Ugak Scenery

 

Outer Bay

Ugak Bay is much bigger than I had expected.  I have been there a few times and flown over it countless times.  It just never seemed all that big to me.  But once we started to survey and actually boated around from place to place - I realized that it is HUGE.  It's even bigger than adjacent Kiliuda Bay.  

It spears far into the interior of Kodiak and snow-covered mountains tower above the 3 arms that form the head of the bay.  The outer bay is characterized by grassy fields and lower mountains with less snow on them.  The outer bay is the only part of the bay that I have ever visited before.  Narrow Cape forms the north entrance to the bay, and in the past I used to mountain bike and explore the coastline between Pasagshak and Saltery Cove.  A few years ago the museum even did a survey of the Saltery Cove area (click here for post).

Patrick

The community of Pasagshak - back to the car and home

Alpenview Lodge

View from near the lodge

Eagle Harbor salt grass flats

Hatchet rock

Wild Creek Delta

Green Up

 

The landscape got green in the 4 days we were in Ugak Bay.  When we arrived there were no buds on the cottonwood trees and the cow parsnip had barely sprouted.  But the time we left the cow parsnip was knee high or even higher, and all the trees were budding out.  Green vegetation makes it difficult to see sites, and I think we got in this survey in the nick of time.  On the other hand, a little green makes it easier to find sites because they tend to turn green before the surrounding landscape.  I investigated more than a few suspiciously green places and found a few new sites as a result.

Patrick

Ugak Plants and Animals

 

Rose Orchid

This post highlights the plants and animals that we saw while on survey in Ugak Bay.  I think my favorite was the 'wild' horses at Portage Bay.  Funnily enough we did not see very many foxes or deer. We also saw quite a few bears, but I did not get any good pictures of them.  The bears we saw were mostly grazing on the salt grass at the heads of the bays.  The bears have also been digging up lupin plants and eating the roots.  We saw a lot of lupin root digging damage at the various archaeological sites we documented.

Patrick

shooting star

bears tracks

Canadian Geese MUCH bigger than the cackling geese I saw on Tugidak

Roseroot

Pine Grosbeak

New Point and Shoot

 

I just got a new point-and-shoot camera that fits in my pocket.  I like cameras with big sensors and have never been an iPhone user.  I already had a small waterproof point-and-shoot (Olympus TG6) but it has a sensor that is barely bigger than that in an iPhone.  It takes grainy pictures.  I wanted something tiny but with a big sensor.  And so I got the Ricoh GRIIIx.  It has a fixed 41 focal length and a relatively huge APSc sensor.  From what I researched on the internet it is basically the only camera option that fits in your pocket and that also has an APSc or bigger sensor.

My other cameras are all on the compact side but none of them fit in my pocket.  They are always swinging around on a strap from around my neck.  Great cameras but slightly inconvenient, and I will still use them.  But I just wanted something small that still takes good pictures.  Something that I always have in my pocket.  And so far I think the GRIIIx is pretty good.

It takes sharp pictures that edit and touch up well.  It also takes pretty nice macro close up photos.  It is pretty easy to use and does not have an overload of menus and options.  So far so good!

Patrick

Back from a survey of Ugak Bay

 

On Friday I got back from a quick archaeological survey of Ugak Bay.  We like to do these surveys early in the spring before the vegetation gets too high and makes it hard to to see old house depressions and the other surface features of archaeological sites.  This was the last survey of the year, and we got it in just before green up. While we were out there it started to green up - on the last day the cow parsnip (pushki) plants grew about 6 inches in just one day.

This survey was a bit more cushy than usual.  Rather than hiking or kayaking and camping in a teepee with a woodstove, we stayed in a lodge and got around the bay in a skiff.  We stayed at the Alpenview Lodge and had breakfast lunch and dinner prepared for us.  No sweating over the woodstove for me!  No sawing and splitting wood either.

It was a very successful survey - in 3 days we found 29 new sites and visited and documented another 12 previously known sites.  We more than doubled the number of known sites in the area we surveyed.  Many of the sites we visited were large villages, and like at nearby Kiliuda Bay we also found a lot of sites older than 1000 years.  Most of the sites were in pretty good shape and not eroding all that badly.  The older sites were often not even on the current beach but on old beach berms set back a ways from the current coastline. Of course this also meant that when surveying an area with lots of old beach ridges we had to walk and survey ALL the beach ridges.  This made for a lot of walking!

Anyway, in the next few days I'll post more about various aspects of the survey.  So stay tuned. 

 Patrick

view of the alpine from near the lodge

Molly documents a site

Salt flats at the head of the Bay - if you look closely you can see a grazing bear

Dave and Molly on the boat

New buds on the cottonwood trees

Cottonwood trees on the first day

house depressions at an archaeological site