Last Hurrah

 

My ski season is finally over (at 208 days on snow) - last weekend I did one last hurrah and did the long hike to some decent skiing behind Bells Flats.  I also skied the snow dregs one last time on Pyramid.  And then I took the ski gear out of the car and put it all away in the shed.  Yesterday I went for my first mountain bike ride of the year, and then went for a paddle board on Mill Bay with Nora. It's summer and time to switch recreational activities.

That said there is still plenty of snow behind Bells Flats - it's just that it is too long of a hike to get back there.  Bode and I did a run down the backside that was something like 1500 feet vertical.  And then on the ski back to the car we did a run that was a mile long.  But it also takes almost 3 hours to drive out there and then hike on back to the top of the run.

On Pyramid the top of the North Bowl was still good.  The middle had melted out but the top 300 feet vertical was still a decent run.  But it was also not long for this world, and these days there are too many hikers on the mountain. I'm tired of them asking, 'is there still snow?',  or 'did you find any snow?'  Like I'd carry my skis up there if there was no snow.

So yesterday I went mountain biking.  It was very hot and the road to the top of Pillar Mountain was dusty with all the cars driving past.  I missed the cool breeze off the snow.

Patrick

The run back towards Bells Flats went on and on - not very steep but LONG

Bode and I dropped way down into this ravine

Last of the snow on Pyramid

Quick trip to Chirikof Island

 

The old CAA towers on the north end of the island

Last week I got to make a quick overnight trip out to Chirikof Island.  I've spent a lot of time there in the past surveying the island for archaeological sites (2005) and sampling middens (2013) (click here for some posts about past trips). And on this trip I accompanied some journalists doing a story on the feral cows that live on the island.  The unmanaged cows have overgrazed the island, altered the ecosystem, and damaged the archaeological sites.  I was along as a sort of 'tour guide' to show them archaeological sites and tell them what I know of the history of the island.  

In this post I'll stick more with the experience than on the island's archaeology or the effects of the cows.  The link above is to numerous past posts where I have expounded on those stories.  The only thing I have to add to what I wrote about the cows and archaeological sites in the above link is that I have since surveyed a similar island where the cows are well-managed and not feral.  Last Spring I surveyed nearby Sitkinak Island (click here for some posts), and what a contrast with Chirikof.  There the ranchers have put up fences to keep the cows out of sensitive areas (like wetlands), and have kept their numbers low to reduce over-grazing.  And WOW what a difference!

All of my trips to Chirikof have been very different.  In 2005 I went out in late April and the cows had just reached a 'Malthusian limit', over-grazed the island and experienced a severe winter kill.  In 2013 I visited in late July and everything was bright green and there was a lot of blooming lupine.  This year we stuck to the northeast corner of the island and I was struck by the blooming cottongrass and birds.  Since I last visited the USFWS got rid of the arctic foxes, and it seems to have made a difference with the nesting birds.  On this visit there seemed to be a lot more nesting birds.

The journalists and I had time for 2 long hikes - on the first day we hiked to the old CAA towers (basically 'lighthouses' for planes during WWII).  The north end of the island has turned into a desert and is literally blowing away.  Up there I did find one new prehistoric site, but there was no intact soils and basically when people had lived at the site it was 3 or 4 meters up above where it is today.  All of the artifacts that I saw at the site had been polished and fluted by the wind blown sand.

On the second day we went on another long hike and visited the old ranch.  The old ranch is on top of an old terrace that is literally falling into the sea.  I examined my old notes of the locality from 2005 and looked at old photos and estimate that since 2005 the terrace has been cut back about 60 meters!  When I visited in 2005 the old ranch headquarters was still standing and there was still a prehistoric site in a blowout just behind the cliff edge.  Today the prehistoric site has gone completely over the edge and the main ranch building is in the process of going over too.  WOW!

Finally, I'll add that on this trip I did not find a single glass ball.  I did look but mostly along the east side beaches where there are rocks along the high tide line.  At the north end where there is a HUGE sandy beach and lots of bottle and other marine debris I stuck to the high terrace edge and looked for old archaeological sites.

Patrick

Back in 2005 at this same location I could not resist the lure of glass balls - this time I stuck to the terrace edge looking for archaeological sites

Wind and sand polished cobble spalls found on the surface of a deflated archaeological site

A wind polished flake core from the same site as above

Jude and Shanna crossing the 'River Styx' - green on one side a desert on the other

Our camp in the exact same spot we camped the first night in 2013

Old ranch building about to go over the cliff - that's some severe erosion!

Dead cow in the generator shack at the old ranch

A cattle enclosure - note the TALL grass inside the fence where it is not grazed short by cows

Prime beach combing! But no glass balls or even any glass bottles - too many rocks on the high tide line

Ground Squirrel!

Feral cattle

Brewster

 

The picture above is the last picture I ever took of Brewster.  Soon after I took this picture he developed a gut issue and then died in less than 36 hours.  And the gut issue did not seem all that serious either. He even lept into the car on the way to the vet.  No one expected him to die there.  The distressing thing is that because he died so suddenly we never got a chance to say goodbye.  But the silver lining is that he never slowed down or got old.  He lived life to the fullest literally right up to the day he died.

Brewster arrived in our household in November 2015 as a 5 month old puppy. And immediately joined the aging pack of big black labs - Tank and Sheba.  Brewster energized the group.  If there was a walk in the offing he would start to bark and spin.  He did this to the day he died.  The other dogs put up with his antics, and soon after the walk started he'd go back to the normal walk routine.  Same with skiing - at the top of the downhill he'd start to bark in anticipation of the chase down the mountain.  Full of life and with his doggie grin on he chased me down the mountain the day before he died.

He loved everyone, and would follow me from room to room around the house.  If he wanted a pet he'd come up and nudge my hand.  At night he'd sleep on Stuey's bed.  He got along particularly well with Bode and they'd often sleep on top of each other (see bottom photo). They also did the stick tug-of-war thing on practically every walk.  

It's hard to believe he's gone and the house seems empty without him.  We'll miss our Brew Hooo.  We already do.

Patrick

A young Brewster and Nora

Brewster always LOVED his bones

Brewster meets Bode for the first time December 2020

The Big Three - Brewster, Tank and Sheba

Ski dog

He immediately fit in with Sheba and Tank

A Young Brewster soon after arrival - November 2015

Playing on the snow with Bode

On the ice with Bode as a puppy

Giving Stuey a tow - November 2021

Brewster and Bode napping in the car after a ski - June 2022

Nunalleq - KOD 1284

 

The site prior to excavation - quite the thicket

For the last 2 weeks I have been helping lead a small archaeological excavation out at the head of Womens Bay.  Molly and I found the site a few years ago (click here for post and look at bottom photo in post). It had been mostly disturbed by earth moving and gravel quarrying activities post WWII, but a tiny pie-shaped sliver of the site remained undisturbed.  The site resembles a mesa with steep slopes on all sides where the ground had been removed, and there was about a meter of overburden and thick brush on top of the site.  Molly and I only found the site because we could directly examine the disturbed soil profile on the steep slope and noticed a deeply buried, charcoal-stained, cultural layer.  Since it was capped by a volcanic ash layer that we know is 3500-4000 years old, we knew the site had to be older than that and we were hopeful that it was much older.

And so this year with support from Koniag Inc. we excavated the site.  It was a lot of work removing all the brush and overburden on top of the site (imagine thick roots and lots of gravel). And we laid out an excavation grid that covered practically the whole site, and then dug, dug, dug away until we got to the bottom.

What's interesting is that despite evidence for a lot of human activity at the site we found very few artifacts.  We found 2 cultural layers - a thin ephemeral occupation on top right below the white ash of the 1912 Katmai eruption (probably dates to around 3000 years ago), and a much more deeply buried occupation associated with toss and turned 'paleo' sod clumps, lots of charcoal and red ochre stained living surfaces, and relatively few artifacts.

We did find a few ground slate hunting lance (bayonet) fragments, 2 flensing knife fragments, a couple of whetstones for sharpening them and some 'saw-and-snap' ground slate lance preforms, but that is about it.  Ordinarily, in a site from this time period with evidence for so much dirt moving activities and so much charcoal one would expect to find hundreds of chipped stone flakes, and much more worked slate and other manufacturing debris.  But we found practically nothing.  Last year at a similarly aged site, but with far less evidence for 'dirt' landscaping and with much more ephemeral living surfaces, we found many more finished tools.

So what was going on at the site we excavated this year?  Based on the stratigraphy and style of tools that we did find it looks to date to around 5-6 thousand years ago, and clearly, based on the tools that we did find, the inhabitants we doing something related to sea mammal hunting and butchering.  But why so few artifacts?  Did we excavate just outside of the main site area (i.e we 'missed' the site), or were the inhabitants primarily only using tools made of organic materials like wood and bone that have since rotted away?  We do know that there was relatively little tool manufacturing going on (hence the lack of stone debris), and that reduced oxygen fires were a part of what was going on (hence the copious charcoal - if fires burn down with plenty of oxygen all that remains is ash and very little charcoal). 

Down near the bottom of the site we found a structure of some sort.  It had wood posts that likely supported a sod and dirt covered roof. It also looks like it had a stacked sod wall.  And yet it did not have a flat floor inside and the inhabitants seemed to have used an existing depression on the hillside - it was not dug out down to glacial till and flattened out like such structures are ordinarily.

The site is exciting because we found a new 'type' of site for the area.  Close by we have found sites associated with fishing, with waiting for and ambushing sea mammals, established villages, and sites where the inhabitants smoke-processed meat.  Each of these sites was associated with its own particular assemblage of tools, manufacturing debris, and features (or lack there of).  What's exciting is that at this year's dig we did not find lots of artifacts and yet there was a lot of activity taking place at the locality. I've never encountered a site like that before.  And I still do not quite understand what exactly was going on at the site, but at least we have now established a pattern that we can try and figure out in the future.

Patrick

It took us a day and a half to get to this point - clearing off the brush and then the overburden

Getting down into the interesting stuff

Libby's flensing knife tip fragment

Hunter's whetstone and ground 'saw and snap' slate bayonet preform

bayonet (hunting lance) fragment

Molly finds a bayonet mid section

Feature at the bottom of the site - the inhabitants made use of an existing depression

Molly maps the feature

Site profile - lots of activity but few artifacts

Flecks of charcoal and red ochre on a living surface

Base of a bayonet (hunting lance)