More Fall scenics

 

A few more pretty pictures from my recent hikes.  This is my favorite time of the year for hiking.  The brush is down, it tends to be cool, and the colors are spectacular.  I've been taking the dogs on a different hike every afternoon.  Nora has been joining me on a bunch of them too.  We figure that hiking up the mountains will get us ready for skinning up the mountains when it gets to be ski season.  We're hoping that pretty soon it'll be ski season.  Fingers crossed!

Patrick

Camp Life - The Swamp

On the south end it is difficult to find good places to camp.  It is generally pretty swampy and the places that are dry tend to be hummocky (frost polygons from freeze thaw cycles).  And the lack of trees makes it tough to find a spot sheltered from the wind.  Hence you almost have to pick your poison - flat but swampy and sheltered, or flat and dry but not sheltered.  There were also a few dry, flat and sheltered places but they tended to be situated in logistically poor places to hunt.  

So we chose to camp in a swamp.  

It was fairly dry when we arrived, but after a rain storm and high wind our little camp on an oxbow flooded.  We noticed that the wind would blow up the creek and sort of back it up - it would blow the water back upstream!  We were never totally under water, but after a few days of trampling it got pretty mucky.  

But we got used to it and even reveled in the mud like pigs. Hey, what's a little mud when you got a woodstove to dry off with and a dry mountaineering tent with a floor for sleeping?  

Life was good if a little adventurous.

Patrick
 

When it was windy we collapsed the teepee

Our camp in the swamp

Muddy feet - a frequent condition

The 3 of us spent whole days tent bound in our tiny mountaineering tent

It got pretty mucky at our camp!

Mike had a device that measured the inside and outside temperature - looks like the stove is working

Our meat shelter - we had to build a 'table' to keep the meat off of the wet ground

MUD camp

The Hunt

 The purpose of a hunting trip is to fill the freezer with meat for the winter, and in this regard our south end hunting trip was very successful.  We harvested 5 deer and ended up with around 220 pounds of packaged meat. Better yet the meat is excellent!  I already made a meal from one of the backstraps and the, usually lean cut of meat, was marbled with fat - just like beef.  

We also harvested 2 'steer' deer.   These are male deer that are born sterile.  I gather that it is not a genetic condition, but that it is related to their mother's diet during gestation.  In any case, without all the male hormones coursing through their veins they are much fatter than normal bucks with milder tasting meat.  Their antlers also stay in velvet and tend to have wild configurations.

I am pretty certain that we saw one of the individual steer deer that we harvested this year during last year's hunt.  Last year we harvest a buck who was bedded next to a steer deer that I photographed and videoed as he ran off.  This year we harvested a steer deer in the exact same bed the steer deer was in last year and he resembles the deer from last year.  Pretty amazing coincidence!

Patrick

Landscape without trees

 

The south end lacks trees and this makes for a spectacular landscape.  It seems more like the Aleutians than Kodiak.  It is a stark place. There are just the rolling hills, driftwood, and the surrounding sea.  This time of year the light is low and raking and if there are any clouds it lights up one hillside while leaving another dark.  It is like there is a spot light on high.

The downside of no trees is that there is very little shelter from the wind.  Practically the whole time we were down there it blew and often blew very hard.

Patrick

Recovery hikes

 

All the hiking with often very heavy loads on my recent South End hunting trip has exhausted my legs. So since I got back I have been going on very slow and light hikes with the dogs.  It's amazing how much easier it is to hike up a mountain with no weight on your back.

Kodiak is at peak fall color right now and everything is very yellow and red.  Down low the cottonwood and willow trees have turned yellow and the fireweed and wild geranium leaves are all bright red. The fall light is low and raking and makes for great visuals.

It's my favorite time of the year to just go for a hike. And the dogs seem to like it too!

Patrick

Abercrombie hike - it's still green under the trees

A South End Experience

 

Friday night I got back with my friends Ray and Mike from a hunting trip to the south end of Kodiak. We then spent the next 2 days processing our deer.  It was a successful trip and we ended up with around 220 pounds of packaged meat. And I also found a glass ball net float.

It's beautiful down there and with no trees and brush the hiking is amazing.  But no trees and brush also means no shelter from the wind and boy did it blow!  On the first night our cook tent blow down and we were very happy we also brought a full on four season mountaineering tent.  We spent a lot of time hunkered down in the four season tent.

In the next week or so I'll post more on the trip, but for now I'll let the pictures do the talking.

Patrick

Camp with only the mountaineering tent standing