If you were to look at the low tide mud in this area under a microscope, it would look like a chinese finger puzzle. If you foot goes into the mud, chances are it will not release you. When the tide comes in, you will drown. You will not be the first.


There is only one beach in Anchorage. Cook Inlet is nothing more than a shallow mud flat which is dredged to allow ships access to the city. Due to the mud drying, some people think that it would be a good idea to walk out into the flats: WRONG. You can have your limbs torn apart by the suction of removing a limb from the strong strong mud. The National Guard will have to send out a rescue team- which you will be charged for the cost of. Do NOT go out into the mudflats.