This week’s monster high tide in Dillingham claimed this truck left overnight at Kanakanak Beach.
The driver launched a skiff for Clark’s Point on Monday night and parked an Isuzu pickup truck and trailer on the beach.
Parking far up the beach is often suitable for most tide changes. A vehicle’s tires may get wet on a 20-foot tide. But on Tuesday, the Nushagak River saw one its biggest — and one of its lowest — tides of the year, and this Isuzu’s swamped interior can now attest that parking up the road would have been the wiser course.
Beachgoers Tuesday afternoon were shocked to see the outline of the truck appearing as the water receded on the afternoon ebb, and called police. The surf, fueled by 30 mph southwest winds, continued to pound the truck until police and harbor staff were finally able to tow it out around 2:15 p.m. Tuesday.
Initially, police suspected the vehicle might have been stolen and left on the beach after a joyride. It took just a few phone calls after the license plate became visible for the owner to clarify that wasn’t the case. The vehicle had been parked Monday night to launch a boat, was apparently swamped on the Tuesday morning high tide, and dragged perhaps 75 yards seaward with the ebb.
According to NOAA’s Tides and Currents page, the Nushagak River’s high tide Monday night was 18.5 feet at 5:47 p.m. The low tide went down to negative 2.8 feet at 12:29 a.m., one of the lowest tides of the year. At 6:55 a.m., a monster 24.1-foot high tide smothered beaches and climbed shorelines, including several feet up Kanakanak Beach. That tide receded to 3 feet by 1:26 p.m. Tuesday, revealing the missing truck.
The skiff trailer wasn’t immediately found.
