![]() Where much of what we see in nature is driven by the sun, from photosynthesizing plants to our winds and rains, the pass is driven largely by the moon and its gravity and the island geography that turns it into a powerful sluice.Īs the owner of Vessel Assist Northwest, Aydelotte has spent a quarter-century pulling ill-fated boats and spooked scuba divers from the pass. The pass, now crossed by a 186-foot-high span, is a dramatic showcase of awesome and unique natural forces. Actually, it's two passes, Canoe, at about 50 feet across, and the 500-foot-wide main channel, Deception, separating Whidbey and Fidalgo islands. Geological Survey at the University of Washington.ĭeception Pass, which sits at the narrow end of the big bathtub of Puget Sound, focuses and redirects the sloshing of the tides in ways that the people who make tide charts have yet to fully understand.įour times a day, the waters of Saratoga Passage and the Strait of Juan de Fuca try to shoulder their way through the pass. Without the scouring currents of the pass, sediments from the nearby Skagit River would have so filled in the Sound to the east that one might have been able to walk from Camano Island to Whidbey Island, said Ralph Haugerud, a research geologist for the U.S. It's more than 50 times the average flow of all the rivers emptying into Puget Sound. That's eight times the average flow of Washington's mighty Columbia River. Cargo-burdened tugs and low-powered sailboats refuse to chance the passage in all but the small window of a slack tide.Īt a peak flow of nearly nine knots, 2 million cubic feet of water pour through Deception Pass per second. These beautiful, beguiling waters have drowned swimmers, tossed kayakers and weakened the knees of even experienced skippers. Of all that Deception Pass offers - riotous tide pools, old-growth giants, the most photographed bridge in the state - the heart of the pass is the rocky notch through which flows some of the fastest, trickiest and most dangerous currents of our inland sea. He and his diving partner, low on air, surfaced and spent an hour swimming against the current to their starting point. Charts consulted before the dive said the current would soon change directions. On his second dive, Holman felt the pass's dark side.Ī sudden upwelling dragged him 40 feet toward the surface. The first time he dived the depths of Deception Pass, Rob Holman saw how Washington state's most popular park gets downright spectacular beneath its roiling surface.īurgundy, pink and white anemones and sea urchins bigger than dinner plates lined the underwater canyon.
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