Pretty Pictures from the trip

 

Trident Basin at sunrise

These are some of the pretty pictures from my recent trip to the south end of the island. Generally I post all my pictures from a trip by theme - camping, hunting, landscapes etc - but these are the ones that really did not fit with the themes I chose to post about (and that will be posted over the coming week).

Two of the pictures show bear 'century trails'. These are trails where bears step in the same spot repeatedly and create holes in the tundra that mimic their stride. There is some debate about how long it takes to create such a trail and why exactly bears create them. On this trip we found a lot of them on the ridge tops. We even found one (not shown) where you could see fresh bear paw prints on the bottom of the 'step' depressions. I found this interesting because the holes were clearly getting created and dug out by recent bear activity. I've always thought that the trails were ancient and would take hundreds of years of repeated use to create, but seeing the fresh bear activity hints that they might not take that long to create after all.

Patrick

elderberries - bears love these

Kodiak 'Dog Bay' boat harbor

Bear 'Century Trail'

rotting humpy

spider web catching fog

another bear trail

Home sweet home in the teepee

 

We did not have very good weather on our trip to the south end. Most of the days it rained and the hillsides draped in fog, and one day we had a full on storm with hard rain and 40 mph winds. This made for a lot of teepee time by the woodstove. Reading books and killing time while staying warm next to the woodstove. We'd feed the stove wet willow.

On the day of the storm we were going to float down the river. The high winds had already forced us to collapse the woodstove. The wind almost bent the stove pipe and, at one point, did pull the pipe out of the woodstove while it was going. We had camped all packed up except for the teepee. But it was raining so hard and the wind, while it had abated a bit, was still pretty high. We decided that it was too risky to leave camp and float - we'd get too wet and might not be able to set up a dry camp on the other end.

So we stayed and re set up the woodstove. It rained and the wind blew for the rest of the day. We were VERY happy that we decided to stay in the dry camp.

Patrick

Returning to the teepee and woodstove in the rain - something to look forward too

This was when we were all ready to leave and just about to leave camp - then we decided to stay

Back from the Refugium

 

I just got back from a trip to Kodiak's South End. The part of the island known as the Refugium because it was not covered in ice during the last episode of glaciation. It acted as a 'refuge' for the hardy plants and animals that later repopulated the rest of the archipelago after the glaciers retreated.  This part of the archipelago is characterized by more rounded mountains and flat marshy plains that were once lakes. It might not have been covered in ice but the nearby glaciers flooded it in water. Many of the river channels and canyons were carved by the enormous quantities of water pouring off of the glaciers, and the glaciers flowing down past the island also dammed up the rivers and created vast lakes. It is a beautiful place and one my favorite places in the whole archipelago to visit.

I went with my friends Jonathan and Ray. We floated down a river and camped along the way. We did a little hunting and a lot of hiking. We did not bring back as much deer meat as we wanted (more on this later), and the weather was not all that great. But the rafting, adventure and scenery was totally worth it. More to come on this in later posts.

Patrick

Spawn and Die

 

On my way to take the doggies on a walk, I pulled over by the Buskin River bridge to check out the spawning salmon. There are plenty of them and they certainly are spawning. Some of them look very decrepit and I saw a few that looked almost dead floating about (look on right hand side of video down below for a floater). There is a commonly used semi-satirical expression in Alaska - 'spawn and die' or sometimes 'spawn till you die' (as seen on Ray Troll teeshirts). Looking down on the salmon spawning and dying brings total clarity to meaning of 'spawn and die'.

Anyway, the doggies and I hiked on up to our favorite lake and on the way I noticed that the salmon aren't the only ones 'spawning and dying'. The fireweed blossoms are now dead and turning into fluffy seeds that fly away. The tall grass is also turning brown and going to seed. I guess fall is the season of 'spawn and die'.

Patrick