Old Womens Mountain

Last week one day after work I took the doggies, Stuey and his friend Elias for a hike up Old Women Mountain.  This week it will be Community Archaeology all day every day.  No more hikes after work.  But I will not be inside a building for work either.  I'll be outside next to a beach excavating a 3-7 thousand year-old site.  More on the dig tonight after our first day of excavation.

On Old Women Stuey and his friend lagged behind or ran way out ahead.  I pretty much walked alone with the dogs.  They tried setting up a few ambushes and I did the same.  The point of the game was to find the ambushers before they could set their trap.  The hardest part was fooling the dogs.  They pretty much found (or stayed with) anyone hiding in the bushes.  Patrick

Spruce Cape with my co-workers - I took this pan with my iPad!

75 year old bomber emerges from the snow

Today I climbed up Sharatin in the fog and then skied down.  I actually got in a pretty good ski (1000 vertical and 1 mile horizontal), but I was chagrined to see the fog totally clear off just as I finished my ski and headed for home.

On the way back I decided to go look some more at the old plane wreck I examined last week.  I've known about the plane wreck for years but had no idea what it represents.  Last week I had even asked other people about it.  One friend with a foot in the aviation industry had told me that it was a Beaver floatplane and that everyone had lived.  Looking at the wreck with binoculars it just seemed too big for a single engine Beaver.  So I went closer to investigate.

First off I noticed a huge landing gear strut and tire rim.  Clearly NOT a beaver floatplane.  And then I noticed that there are actually 2 very large engines.  I also saw evidence for an extremely hot fire.  This looked like a pretty serious airplane crash and I had a hard time seeing how anyone could survive such a crash on such a precipitous slope.

The wings and fuselage are emerging out of the snow, and the whole scene is quite dramatic.  It reminded me of that plane crash scene from 'Tintin in Tibet' or the one in the Andes with the rugby team.  Clearly something bad had happened here.

On the way home I met other hikers and asked if they knew about the crash - and one man did!  He said the plaque at the bottom of the Red Cloud trail is in honor of the men who crashed.  So once at the car and driving home I stopped and looked at the plaque (see photo below).  Then at home I googled it and hit on Crusty old Joe's WWII website (linked here). I finally had the story.

It was a B18a bomber that crashed soon after takeoff on an aerial photography mission to Umnak Island.  This occurred on the morning of April 29th, 1942 a month before the Japanese bombed Dutch Harbor, and really brought the war to Alaska.  What's amazing is that there was a survivor.  He recounted that the plane had cleared the ridge but was caught in a downdraft and crashed.

It really hit home after I read what happened - Sharatin was the scene of a very tragic plane crash.  My great uncle flew bombers (B24's) in Italy during WWII and these were some of his colleagues.  Patrick

This must have been a pretty hot fire

The view from the bottom of my ski run - I skied 1000 feet vertical and 1 mile horizontal

The wreck is scattered down a steep slope for a couple 100 meters

After being totally socked in when I was skiing off of the summit - it totally cleared off when I was on my way home

Rest in Peace - and thank you for your service

Camplife

Teepee time and fireworks - oh my! With no adverse weather conditions for the entire trip we really did not need the tents to protect us from the elements.  But, funnily enough, it was so hot at times that we often retreated to the cook tent teepee to read in the cool shade that it provided.  When we opened both doors we often even got a cross-ventilation breeze.

In the evenings after dinner it has become a tradition to cook up a s'more over the wood stove for dessert.  For this purpose I think the kids prefer the wood stove over a campfire because it is a more controlled environment.  It is is easier to make perfect s'mores.

Another evening event that was a HUGE hit with Stuey was fireworks.  Stuey has officially discovered whistling bottle rockets.  No more of the big stuff for him - from now on he just wants me to buy whistling bottle rockets.  On the evening of the third while Mike P and I lit off the big stuff, Stuey added to the chaos by sending up a constant stream of often poorly aimed bottle rockets.
Patrick

S'mores on the woodstove

Pure glee

Underwater bottle rocket explosion

A cool bug-free zone for reading!

Adventures away from camp

Stuey and Nora both waded out to this rock from the beach (offshore rock in photo below)

Something new for this trip to Afognak is that rather than bringing inflatable kayaks along we brought just one big, inflatable canoe.  It is the canoe I usually take on float hunting trips on big rivers.

On our last couple of trips Brewster has not been comfortable with us leaving him on shore while we kayaked out on the ocean.  Nor did he like riding in the small and tippy kayaks (and we did try!).  So for this trip we brought a boat that all of us - including Brewster - could ride in.  And it worked out pretty well.  Brewster and the kids loved it.  One day we even paddled further up the bay than we ever have in the kayaks.

The Alutiiq used a similar boat called an angyaq - an open, skin-covered boat with benches that could carry 20 or 30 people.  The Alutiiq also used single-bladed paddles to propel both their kayaks and angyaqs.  So for this past trip my canoe and canoe paddle were actually pretty traditional for the area.  I bet it is the first time someone used an angyaq in front of Afognak Village in maybe a 100 years!
Patrick

The beach at Old Afognak Village 

Brewster and the spring beauties under the trees at Graveyard Point

The big blue canoe

Taking a shower in the sunshine

Hydrating

On the beach

It was pretty hot last week on Afognak, and often too hot to sit out in the sun on the beach.  But we did spend a lot of time on the beach - particularly in the mornings and evenings.  We read books, cooked quesadillas on campfires, napped.  The favorite activity was our play city.

The kids have been playing city for years.  It is the game where we make houses of rocks and shells, roads, and use feathers for money.  I have always wondered when they would outgrow the game but this year it seemed more popular than ever.

This year there were a lot of feathers on the beach, and we all had lots of money.  Consequently, there was a dramatic case of inflation.  At first no one would accept feathers for anything and we all worked on our own houses.  But then we made feather gathering rules to firm up their value and started offering lots of feathers for services.  Basically I made Stuey houses and Nora did all the shell landscaping.  A good, split level house with solar panels cost 30 feathers to build with an additional 25 feathers for landscaping.  That's outrageous prices compared to years past.  Patrick

Tidepooling

On our last trip to Afognak the low tides coincided with the middle of the day.  Consequently we spent a lot of time in the tide pools in front of the beach.  Mostly wading.  Stuey and I also got into building model sail boats from washed up net floats with pieces of slate for keels.  We would made the sails from water bottle plastic.  Then we had boat races across the big tide pool. Stuey absolutely loved this game.

I also used my underwater camera to take pictures in the tide pool.  I found if I took pictures of jellyfish from down below with the sky as the backdrop it looked like they were taken deep at sea and not in a knee deep tide pool.  Of course I could not see what I was doing and I had problems with focus.  I took literally a 100 jellyfish photos before I got any good ones.
Patrick