Bears in the 'Hood

There has been a lot of bear activity in my neighborhood lately.  The family down the road lost their goose and ducks, and another lady on Nora's paper route told us how a bear had tried to get into her house.  It seems a hungry bear has been wandering up and down Cliffside Road looking for something to eat.

Last week he tried his/her luck at our place.

I have a fenced in backyard and that is where I store the tin cans slated for recycling, keep my compost bins, and the dogs chew on the various elk and deer bones leftover from my hunting trips.  If you are in the kitchen you will often hear a thump from the back deck as the dogs chew away on a bone and it hits the wood porch.

Anyway, early one morning last week I was in the kitchen with all 3 dogs when we heard a 'thump' from the back porch. It was pitch black outside.  I looked at the 3 dogs and looked at the black kitchen window.   'Thump' - 'uh oh,' I thought.

I went to investigate and immediately the dogs all went into high alert, dog pack mode  Woof, woof, woof - scrabbling of doggy toe nails on the wood floor, and then whap, whap, whap as they raced out through the dog door one-by-one, and out into the backyard.  I followed out the door and all Hell had broken loose in the back yard.

The bear had tried to hide in behind the oil tank, and the dogs had him cornered.  The barking hit a crescendo. The bear bolted and the dogs chased him around the yard.  The bear could not get out of the yard.  Finally the bear tried to jump the fence.  He landed on top, smashed it down, and climbed over to make his getaway.  The pack had 'hounded' the bear!

No way will the dog pack let a silly bear steal their bones!  Patrick

Post script: As an aside the dog bones did not even have enough meat on them to attract birds.  The bear seems to have been attracted to the tin can recycle bin.  He had come in through a hole in the wood fence that lead to the neighbors.

The bear has not come back.

Anchorage

My fellow hikers on top of 'Near Point'

I just spent the weekend in Anchorage.  I stayed at my friends Julie and Ray's house, and did a lot of mountain biking and hiking.  And in the evenings I got to eat fancy restaurant food.  A very different experience than my typical weekend on Kodiak!  And on the last day it even snowed!

I usually go to Anchorage in the winter and my outdoor activities are confined to skiing.  So it was pretty cool to go hiking and mountain biking and see the XC ski trails I usually ski completely bare of snow.  Anchorage is a very different place when devoid of snow.

The mountain biking was REALLY fun.  I just took up the sport again this summer after an almost 20 year hiatus, and until this weekend I had only experienced Kodiak trails.  I was a little worried about keeping up on the Anchorage trails.  I need not have worried.  Anchorage mountain bike trails are really well engineered with banked turns and excellent tread.  None of the sudden surprises, HUGE rocky drop offs, trees whacking the handle bars, or extreme mud that you experience on a Kodiak ride.

It's funny but I have always said that Kodiak's 'challenging' XC ski conditions make for better skiers, and I think the same is true of our mountain bike trails.  That said, it certainly is fun just to go fast and not worry about hitting a tree, falling off a cliff, or ending the ride covered in mud. Patrick

Pretty windy up on top!

Hillside snow - we need some of that on Kodiak

Sunset on the flight home

Abercrombie Light

The light was beautiful for my walk with the dogs Sunday morning.  We hiked into the park and the sun came out.  It had been stormy but cleared off in spectacular fashion during our hike.  I tried to catch a good picture of the light and tried a couple of variations on each picture.

For the top 2 pictures one is a close up while the other is a panoramic. The goal was to catch the golden light streaming through the trees.  I think I like the top one where if you look closely you can see a clearly happy tank the dog.

For the next 2 of the rainbow (both panoramics) - I tried framing one from a higher vantage point point to get more of the beach in the foreground.  But the other make the rainbow look higher.  Not sure which one I prefer.

Finally for the bottom 2 I wanted to catch the blue skies and stormy seas on the right and the rainbow and dark clouds on the left.  Not much difference between these 2, but I like the top one because there is a bird in it and it shows more of the scene.

Patrick

Roasted Garden Vegetables

Couple of weeks ago I posted my roasted vegetables recipe for when camping.  This is how I do it at home.  Roasted vegetables with the beet greens!  Sadly enough I no longer have viable beet greens in the garden.  These photos are all from early September.

Ingredients:
3-4 beets and greens
1 head of garlic
2-3 large carrots
Salt, pepper, cumin
1 teaspoon sugar
corn oil

I wash and cut up the carrots and beats.  I quarter them so there are more surfaces to 'black' in the pan.  I also trim the beet greens and get rid of any iffy leaves.  There are always too many leaves so one can afford to cull accordingly.  When I cut the greens up I keep the leafy parts and stems separate because at the end I add the stems before the greens as they take longer to cook.  Break up the garlic clove and peel the skins off of the individual cloves.

Pour oil in a baking pan and add carrots and beets.  Sprinkle with salt and pepper and add the sugar (this helps with browning).  Sometimes I add cumin seeds.  Stir to get all the vegetables evenly coated with oil. Bake at 375 for 20 minutes or so before adding the garlic.  After about 40 minutes (from start) stir all the vegetables.  You do not want to do this too often or the vegetables start to break apart.  You also want them to brown before stirring.  Slightly burnt vegetables is the goal here.  I sometimes broil them a bit at this point too.  Add beet green stems.

Then about 10 minutes before you want to eat add the greens on top of the vegetables.  I find you can put off adding the greens until the rest of the meal is ready.  The root vegetables just get more browned.  But at a minimum you need to cook them for about an hour.  The greens wilt pretty quickly when added so do it just at the end.  Then I stir them all up and serve.

Patrick

New Recipes

Clam chowder with Halibut

Now that hunting season is over it is time to appreciate what I caught and grew.  That means cooking up the harvest.  This year I also traded a lot of land mammal meat with a friend for fish.  He likes to fish while I like to hunt - symbiotic friend!  And so despite almost no time spent fishing I also have a lot more salmon, halibut, and even yellow eye snapper than usual.

It's time to try out new recipes.  Friday night I decided I was tired of baked or fried halibut and made a cream based chowder instead.  I used potatoes and garlic from the garden, a leek, celery, and added a lot of clams.  It was very good.  And I also know that Nora loves clam chowder so I can't wait to have her try it.

Tonight I am making up an old stand by - my usual pot roast recipe.  But this time I am cooking up Dall Sheep and added potatoes.  I never add potatoes to stews because they never seem to re heat very well.  But they thickened up the chowder quite nicely and so I decided I'd experiment with tonight's pot roast.  Patrick

Dall Sheep pot roast (with lots of garlic!)

Surf and Snow

Yesterday we finally had some fall weather - cold rain in the morning and cold wind in the afternoon. Leaving work I looked up into the mountains and saw new snow.  This is the first snow near town that I have seen.  Funnily enough I did see snow on the ground way back in early August while on our sheep hunt, but that does not count because it was in the Alaska Range.  Then this morning we had the first hard frost of the year.  When I take Stuey to basketball practice I will have to scrape the ice off of the car windows.  Whooo hooooo.

The storm that brought the snow also kicked up the surf and there were some pretty big waves in Mill Bay yesterday.  I saw a guy surfing and tried to take his picture.  He kept on passing or not catching waves.  After about 15 minutes I was about to give up when he finally caught a wave.  Picky surfer.
Patrick

Kodiak Recreation Summit

The Kodiak Island Borough is updating their Parks and Recreation plan and needs your help.  The plan is dated and as the urban area continues to develop a plan is sorely needed.  As the borough develops all the new roads, new housing, new facilities we will be impacting our recreational opportunities.  The borough needs to know what recreational opportunities Kodiak values.  How many playing fields do we need? What trails do we want to keep?

You can help by filling out the recreational survey hot linked below (or to find it on your own google 'Kodiak Island Borough Recreation Survey').  There will also be a recreation summit next Tuesday (October 23rd - 6 PM at the Borough Assembly Chambers) where the Parks and Recreation Committee will be introducing the plan and seeking feedback.  So if you are interested - fill out the survey and attend the meeting.  Patrick

https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/6ZGGJ3B

Elk Hunt Snapshots

I noticed that I did not take very many really good pictures on the recent elk hunt.  I mentioned this to  Philip and he pointed out that the weather might have had something to do with it.  It was pretty much misty and grey the whole time.  And coincidently all of my good photos are from the times when the sun did shine.  Sunshine makes colors and clouds pop. Pictures of drab days - well look drab.

In any case, here are a few more images from our recent elk hunt.
Patrick

Philip's panoramic from near the top of Cloud Peak

Our camp that looked out over the Shelikof Strait to the high mountains on the Alaska Peninsula

Rocky beach where we got picked up with the first load of elk

The meat from Jason's Elk

This is where we camped ashore on the third night - I checked the area for archaeological sites

Dawn in Malina BayThat's 

That's Afognak Lake and Muskomee Bay in the distance and Cloud Peak on the right

Meat on the hoof

I'm still exhausted from the elk hunt.  It was go, go, go while on the hunt and then once we got back to Kodiak there was a rush to put things away and take care of all the meat.  Yesterday morning all hunt related chores were finally complete and the exhaustion finally had a chance to set in.  I took an all afternoon nap.

It was a very successful hunt.  Despite poor weather, we saw elk every single day and found 2 different large herds.  We hiked something like 30 miles over very rough terrain - 7 of those miles with meat on our backs.  Finally, we harvested 2 big elk, got them back to the boat, kept the meat from spoiling in the warm and wet weather, and finally, back in Kodiak, got it all cut up and packaged and in the freezer.

Philip made a video of the whole process - see link below.
https://vimeo.com/295047461

Patrick

Elk Hunt 2018

A beautiful spot to find the elk herd

 The 2018 elk hunt is complete!  We returned to Kodiak from Afognak Friday morning with 2 elk.  Every year a group of us take a ride on a seiner to North Afognak for a boat based hunting trip for Roosevelt elk.  This was the 17th consecutive hunt - that's a lot of elk hunts.

Highlights of this trip include - Jason's big bull elk, a glorious sunrise at a camp where you could see alpine glow on the Alaska Peninsula volcanoes on the other side of the Shelikof, hiking in the old growth Sitka Spruce forest with all the devilsclub leaves turning yellow, collecting mushrooms to augment dinner right next to the teepee, and exploring precipitous Cloud Peak.

Memorable low points include - wallowing in quicksand with a 130 pound pack on my pack, bushwhacking down a salmonberry, devilsclub and alder choked slope with elk on our backs, chasing Brooks' elk, and our stalk on a 'herd' of ash pits.  The exposed white ash from the Katmai eruption of 1912 looked exactly like a herd of elk!

More to come!

Patrick

Dawn at a camp high on the mountain - Alaska Peninsula in the distance

Jason with a portion of his elk - bushwhacking back to the boat!

Dawn on the Columbia - looking for elk

Hiking with camping gear in the rain and the fog

Hiking through the old growth Sitka Spruce