Into the clouds on Sharatin

 

On Friday I was just back from Karluk Lake and super tired. I had the day from work, and it was sunny. But all I wanted to do was take a nap.  Stuey had to cajole me into going on a hike up Sharatin. I'll admit the sunshine helped. How can one take a nap when it is sunny out?

I was glad I went! It was a beautiful hike and the mountain top was partially shrouded in weather clouds. They were like thunderheads. The dogs were super happy to get the extended walk too.

At the top we Facetimed with Nora, and then we hiked on back down. The clouds came in and by the time we got back to town it was misty with a light rain. But we had made the most of our weather window!

Patrick

Beavers in action!

 

Where we were camping at Thumb Lake there was a HUGE beaver lodge about a 1/4 mile from camp. The beavers would routinely swim past our camp. At one point there were 5 beavers all swimming around in circles in front of our camp. If you walked along the beach they would slap their tails in alarm on the water. We even heard them doing the slap for bears walking along the beach.

Along the shore you could see the remains of willow trees that they had cut down. There were little trails through the grass down to the beach where they dragged the branches they harvested. In the evening we even watched them eating the bark and leaves off of the branches in the shallow waters of the lake. They also seemed to leave a lot in the water for later. In the winter I gather they go back under the ice and find the branches they left there in summer.

Busy little guys!

Patrick

beaver getting ready to SLAP!

beaver cut branches dragged into the shallow water for later consumption

beaver cut willows in the process of getting dragged to lake

Back from Thumb Lake

 

bears arriving below the site to fish for spawning salmon

It must be almost Fall because the Archaeology field season is over - for me at least. I just got back from a remote 2 week excavation on the banks of Thumb Creek - a tributary into Karluk Lake. We excavated a 4-5 thousand year old fish camp above the Creek. There was also a 1000-year old camp on top of the site. During the dig we learned a lot about past life on Thumb Creek, and this will be the subject of a future blog post. 

We camped up on Thumb Lake and walked a 1/2 mile back and forth from camp to the site every day. This year there were a lot of bears. Red salmon spawn in the creek below the site and there were almost always a few bears down below us in the creek trying to catch fish. You'd hear them splashing up and down the creek chasing the fish. The bears are there for the same reason people camped there in the past. In late summer it is an easy place to catch a lot of fish.

Anyway, I am now back! In the next week I'll post more details about our trip and on the archaeological results.

Patrick

cottonwood trees by the trail to our camp from the site

Thumb Lake reflections

fireweed - getting a late start this year!

Our camp on Thumb Lake

A 4-5K year old serrated, ground slate bayonet from the site

beaver paddling in Thumb Lake

No salmonberries

 

My potatoes are blooming!

I still have not found a ripe salmonberry to eat. I fear it is an awful year for berries and the bears are going to be hungry. I did find one semi ripe blueberry in the park to eat but that's it. There are just very few berries around. I spent the last week on my hikes looking for a ripe salmonberry to eat and did not see a single one. Wow!

That said the fireweed is in full blossom and seems to be doing fine. The fireweed might actually be blooming a little early.

Patrick

Fogged Out

 

Over the weekend Stuey and I went hunting on Afognak with our friend Ryan. Right off the bat at dawn on the first day we found a herd of bucks and Stuey wanted to shoot the first one we saw. And we probably should have done so. But the buck was not very big and was at a bad shooting angle at the bottom of a steep slope. The next guys were not very big either. With so many deer around I wanted to get something big.

And then just as we were off after some big boys the fog came in and covered up everything below in a mantle of white. Only the very tops of the mountains stuck up above the clouds. And that was that - you can't hunt when you can't see the deer. And so we waited and waited, and took naps and hoped the fog would burn off. 

The fog did not burn off until late in the afternoon. And by then it was very hot and all the deer had bedded down for the day. We looked and looked and just saw one doe. And then the next day we had more fog and the wind was blowing in the wrong direction. Despite getting up at dawn again we only saw one doe.  Lesson learned - 'a buck in hand is worth a big one in the bush'. I actually should have learned this last year!

But the trip was not a bust. We got to camp and hike in some beautiful country. We did some exploring where I have never hiked before. If we had harvested the first deer we saw I would never have had the glorious nap in the sunshine, nor would we have done so much hiking.

Patrick

Nap time waiting for the fog to burn off

Nap back at the beach - waiting for the ride home

Karluk Lagoon

 

Karluk Village and Lagoon with old Karluk on the other side of the lagoon (to left)

Last week I went to the village of Karluk for a work related trip. For the last 15 years or so I have done a lot of archaeology up on Karluk Lake and along the river.  But I had not visited the village in over 20 years - maybe 25!

The village of Karluk is on the lagoon at the mouth of the river and it is where I spent my first summer in Alaska way back in 1985. I was a part of the Bryn Mawr College excavation at the Karluk One site. This is the excavation that basically created the Alutiiq Museum where I now work. The site was a 'wet' site and had amazing organic preservation - grass and spruce root baskets, wood masks, painted box panels, ulus with the handles attached - All sorts of amazing stuff  Today most of the artifacts on display in the gallery are from that excavation.

Since then the entire site has been destroyed by erosion. The river draining the lagoon has been slowly migrating to the southwest and it completely destroyed the site by the early 2000's. Now it is cutting into the hillside and threatening the old Russian Orthodox Church on the hill that was once behind the site (see bottom photo).

Spending a day back on the lagoon brought back many memories. I walked the same road that I had once walked every day from the village to the site. I saw the old Russian Orthodox church. But one thing I did not see was Karluk One the archaeological site I helped excavate. Where the site once was is now under water or beach gravel. The erosion since I last visited is utterly amazing. 

Patrick

River erosion threatening the Karluk Church

It was a tad buggy

Ugak Bay from the plane home

'CC 1,2,3' - the old ski route from Crown to Center

The church in 1995

me on the slope below church above river in 1985

Aerial view of Karluk from 1983 - it's eroded a lot since then