King Crab for Dinner

 

Yesterday Stuey and I had King Crab for dinner. I bought the crabs right at the dock from the people who had caught them in Bristol Bay and brought them to Kodiak to sell. Kinda a cool to be able to buy live King Crabs right at the dock.  Where else can you do this in the United States?

Getting the crabs is only part of the process of getting them to the table.  I took them to my friend Mike's place where we cleaned the crabs and boiled them in a HUGE pot over a 'crab-cooker' propane burner.  We both had crab for dinner.  We also froze an extra crab in its shell.  This morning I 'rimed' the extra frozen crab with salt water.  The rime creates a coating on the crab shell and keeps it from getting freezer burn.

King crab is expensive - even right at the dock - but it is amazing how much meat is them.  And they are so easy to pick!  I have enough crab leftovers for a few more meals in the next few days.

Patrick

Big bowl of leftover crab meat

SNOW

 

On Monday it rained in town, but we got a little bit of snow on the mountain tops.  The next day it was super windy - like gusting 70 mph - but I still took the dogs up Pyramid to check out the snow. The wind was nuclear at the pass, but as I climbed the mountain it actually got a little less windy.  Up on high there was not quite enough snow enough snow to go skiing . .. yet.  But there was enough to make the dogs and I very happy.

The new snow and sunshine made everything super bright. I almost wished I had had sunglasses.  The bright snow contrasted with the snowless landscape down below.  In some of the pictures it looks dark down there by the road.

Patrick

October Dog Walks

 

These pictures are mostly from last weekend.  Since then it has actually snowed a bit on the mountain (post to come). It is now late Fall.  The leaves have blown off of the trees and all the bright colors have faded to brown.  No more reds and yellows. The days are cool and you need to wear a jacket hiking.  But my favorite part is the low raking light.  

These days the sun is always near the horizon.  It makes for great photography.  Sort of like having a sunset that goes on for hours and hours.

A lot of these doggies pictures are quite similar to each other, but while they might be in the same pose, and even taken seconds apart from each other - they show quite different expressions.  I found it hard to edit and decide which one was best.

Patrick

Post Hunting Season

 

Here are some landscape pictures from post-Elk-Hunt hikes with the dogs.  Hunting season is over, but it isn't quite ski season yet either.  But hopefully this year we will not have to wait too long.  On Saturday there was termination dust on Pyramid.  During the rain storm on Friday I had even gotten soaked hiking up in the rain. I had hoped to find it snowing.  But no just the very tippy tops of the peaks got dusted with snow.

Last night I noticed it was raining and 37 degrees here at the house.  Maybe today will be the day the snow moves a little lower on the mountain.  Pretty soon we will be ice skating and skiing - my favorite time of the year!

Patrick

Elk Harvest

 

This year on the elk hunt we harvested 2 bull elk.  One of the bulls had a HUGE body.  Unlike the past couple of years, this year we did not harvest both elk at once.  Rather we hiked into one area, found the elk herd, harvested an animal, and packed just the one out.  And then, after spending a night on the boat, we went ashore and did this again.  I like doing it this way much better.

In the past when we harvested 2 animals at once it made for a chaotic afternoon as we raced to butcher both elk and get the meat to camp.  And then we generally had to make 2 back-and-forth trips to shore to get all the meat to the boat.  This entailed leaving meat in the field behind an electric fence and put us at risk of bear problems.  

Harvesting 2 elk from 2 different herds means that we got to see much more country, and also not have to leave any meat in the field for extended time periods.  Ironically,  harvesting elk from 2 different herds also took the same amount of time as 2 elk all at once from the same herd because there was no back and forth to get the final load of meat to shore.  

So I much prefer the extra variety and simplicity of harvesting 2 different elk from 2 different herds.  That said, sometimes it is hard to find the elk - let alone two different herds.  

Patrick