sitka Archives -

03 Nov

Let the record state

…that on November 2 and November 3, it was clear and sunny in Sitka. This is after it rained so hard one night earlier this week that the noise of it woke me up at 3 am. And on Tuesday it pretty much rained an inch before lunch. So I am loving this sunbreak, and hoping it lasts.

I took a little time off work this morning and walked down to the harbor near the Forest Service office (just one of five harbors in this island town) and did not slip on the frost covered dock.

This crow was very impressed by my capable surefootedness.

Just kidding. This crow stood still long enough to see that I wasn’t going to toss it anything edible, and then left the scene.

Fishing boats on the dock are much more patient subjects, though.

Mmmm… sun….

Those are pretty much all trollers, with their, umm, troll poles up. Here’s one leaving the harbor, will poles extended.

There are baited lines hanging off those extended poles, which drag behind the boat as it slowly trolls through the water. A troll boat is crewed by one or two people, who immediately bleed and ice the salmon they catch, mostly coho and Chinook (also known as silvers and kings). This is your highest quality fish because it gets personal attention.

I could tell you how much of the commercial catch for the different salmon species is allocated to the troll fleet, because I’m spending my professional time on the ever growing Tongass Salmon Factsheetbook, but I won’t. (Although I will send you a copy of the facts if you want.) Then there’s the Fisheries and Watersheds report to do. And I’m devoting my free time in November to NaNoWriMo. Nothing too literary, really, more of a sci fi pulp sort of novel, but the exciting thing is the hope of finishing a writing project!

The rough storyline is that a photographer is hired by an environmental group to publicize some cute little animals whose habitat is threatened by Big Bad Business of some sort, however it turns out that the environmentalists are actually more interested in the plant that the animals eat because it can be made into an expensive drug, the sale of which is funding their organization and its work. By the end the photographer will probably hook up with a drug enforcement agent, or a conflicted environmentalist…

Anyway, this is all to say that there may not be too much in the way of new Alaska adventures up on the blog for a bit. However, I have a plentiful stash of half-written things from years past on my hard drive, some of which amuse me and I will share with you. Check back on Monday for the first one!

P.S. I went to the pointy top of that mountain before it snowed.

31 Oct

Stormy Weather

I went across the street this weekend to see how the beach was doing with the fall storms. The windy weather has certainly whipped up the waves, and the waves have seriously rearranged the rocks. I will have to go back with voice recorder to capture one of the most striking things about the beach in the storm: as a wave pulls back there is a gurgling, grinding noise of the cobbles of the beach settle back after being pushed up by the water. It doesn’t come out in pictures if you’re not familiar with the beach, but big piles of rocks, up to softball size, have been pushed up toward the high tide line.

I was hoping to find lots of fabulous new treasures on the beach, and I did find one cool thing: a license plate from 1961!

I took a bunch of pictures of the waves, but it’s hard to capture them as photos when what makes them cool is the whole sensory experience – the sound of crashing water (and the rocks!), the feel of the ocean spray and the wind, watching the water rolling in and in and in…

Want to know how waves work? All the particles of the water are moving forward together, pushed by the wind, then as it reaches the beach the lowest layers catch against the bottom. Meanwhile the top layers are still going full bore ahead, and they run out into space without the base of the wave to hold them up. Foom, the wave breaks!

It’s like if you are running and trip–your feet suddenly stop, but the rest of you is still moving. A wave is the ocean falling on its face, over and over.

So here’s a bit of Sitka Sound tripping onto the beach. If you look close, you can see some black spots in the water off the point.

This picture is pretty good because there was a sunbreak.

Here, we can look closer together. I took a zoomed picture. Hint: not seabirds!

Sitting in the swells.

Both Saturday and Sunday there were hardy folks out in wetsuits, appreciating the waves in an up close and personal way. Now you can tell everyone that yes, people do go surfing in Alaska.

Surf’s up!

25 Oct

Halloween Death Heads

I’ve been in Seattle for three weeks – I got married and then left my husband in the Lower 48 for safekeeping. Now I’m back to Sitka for my last month as Tongass Salmon Forest Resident and Southeast Alaska is about the same as I left it – gray and damp, and ten degrees cooler than Western Washington.

It’s almost Halloween, and I saved these photos out of my earlier posts on spawning salmon for their, umm, seasonal appeal.

We’re a little short on pumpkin patches in Southeast Alaska, but the tail end of the salmon season provides plenty of ghoulish remains to get you in the Halloween mood.

Salmon Skellington

Empty eye sockets – the sea gulls make sure of that.

Yep, the skin is just rotting of the flesh here.


Those are some gnarly teeth!

I’m also looking forward to the Stardust Ball, which is how Sitka (at least a certain subset of the adults) celebrates Halloween. It includes a lip-synch and costume contest, and if this video from last year is anything to go on, will be a hoot.

Here’s hoping my planned costume (Carmen Sandiego) will be up to Stardust standards!

29 Sep

Shooting salmon

As you can see, I went back and was more successful in my photographic pursuit of salmon.

It was sunny over the weekend, so I spent quite a bit of time at the beach and in the creek, trying to get as up close and personal with the salmon as possible, without actually touching them.

The live ones would flee from my shadow, desperately thrashing upstream if they sensed my approach. The dead ones were much easier to work with, but that’s a post for another day. Still, after 700 and some photos, I got a handful that I really like.

It’s easiest, of course, to successfully see the fish and focus on it if you can catch it partly out of the water. However, I’m pretty happy with some of the pictures I got with the fish entirely underwater.

Then there are some of the ones with only a selected bit of the fish out of the water, like a tail or a back.

Definitely worth standing in a creek for an hour or two!

22 Sep

Salmon at Sunset

Earlier this week I suddenly realized there was some beautiful color in the clouds, so I grabbed my camera and went across the street to the beach. (Yeah, I live across the street from the beach.)

The colors were reflected on the water and it was very pretty.

The clouds were pretty fearsome in the gathering dusk.

While my eyes were appreciating the sunset, my other senses were letting me know what else was going on on the beach. There was the noise from the seagulls, and the smell from what they were feeding on – pink salmon making their way up Cascade Creek, which reaches the ocean right there.

Pink at Sunset

Not all of the fish make it. In fact, the high tideline and the area around the stream is littered with dead fish. Sure, it’s no dead whale, but it is a bit a stink.

In the fading light, I walked over to the stream mouth and waded in to try and capture – visually – some of the salmon.

See their tails sticking up?

I tried to take some close up shots, but it was pretty dark and I couldn’t really get anything. I gotta get back next time it is halfway sunny, if that ever happens again….

That dark smudge is a salmon, I swear.

15 Aug

Weekend Adventures

We had a beautiful, cloudless Saturday, so I went up Gavan Hill. I hadn’t been in a few weeks, so it stretched out my calves pretty well. I also went directly after lunch, which made me a bit slower than I had hoped – 57:45 to get up to the lookout. I forgot to take a picture of the view, but I did take a couple of the stairs. That’s the main thing you see on the trail, anyway!

Yep, it’s some stairs.

On Sunday the sun was gone and the wind was warning of a weather change. I had made some tentative plans to visit one of the islands near town to pick berries, but I decided I’d rather stick near home and avoid unnecessary boat trips. As it turns out, there were some berry bushes behind the bunkhouse. I found a few blueberries, but lots of red huckleberries. I’m glad I kept exploring, because eventually I found a few bushes that were loaded down with berries. I spent over an hour climbing around in the woods (and singing to myself in case of bears) and picked about a quart of berries. Then I found the mother lode, picked a little longer, and went in. A few hours later I came back and spent another hour picking just off one bush!

Part of the mother lode!