First Salmonberry Blossom 2023

 

After yesterday morning's 'doom and gloom' post the sun came out and I saw my first salmonberry blossom of the year.  For work I got to drive out the road and assist with an archaeological survey.  So I also got to enjoy the sun while I dug test pits and looked for the limits of archaeological sites.  The sites were located right next to the beach and at lunch I ate a sandwich while sitting on the beach.  That's hard to beat.

After work I took the dogs for a walk in the park and could not resist taking more pictures of the blueberry blossoms.  But it was easier to get good pictures because there was bright sunlight filtering down through the  trees onto the blossoms.

Patrick

Gloomy

 

It's been a little gloomy of late on Kodiak.  Grey skies and low 40's.  Not warm enough to be pleasant and not cold enough to freeze. There is not much green and the snow is disappearing rapidly at the pass.  I have yet to see a blooming salmonberry but I did notice flowering dandelions.  And, of course, the lawn is getting green.  Pretty soon it'll be time to mow the lawn.  It already is time to weed the dandelions!

Patrick

Gallons of Carrots

 

Saturday's haul - this is less than half of the total harvested

Over the weekend I spent almost 3 hours hours harvesting and washing around 7 gallons of carrots from my garden.  Earlier in April I had harvested about a gallon (click here for post) - so that's about 8 gallons total of 'over-wintered-in-the-garden' carrots that I harvested this spring.  That's a lot of carrots.  Actually I think it is more than we can eat, and I have been giving away bags of carrots.  The rest I am storing in my refrigerator, and I think we are set for carrots until I start harvesting this year's crop in August.  Next Fall I plan on harvesting more of the carrots and over-wintering less so as to balance out the seasonal abundance.  Last Fall I only harvested enough to get us through December or so.  

It's kind of amazing how well the carrots did buried in leaves and tarped in my garden over the winter.  They taste sweeter than they did in the fall!  I know the garden froze solid all winter but the insulation kept them from thawing out repeatedly, and so without the freeze/thaw cycle they did not turn to mush.

Also further below in the post is some more pictures of blueberry blossoms.  Every year I try and take a decent blueberry blossom picture.  This year I tried the color select thing again, and I think I like the ones where I chose 'green' because it makes the blueberry blossoms stand out as pure white.  But I also like the one where I chose 'red' because it accentuated the red stalks.

Patrick

Sunday's carrots before getting washed

Color select white

color select red

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Tugidak Archaeology

 

Documenting a newly discovered archaeological site

This is my final Tugidak Island Survey post - and it is basically my last few archaeology 'in action' pictures.  I actually summarized what we found pretty well on my first post (click here for post).  But I still had lots of pictures to show - hence the final post.  Basically we found 31 new sites and checked on another 7 or so already known sites.  

The most striking thing about the survey is that the island has such a dynamic coastline that it is very difficult to visualize and predict where sites would have been located - basically to visualize the good spots to find sites.  So we had to survey everywhere.  And we found sites in what today looks like some very unlikely spots a long ways from the ocean.  But that back in the day were once perfectly located on the coast.

Another thing that surprised me, and that we also found on neighboring Sitkinak Island too, is that the tiniest little salmon streams had sites on their banks a long ways inland.  Elsewhere on the archipelago, on all but the largest rivers, you only find sites either at the mouth or at the outlet to an inland lake.

Patrick

Keller in a dune buggy used by seal hunters to get around the island in the early 1970's

checking on an eroding shell midden

Survey old beach ridge - this was a beach not so long ago!

A 500 year old village that was once also on the ocean

Severely eroding village site - this was the main village on the island in AD 1800

Molly maps a site

A HUGE village site along a tiny creek

Artifact - a line weight of some sort?

Structure depression with a big wall berm - this might have been a qasgiq or ceremonial house

A 1500 year old village site that today is a long ways from the sea

Tugidak Logistics

 

Our main camp in an old blowout in the sand dunes

We flew to Tugidak by Helicopter and had a base camp, but we still had to keeps things 'minimalist'. The helicopter can carry something like 800 pounds, but the space inside is very limited - especially with 3 people in there.  So we had to keep gear and food to a minimum.  Keller the pilot told us that we were actually lighter and had less bulk than a group he had taken into the mountains for an overnight camping trip a few days earlier.  What's amazing is that we actually took 2 camps with us - our base camp and then a whole other small teepee with wood stove and tiny tent for our 'spike camp'.  I also thought it was a good idea to have extra tents in case we had a bad storm that destroyed stuff!

We did some of the archaeological survey from the helicopter, but we did most of it on foot.  Keller and Molly on the days we got dropped off and picked up took the helicopter and checked on various places we were not able to get to on foot.  While they flew I hiked.  

And then it was all hiking on the 4 days in between the drop off and pick up.  We covered a lot of ground.  We also made the most of our foot coverage.  We'd separate and would each hike a parallel beach ridge, creek bank, lake shore, or terrace edge.  We communicated by radio and could often see each other in the distance in our bright orange High Visibility vests.  So we covered twice the area we would have if we had stayed together.

Patrick

Our spike camp - we hiked a long ways to this camp

Molly gathers firewood for the stove at the spike camp

We might have got there using a helicopter but we certainly did a lot of hiking

Going Quick

 

May 2

These are some pictures of the snowpack on Pyramid Mountain from the last 2 weeks since I got back from Tugidak Island.  By May 1rst we were starting to lose snow quickly down by the road, and by the 4rth just before I left on my Kiliuda Bay survey the snow was already getting patch y by the road.  But on high - above about 1000 feet - we had not lost any snow.

Then after I got back from Kiliuda Bay we got a big snowstorm and it snowed all the way down to the switchbacks - even a little at the golf course!  There was a foot and a half of new snow in the jibber bowl.  This was the moment of maximum snowpack on the mountain for the whole year.  If you added up the weight of all the snow on Pyramid it was at its heaviest at that moment.

That storm turned to rain and it has been raining and warm ever since.  It has been raining right up to 2000 feet, and has stayed above freezing even at night.  Consequently, the snow has started to melt at an alarming rate.  Yesterday I could barely ski to the road.

Still maximum snowpack is usually in late April and has averaged around April 20th the last few years.  So I am pretty happy with this year, and I am super happy to be still skiing to the road in mid May.  I hope I am able to ski to the road today!

Patrick

May 2 near road

May 2 looking towards hill behind ski chalet

May 1 at road

Road at the switchbacks May 9th

May 4 near road

May 9th at road

Max snowpack for the year - May 9th

Just 54 hours later on the 11th - losing snow quickly

May 11th