The extensive mudflats that surround the city of Anchorage, Alaska, are very impressive to behold, but getting stuck in them 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.
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