Fort Tidball

Last week out on Long Island Molly and I documented a lot of material from WWII.  During the war the island was the location of Fort Tidball and there are old quonset huts and fortifications everywhere.  Mostly we simply documented their condition and took lots of photographs.  Most of the WWII stuff has been mapped and reported on before, but we also did find a few structures that no one seems to have known about or reported on.

Most of the quonset huts and wooden structures are in the process of collapsing.  When I visited and checked on their condition in 2002 a great many were still in pretty good condition.  This is no longer true.  Very few of the quonset huts are even standing.  The concrete structures, on the other hand, are doing great.  It is sort of amazing to walk into the old bunkers and look up and see stalagmites.  They are old but still in good shape.  It made me wonder exactly how long does reinforced concrete last?  Will these structures last as long as the Roman Coliseum in Rome?  Or will they start crumbling and barely made the next century?

For now they are certainly fun to explore!

Patrick

A lot of people have signed their names in these structures - amazing how many are people I know!

Molly documents an old cliffside AA (Anti aircraft) emplacement

A collapsed watchtower

Mount Monashka

Yesterday Nora and I started the 'Adjust your Altitude' challenge.  We have until September to climb 7 mountains - Monashka, The North Sister, Pyramid, Sharatin, Barometer, Kashevaroff, and Heitman.  We started with my favorite - Mount Monashka.  It is my favorite because it is right by the ocean and on top it feels like you're on a perch above the trees and sea.

It was a pretty hot day and Tank did NOT like the climb.  He was puffing like a steam engine by the time we got near the top.  We stopped to give him some breaks and gave him most of our water.  On the way back he wallowed and drank in the first stream we crossed.  Totally happy.

Next up - the North Sister.  This is the one Nora already climbed last Friday.

Patrick

Pretty Pictures from Long Island

Some pretty pictures from last week's trip to Long Island.  The weather was spectacular all week.  While we were there we could hear the whales breathing and breaching pretty much continuously on the west side.  While on the northeast corner it was sea lions doing the 'ughhhhhh' thing.

The first morning at our camp on the east side Molly and I both wondered why anyone would light off fireworks in the morning.  Then we realized the 'cracks' and 'bangs' were actually whales slapping their tails on the water.
Patrick

Russian thistle - horrid invasive species!

Return to Long Island

6 inch gun mount at Castle Cape - the big thing in the background is the gun 'roof'

This morning I was getting ready to take the kids kayaking when Nora suggested, 'why don't we take the motor boat out to Long Island?'.  'Why not indeed', I thought.  I spent all last week camping and working on Long Island, and realized that it is a super quick trip to get over there.  And once there the hiking is great - and so away we went.

Nora drove the boat on the way over, and I inflated a kayak to help with mooring up the boat.  We then hiked up to the bunkers on Castle Cape.  Of course we had forgotten a flashlight but Stuey turned up the iPad screen brightness to the highest setting and it actually worked pretty well.  We also used the flash on the camera to light up whole rooms and see what was inside.  It was pretty spooky!

Back at the beach I ate lunch and Nora took out the kayak for a spin.  Perfectly flat calm.  A great day for a visit to Long Island - and it really is only a 10 minute boat ride.  It is easier to boat out to Long Island than it is to drive out to Pasagshak.

Patrick

Hikes with Nora

Since I got back from Long Island I've been doing afternoon hikes with Nora.  Nora is excited by the 'Adjust Your Altitude' challenge put on by Discover Kodiak (click here for link).  She wants to hike all 7 of the mountains that are part of the challenge, and she wants to do it in one week.

Friday afternoon we hiked up one of the mountains - the North Sister - and Nora got to the top, but the hike did not count as part of the challenge since we had not signed up and did not have the proper sticker and passport.  Oh well.

It turns out that we can not get these stickers until Monday.  So Nora does not want to hike any of the other mountains until have signed up.  This means we did a simple Near Island hike on Saturday, and today we plan on kayaking with Stuey.

But come Monday. ... ...

Patrick

Back from Long Island

Last week I helped conduct an archaeological survey of Long Island.  This is 5 mile long island just off of the coast of Kodiak and not the big island associated with NYC!   The survey was another segment of the Leisnoi Land survey (click here, here, and here for introduction and earlier survey segments) sponsored by the National Park Service.  During WWII Long Island saw a lot of activity and is the location of Fort Tidball - think bunkers and gun emplacements.  But Long Island was also a fox farm in the early 20th century and has been a prime location for Alutiiq settlements and hunting camps going back thousands of years.  Needless to say, but there was a lot of archaeology for us to find and document!

And find it we did - we found 5 new, previously unknown, prehistoric sites and mapped and documented the condition of another 7 previously known prehistoric and early historic sites (one was an early Russian era brick kiln site).   But our main activity was documenting all the structures associated with Fort Tidball.  We recorded the locations of everything we found but the most important part was assessing the condition of everything.  How is it all holding up after 70 years? I'll be doing more blog posts on the archaeology so stay tuned.

One exciting occurrence was when I got attacked by a nesting goshawk.  I was hiking through the forest  when suddenly a goshawk started to dive bomb and schreak at me as I dodged to get away.  I never saw the nest but I assume that was way he/she attacked me.  After a bit he/she stopped and that is when I took the picture below.  I continued to walk away when WHAM I saw stars and fell to the ground.  The hawk had slammed into my head and took my hat!  It was super scary.  Patrick

Old gun mounts at Deer Point

Some of the nicer beaches had prehistoric village sites behind them

Checking on an old quonset hut where the troops lived during WWII

This is the goshawk that attacked me and stole my hat

Beautiful hiking - with no understory (devilsclub or salmonberry) because of grazing cows

Really GORGEOUS hiking under the trees

Raspberries

Today I picked my first ripe raspberry of the season.  I think this generally happens in August, but I checked my blog and could not find the dates of the 'first raspberry' from years past.  I do know that last summer it was a full time job to keep harvesting them so that they did not rot and infect the whole patch with rot.  I get the feeling I'll be flavoring a lot of kombucha with raspberries in the near future.  This year I hope to make some jam too.  I bet by the weeks end I'll be swamped in raspberries.  Patrick