Family Hikes

According to the kids today is the last day of summer because tomorrow they go back to school.  Nora is very excited to go back to school, but she did say that her one regret would be no more early afternoon hikes.  This made me so happy!

Early last week I hiked down a mountain without ski poles and tweaked my knee - so for the past week our hikes have been of the 'low angle' variety.  Near Island, Spruce Cape, and Russian Ridge.  Now with school we will just have to hike more on weekends!  And then ski season is not all that far away. ... .. Patrick

Alaska Range

In Alaska during summer the high alpine is God's Country.  One night while hanging out in the teepee  we joked about living like gods in the alpine while the mortals got along on crumbs down below.  And up high in the mountains it is so beautiful and life is so simple that once back to the lowlands and ordinary life you have to ask yourself, 'why did I come back?'

But of course you have to come back.  And the reality is that in the alpine humans will always be mere 'mortals'.  Occasional visitors.  Still it remains God's Country.  It's just that the real gods are the marmots, ground squirrels, sheep and pikas who manage to live up there year round.  Patrick

Our teepee is in this picture - see if you can find it!

The 'honeycomb' river - 'mortals be here'

Sheep Hunt

Sheep meat is the main reason I went on a camping trip in the Alaska Range.  I was promised a share of the meat if I would help out with packing the meat and gear.  I jumped at the chance - sheep meat is excellent, and I barely need an excuse to go on a camping trip with friends.  But that said, I did care about bringing something back home.  I wanted some meat.

So the trip got serious when on the 3rd day we spotted 2 sheep.  I whipped out the spotting scope and even at a mile away I could tell that one of the sheep was probably a 'full curl' legal sheep.  You are only allowed to shoot male sheep whose horns have grown big enough to complete a full curl.  This means that they are mature and usually older than 8 years.  Full curl sheep are not common so to spot one so quickly was very good luck.  But we had to be sure!

We set up camp where we could glass the hillside where we had first seen the sheep, and that evening they appeared again in the exact same spot!  We glassed them with the spotting scope and the big guy was clearly a full curl ram.  But we had to wait - hunting season did not begin until the next day.  So we sat back and watched.  It was very cool to watch the sheep through the spotting scope.  They grazed and walked about and interacted a bit with each other.  They could have cared less about us in our teepee far, far below them in the valley.

Brooks was up at dawn boiling water for coffee and at first no sheep.  And then in the gloaming there they were in the exact same spot yet again.  No time for a hot breakfast on the stove or even more coffee.  Brooks and Lindsey rushed off up the mountain to harvest the sheep.  We had a bad moment when Lindsey mistook 2 skylined caribou for human hunters (competition).  We really started to rush then - but no, there were no other hunters just caribou!

I watched them and the sheep through the spotting scope and just about froze.  It was super cold and frosty.  The sun finally came out while they were waiting for the sheep to stand up and give them a shot.  I watched and watched, and finally I saw the big guy walking about.  I watched Lindsey line up the rifle and saw the smoke come out the muzzle.  Then a little while later 'boom'.  Brooks turned to me and gave the thumbs up signal.  Lindsey had got her sheep.  Patrick

Examining the sheep from camp the evening before opening day - is one of them full curl?

Checking out the sheep from the teepee

View of the sheep through the spotting scope from the teepee

Lindsey's full curl sheep - 2 inches PAST full curl

Time by the wood stove

It rained all day before we set up camp 2 - so we had to dry wood on the wood stove (it helps to peel the bark)

For the first 2 days of the sheep hunt it rained.  It even snowed above 6000 feet - my raincoat caught the first snow/slush of the season.  And then on the clear nights it dropped below freezing.  I even had to wear my wool cap at night!  Needless to say, but the wood stove proved its worth on this hunt.

Knowledgable sheep hunters had told us that there is no wood in the Alaska Range, but I had heard that same mantra before when I hunted in the Brooks Range.  I've found that if people are not looking for wood they do not see wood.  I've even heard that Kodiak's South End lacks wood because there are 'no trees' - this is totally NOT true (there are plenty of cottonwoods, birch, willow and alder trees - just no spruce).  So going in we were a little worried about the possibility of not finding wood up in the alpine - but not too worried.

And we need not have worried at all.  We found excellent wood for the stove up to 4500 feet in elevation and even a little higher in places.  Even though we were far above the 'tree line' we found 5 foot high willows next to the creeks and in protected bowls and ravines.  These are the places where we also preferred to camp - so no problem!

And the wood stove was a Godsend.  At the end of the day we could dry off and warm up, and we also did most of our cooking on top of it.  So nice to eat real food cooked slowly on top of the stove instead of the freeze dried yuck you get pouring boiling water into a bag of food.  And we also generally had a pot of boiling water on top of the stove - so lots more tea and cocoa than we normally would have drunk (without the stove we would have had to conserve fuel).  The wood stove was like having a campfire in the teepee.

The wood stove and pipe that I use are made by Titanium Goat and weighs 2 pounds.  The teepee we used is also made by the same company and weighs 4 pounds.  So a wood stove and tent weighed 6 pounds total!  That is a small price in weight to pay for a teepee roomy enough for all three of us and a warm wood stove.  Patrick

Cooking up a pasta meal

Note SPAM can - yes I bring SPAM on my hunts!

Some Natural History

Richardson's Brookfoam

In the Alaska Range the plants and animals are totally different than what I am used to on Kodiak.  Just on the walk in from the road we walked through tall pencil thin spruce trees, and the alders had the weirdest leaves.  Definitely not Kodiak alders or spruce!  And everywhere HUGE Labrador Tea plants.  The Labrador Tea plants were bush sized - they looked more like bog laurel than the tiny swamp plant I am used to seeing on Kodiak (weirdly enough in the alpine the plants shrunk back to their normal size).  Even the rose plants were different with elongated and pink rose hips instead of the usual round and red ones that I am used to on Kodiak.

And then we got to the alpine - weird gentians, beautiful Brookfoam (a plant I had never seen before and which seems to totally dominate the wet areas by streams in the Alaska Range), and all the rodents!  Ground squirrels, pikas, voles, and marmots.  Whenever we entered a boulder field we would be greated by the load whistle of a marmot.  When I finally spotted one it was so big I thought it was a fox.  It looked like the groundhogs of my youth in the fields of Virginia.  And all the raptors - I saw rough legged hawks, merlins, golden eagles, and gyrfalcons.  They were probably all there to prey on the rodents and ptarmigan.  And even the ptarmigan were different with white tails - white tailed ptarmigan a new species for me!

Then of course there were the sheep and caribou - you don't see those on Kodiak!  You do see reindeer on Kodiak but they are white and look totally different from the dark brown caribou of the Alaska Range.  I really wanted to see a black bear - I still have never seen a black bear except in a zoo.

Finally, the photo just below portrays a melting snow patch.  Due to global warming these snow patches are disappearing for the first time in thousands of years. You can tell that the snow has never melted out in summer because the newly exposed rocks are white and not covered by lichens - the lichens have never had a chance to grow on the rocks! At archaeology conferences I have listened to talks about these snow patches.  In the past people would hunt sleeping caribou trying to cool down and avoid bugs on the snow and would often lose arrows and other artifacts.  The cold snow preserves the organic artifacts perfectly.

I was excited to see if I could find anything melting out of the snow patches I encountered.  But nothing - I did find the leaves, grasses and other organics that had been deposited in the snow over the last couple thousand years.  But no artifacts.  Nor did I find much caribou poo - I gather the productive snow patches are like poorly cleaned stables.  Just full of caribou poo.  So I guess I did not find or check on the best snow patches.  Patrick

A melting snow patch - the organics may have been preserved in the snow here for thousands of years

Weirdly colored Gentian

A herd of Caribou

Can you see the ptarmigan?

Pika

Our Camps - Teepees on the landscape!

Camp one by the river on the sand - plenty of firewood

Just like we took a team picture at the start of every day, I took a picture of every camp.  I always enjoy taking pictures of camp.  Back at home I examine the camp views and see how the light changed while we were there.  I love seeing our little teepee in the midst of a vast landscape with a wisp of woodsmoke coming out the top.

While on the go the teepee is the focus of our world.  It represents shelter and warmth.  A protective cocoon.  And in a vast place like the Alaska Range it is the only man made thing in sight.  It brings perspective to the landscape.  It says, 'we were there' while at the same saying - 'look how vast a place it was - our teepee is so small and the landscape so big'.  Patrick

Camp 2 in the Alpine at around 3500 feet elevation

Camp 3 in the alpine on the other side of the pass - still plenty of wood at almost 4000 feet elevation

Reading in the late afternoon

Searching and Scouting

We could have kept things simple and just gone backpacking in the Alaska Range.  It's beautiful and the hiking is easy.  Plenty of wood for the wood stove.  As hunters we were loaded down with extra gear.  That rifle alone adds an extra 9 pounds!  Why not just go light and enjoy hiking in the sunshine?  BUT, I'd argue that because we were hunting we were far, far more keyed in on what was going on around us.

Hunting makes it real and since I am looking for animals to hunt I am much more in tune with what is going on around me.  I have my binoculars around my neck and I am constantly looking about and painstakingly glassing the slopes all around.  If I was just out for a hike I'd be soaking it all in, but not really examining anything too closely.  If we were just out for a hike I doubt we would have even seen the sheep.

When hunting I think about which slopes sheep might like.  Hunt related thoughts crowd my head.  What are the animals eating?  Where are the cliffs they might want for cover?  What plant is that - what animal eats it?  Are those marmot whistles alerting sheep that we are here?  I'd argue that hunting is active while hiking is passive - seeking out vs soaking in.

Hunting is a totally different experience from just hiking and well worth the extra weight!
Patrick