I spent the last week with my friend Mike S on a hunting/hiking camping trip down on Kodiak's south end. This is the part of Kodiak that was never glaciated during the last glacial maximum. Hence, it is known as the 'Refugium' because it was supposedly a 'refuge' for various plants and animals to survive the glaciation and then subsequently repopulate the island ecosystem. It was basically a huge ice-dammed lake. It is certainly a unique place and it looks totally different than anywhere else on Kodiak. The wide open swamp flats are basically the old lake bottoms and the hills would have been islands sticking up out of the lakes.
The trip is sort of an annual event except that we usually do it with our friend Ray and generally float down a river. This year we decided to park in one place, make a comfortable base camp, and do our hikes from there. Of course while hiking the mountains we were also hunting. We also did a little archaeology and found 2 new village sites where Alutiiq people fished for spawning red salmon in the fall.
This year the theme of the trip was spawning red salmon and the reds and yellows of the fall colors. It is gorgeous down there! I particularly liked to see all the spawning red salmon - now I know why people went to these inland lakes in the fall. And the highest concentrations of spawning fish were generally right in front of old village sites. Of course these are the areas where bears also like to fish.
More to come. ..
Patrick
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