Tag Archives: sitka

05 Aug

Mushrooms and Moon Dolphins

Mushrooms growing on the shores of Redoubt Lake

While we were visiting the weir crew at Redoubt Lake, they took us up to the north end of the lake where there is a recreational use cabin. We flipped through the log book in the cabin, and found some interesting entries. This one was so fabulous, that I copied it down, and can share it with you.

3/21/11

Wow, what a cosmic experience. I mean – waking up to a supermoon setting over a lake full of multi-colored dolphins. This’ll blow your mind bro. The dolphins were flying. For real. We all saw it. I think they were moon dolphins. Last night we were attacked by a tussock, but luckily our fearless border collie scared it away with her fierce barking. About 23 times. I think Redoubt Lake might be, like, an energy vortex or something.

Had an excellent dinner of omelets we made from eggs stolen out of a bald eagle nest, and passed the evening by throwing molotov cocktails at imaginary dolphins.

Hope you all enjoy this place as much as we did.

Artistic rendering of moon dolphins

Whether the writer had been partaking of the local fungi or was just being silly, I don’t know, but it sure provided us with a lot of entertainment. If you’re ever calling me on a radio, my handle is “moon dolphin.”

27 Jul

Dead Whale Tales

On our way to Redoubt Lake, we made a little detour to check out this dead whale. It was a gray whale, which died and washed up in March or so. It originally washed up closer to the town of Sitka, but was towed to this location, further from people’s houses.

As you can tell, it has been dead for some time and is an advanced state of decomposition. Large portions of it had melted into piles of goo. As you might imagine, it smelled terrible!


But if you think that’s gross, imagine this image. The fellow we were with said when they cut it open for the necropsy, they unleashed a veritable river of blood. And one of my Forest Service supervisors told me he was once involved in towing a whale corpse from one location to another. When they approached that one in the boat, first, he said you started gagging a quarter of a mile away, and, second, they could see bubbles in the water, from gases escaping out of the blowhole. Yum!

Since it’s a giant smelly pile of meat, maybe you guessed that a whale carcass is a the sort of thing that attracts bears. In fact, the attraction is so well know that earlier in the year there were hunters who came out and shot a brown bear. You can see the bear’s skeleton in the foreground; the hunters only took the head with them. You can also see that Joe’s carrying his rifle in case any other bears come by for a snack.


Perhaps that unlucky bear was the one spotted in June by folks who went on a boat tour with the Sitka Conservation Society.

18 Jul

Hiking in Sitka: Gavan Hill

The town of Sitka is spread along the flat coastal edge of Baranof Island, so directly behind town are the mountains, and a couple trails that go straight up. Gavan Hill is one of them, and I’ve now been up it three Sundays in a row.

You walk through a muskeg meadow, but once you get into the woods the stairs start. At first they are pretty mild.


But it doesn’t take long before they get more serious.

Part way up there is a little lookout platform. It’s at maybe 1400 feet. The first time up the trail my taller half was visiting and we went all the way up to the alpine area above the treeline, another 1000 feet up. The next day, I was had sore calves and a sore back. That made it personal – I went back the next week to prove that I could. My lovely intern came with me, and we got up to the lookout in 59:34. This Sunday, I went up again in 50:02. I guess I’m faster with no one to talk to!

The view from the lookout
Coming back down

Because it’s a small town and I’ve been here for more than a month, I saw four people I knew on the trail, including my supervisor from the Forest Service. Next weekend we’ll be out in the field, and the weekend after that I’m back in Seattle for a quick visit, so I’ll won’t get up Gavan again for a bit, but I hope I can keep improving my time, along with my calf muscles!

10 Jul

Sun in Southeast Alaska!

Stop the presses!

Sun in Sitka!

After a couple weeks of rain, drizzle, aggressive misting, rain and more rain, it started to clear up yesterday afternoon and today has been super beautiful and sunny. It could have done this last week, for the holiday weekend, but I’m glad it’s here now. I went partway up Gavan Hill to a little lookout. Gavan Hill is all stairs, it took us 59:34 to the lookout and now I have a time to beat next time I go up.

We met some good dogs on the trail, and also a squirrel.

08 Jul

Restoration work: red alders



This week I spent some more time in the field, this time helping watching some folks put trees, a.k.a. large woody debris, into a stream. This makes for good habitat for baby salmon. Although it involved a lot of tromping around in the rain and a lot of no-see-ums who wanted to chew on me, it was fun because I had the right gear to be waterproof and I got to see what is involved in the restoration process.

All the trees added to the stream were red alders, a quick growing tree that takes advantage of disturbed ground in places where there were logging roads, or river bottoms that large logs were dragged through.

Red alders are tall and have white bark, and if I went by the minimal tree knowledge I had coming into this job with the Forest Service (where I have learned much about salmon, and a little about trees) I would have tried to tell you that they were birch trees.

However, once they cut a few red alders down and dragged them around, scraping off the bark, it became obvious that the inner layer of the bark is the color of a nosebleed, hence the “red” of red alder. And I don’t think you see that in a birch…


I thought it was pretty, so I took a bunch of pictures of it. In fact, I was photographing some scraped bark when they started calling my name, and suggested I leave when everyone else was walking off, so as not to leave me alone in bear country.

For the record, there was a bear spotted, but it ran off the trail before anyone but one guy saw it. I saw the tracks, but they weren’t super big.