sun in southeast alaska 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.

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!

16 Aug

Upcoming Adventures

On Thursday I’m leaving for what will probably be my last field trip this year. The fireweed blossoms are near the top and the end of the Alaskan summer is near. The summer intern who’s been working with me has less than two weeks before she heads back to college. (FYI, you can read her summer blog, too.)

However, we’re ending the summer with a bang. Literally.

The purpose of this trip is to remove culverts and bridges from an old logging road, leaving streams and salmon to move freely. This involves dynamite. Lots and lots of dynamite. $10,000 of dynamite, or 18,000 pounds of dynamite–that’s the numbers I’ve heard tossed around.

We’ll be out for 8 days, with 10 people, and remove 50 structures.

I still don’t know exactly what this will be like, but I’ve had discussions with a number of the people who be involved. First, the guy in charge, the main blaster, is a big guy. One of the fish biologists described him to me as someone who could cross the Mississippi in hip boots. Now that I’ve met him, he definitely has a Paul Bunyan thing going on.

One of the main forms of entertainment and bonding here is telling stories about coworkers. The story on Paul Bunyan the Blaster is that he is a meat eater, and really should not be allowed to shop for the food for these trips without supervision. On a previous trip he famously purchased, in addition to meat, one bag of red delicious apples, one head of iceberg lettuce, and a large quantity of Pringles. Varying reports have said that there were enough for each person on the trip to have a can with every meal, that it was 30 cans, that there are still cans of Pringles in the warehouse somewhere. Apparently they were on sale.

My intern and I, both being mostly vegetarian, will be meeting him at the grocery store tomorrow morning to help with the shopping for this trip. As he said to me, if we don’t help him, we’ll probably hate him for what he buys.

In addition, there is another blaster coming in from Canada to help with this project. They refer to him as “Daisy.” I don’t even know what to say at this point. I’ll just have to report back after the trip.

Anyway, I had a conversation with some of the fish techs about this trip–of the ten or so participants, the intern and I will be the only girls–and said that I didn’t know what the stereotypes about blasters were, but I could probably come up with some real quick. Later, I realized that I do actually have an image of a blaster in my mind: Edgar from the Red Green Show. If you’re not familiar with this marvel of Canadian television, you’ve been missing out.

Here’s Edgar. I’ll report back on the trip at the end of the month–I’m sure it’ll be a blast!

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.