Surviving the STORM

Our camp was located just above the circle with the 'I' in it - that's 60 plus knot winds!

The final post about our Labor Day trip to Afognak - the Storm.  It was not all sunny skies and calm seas - After 3 pretty nice days we survived the worst storm in our experience at Lipsett Point.

We were expecting the storm and had even collapsed the cook tent teepee Saturday night in expectation of the storm.  But we really did not think it would be all that bad - and even left a lot of stuff under the the collapsed teepee that we ended up needing.  Indeed, when I woke up Sunday morning it wasn't all that bad.  I thought about resetting up the teepee and cooking breakfast.  But then I decided to sleep in just a bit more.

By 9AM the rains had arrived and the wind was bad enough that I thought, 'why chance the teepee - I'll grab some Kind Bars and the kids can eat breakfast in their tents'.  'Let's see what the wind does'.  So I grabbed some juice boxes and Kind bars (my water bottle - and camera and rain pants! - were under the collapsed teepee) and took them to the kids.  I checked Stuey and Lars' tent guy outs, and then Nora and I's tent.  All looked good.

And then around 10AM it seriously started to scream.  By 11 AM I was starting to loose tent pins and had to go outside and re pin both tents with big rocks on top of them.  Ray had to totally re do the tent he was sharing with Julie and Ilsa.  I told Stuey and Lars that they could not leave their tent because with the wind and door facing the storm it might explode!  They were to pee between the tent fly and mesh interior.  At my tent less than 50 yards away we could barely hear it when Stuey would scream 'Dad'. It was getting medieval with moaning winds, spume from the crashing waves drifting the through the trees, and flapping tents.

We were on a point of land facing East and getting the full brunt of the storm straight off the Gulf of Alaska.  No islands or any land in the way to break the force of the wind.  Huge waves (18 foot according to the Marmot Bay forecast) were crashing onto the rocks of Lipsett Point.  It was really spectacular.  We figure the winds peaked out at 60 to 70 mph or so with higher gusts.

But the tents held and we did the best thing you can do in such a situation.  Hunker down.  If you are dry and warm stay dry and warm!  Still I was seriously worried that a tent would catastrophically fail.  I did have an extra tent and there is an old building a mile or so away that we could have taken shelter in if such a disaster did happen.  But I knew that if we moved we would all get soaked.  I sat and watched the barometer on my watch and it just kept on dropping and dropping.  I knew things would not get better until it leveled off or went up.  This did not happen until 6PM when it bottomed out at 29.20 inches mercury.

Nora and Stuey were great - Nora read and slept while Stuey played ColorKu with Lars.  All the kids ate way too many Kind Bars and neither ever wants to eat one again.  Brewster refused to leave the tent and even slept inside my sleeping bag. Nora did get super hungry by the end of the day and really wanted to leave the tent.  But Julie saved the day by coming by each tent with a supply of crackers, hard salami and cheese.  We held on.

Finally, too late to set up the teepee, the winds abated around 7 PM.  We had survived the storm.  I knew all was good when Brewster finally left the tent to pee and look around.

I think the storm was a really good learning experience for the kids.  They learned patience in the face of adversity.  To stay calm when it looks REALLY scary outside.  To wait it out.

Patrick

'Dad - I'm REALLY bored and also sick of Kind bars'

That's some serious flapping from a tightly pitched cuban fiber tent

This makes it look calm - it wasn't