Friday, June 28th

I pulled Jack from a sound sleep around 5:30. Even though we had talked about how painful it would be, it was a rough start for him.

We made it to the high school pool just before the morning lap swim session at 6:30. Jack swam while I ran on the treadmill. We then had breakfast at the Diamond C restaurant.

Our plan was to meet at the ranger office at 9 and to be on the boat to Anan by 9:30. As is usually the cast, things did not go as planned. Bob asked that I help unload the crew boat at the city dock. It was low tide again and the crew needed to unload the scow with the hoist. While I worked with the crew, jack helped load the Anan boat and before long we were cruising South down the Blake channel toward Anan.

The guides at Anan work eight day shifts. They work at the trailhead checking permits for the area ( 50 per day) and answering questions at the falls where the bears ten to congregate. The guides reside on a float house which is moored 100 feet from shore in Anan Bay - roughly a mile from the trailhead. They use a skiff (a johnboat to you Midwesterners) with a tiny outboard to shuttle to and from the trailhead.

Most of the locals who visit the falls carry firearms as do the commercial outfitters who bring visitors on guided tours of the area. After you've had the guides check your permit, you are on your own. The trail to the falls is about a half mile in length and twists its way along Anan creek through dense rainforest. The trail has many blind turns and rises so you've got to make as much noise as possible to ensure that you don't startle a bear en route. It is a bit unnerving as every inch if the trail is covered with bear scat and the brush is nothing but a series of bear trails.

Even though we were weeks from the heavy salmon run, there were lots of bears at the falls. We saw no bears on the trail until we were about fifty feet from the trail's end, when suddenly a black bear emerged from the woods. He stopped and took a long look at us before moving on his way.

We spent two hours at the falls before heading back to the trailhead and float house. We had lunch, packed the boat with the outgoing crew's gear, and headed back to Wrangell.

We made it back to the truck with just enough time for Jack and I to make it back to camp before the potluck began.

The ranger program covered natural dyes, the plants needed to make them, and the varieties of colors that can be found on the island. There were over forty people on attendance- one of the best turnouts yet - lots of families and kids in attendance. It was a good one.

Days Off June 25th/26th

These were the first two days off that we didn't have pre planned. I let Jack sleep in as long as he wanted on both days. He's been giving his Kindle a workout lately and has three books that he is excited to read waiting in the hopper. These days are perfect for kicking back and reading.

On Wednesday we drove to town just after noon to do laundry, take showers, refill with gas and water, and visit the library. After completing our errands, I dropped Jack at the library and headed over to the shooting range to fire off a few rounds. The range is open from dawn to dusk, which gives the residents of Wrangell over 20 hours of access each day. I love Alaska.

Before we drove back to camp, we hiked up the Dewey trail on the hill above downtown Wrangell. It was a short boardwalk up to a deck overlooking Wrangell harbor.

Earlier in the say, We met with our friend Beth who flew in last week to help train the guides at the Anan bear area. Beth is a veteran guide has who worked the area the past three seasons. This tear, the Anan crew is comprised entirely of first year guides so they brought Beth back for a few weeks to help establish the work routine at the site. The permitting of the area starts July 5th, giving locals a chance to access the area without a permit for the first few weeks of prime bear viewing season.

The latest reports from Anan are that not only are bears already starting to frequent the area but that salmon are already starting to run - roughly two weeks earlier than normal.

Dee, the supervisor of the Anan area, invited us to make the crew change run with her tomorrow. We'll take the boat down in the morning and return in time to start the potluck. We're excited - the Anan area is a unique place for viewing a large concentration of bears in their natural habitat.

After racking out for the night, we had a knock on the door of the camper around ten o'clock. It was three local women who asked to borrow an Allen wrench. They were coming to Nemo Point to spread their grandmother's ashes but couldn't open the urn without the wrench. I didn't have a wrench that fit but was able to open the urn by hand. Off they headed to cast grandma to the wilds of Nemo Point.

Up The River, June 23/24

We headed down to the ranger office early for a working trip up the Stikine. Bob planned a quick touch up of the cabins located along the main branch of the river. These cabins all fall within the Stikine/LaConte wilderness area so the use of power tools is prohibited, even for USFS work crews. All of the work is done with hand tools- trees are cut with long bladed cross-cut saws, screws are driven with hand held screw drivers, and brush is cut with the old swing blade grass cutters.

We left at low tide thinking that the sandbars would be visible and that the main channel would be easier to find.
In addition, it was a minus 4ft low tide, a very low water level. So low, in fact, that we loaded the 20ft Boston Whaler at the city dock with a crane as the gangway that leads to the USFS slip was too steep to carry our heavy gear down safely.

In addition to leaving during low tide, Bob was using a GPS to navigate the flats. It was amazing too see the sandbars that Jack and I had been pulling our canoe over just days before now standing so high above the water line.

It was a beautiful sunny day with a light breeze and we were flying along over the smooth water when the entire boat smashed into the first sandbar. It was quite an impact and the engine made a horrible sound as it threw sand, mud, and water into the air. Even though we were following a GPS route that had been set by another crew boat the day prior, the Stikine had moved enough material to change the course of the main channel overnight.

Being unable to move heavy boat from the sand, we were forced to wait for the tide to return.

After about two hours, we were able to push the boat from the bar and continue on our way. Jack and I had been warned about the bugs before leaving but I've never seen mosquito swarms like this. Though "sky darkening" would be an overstatement, "biblical proportions" would not. Jack and I volunteered to man the swing blades and to cut brush from the trails around each cabin. It was a very warm day so we both wore short sleeve shirts - a mistake that we would did not repeat later in the day. Even though we covered ourselves in Deep Woods OFF!, I managed to accumulate a record breaking number of bites. Jack was much less prized by the blood sucking swarm and was bitten only twice. My arms make it look like I'm suffering from smallpox.

At the cabins later in the day, Jack wore a jacket and I wore a mosquito netting zip up - everyone wore a head net and the crew wore long sleeved shirts. Some of the crew also duct taped their sleeves closed over gloves.
We worked at the Mt Flemmer (near the Canadian border) and Chief Shakes cabins for the remainder of the day.

Jack and I stayed in one of the two Shakes cabins and the three crew members stayed at the USFS administrative cabin located about four miles downriver. The original plan was to have all of us stay at the admin cabin - Bob, Jack, and I would have slept in tents outside as the structure Is very small. Given the bugs and the bears, I suggested staying at the second cabin and Bob agreed.

Several of you asked about the tent that Jack and I used in the Garnet Ledge cabin. Since we were canoeing, I always carry a tent in case of an emergency ( capsizing, rough water, wind, etc) that would necessitate a night in the woods. Most of the cabins are fairly mosquito proof, but some have hundreds inside. Since we had it, we used it for a bite free night. I had been warned to bring one on this trip as the cabin we were staying in is known for the mosquitoes.

Our night at Shakes was incredibly relaxing. There was a thunderstorm, a very rare occurrence in SE Alaska, and an incredible sunset. The view from the Chief Shakes cabin is one if the best on the river. The slough at the front of the cabin has an amazing backdrop of four snow capped peaks with lush green alder covered slopes at their base.

The crew picked us up early the next morning. We worked the morning repairing a stream-fed water line at the Chief Shakes hot springs. The hot springs consist of a short section of boardwalk that leads to two wooden barrel hot tubs, a small dressing (or undressing) stall, and an outhouse. One of the tubs is housed in a screened structure that can be used when the bugs are bad.

At noon, we boated back to the Admin cabin to eat lunch and to pick up the crew's gear. We all piled into the admin cabin and made sandwiches. I have never seen a cabin so full of mosquitoes in my life. At one point, we decided to open the door as the outside was less buggy than the inside. Bob and Glenn told us about their miserable night as they has both had forgotten to bring their mosquito netting shelters for sleeping.

We finished the day at the Twin Lakes and Mt Flemmer cabins before heading back down the river and across the flats to town.

Jack and I showered, stopped at the store, and headed back to camp.

June 22nd

The North Wrangell shelter is located at the top of a 2,700 mountain near Shoemaker Bay. The trail to the shelter is roughly 3.5 miles all on boardwalk....boardwalk that is wet nearly every day of the year making it the slickest walking surface in the country. Last summer, I hiked to the shelter and found that it had been vandalized with graffiti. Bob and packed tools in to the shelter and spent the morning sanding the paint from the walls. The hike is extremely strenuous and Bob and I wanted to access not only the North Wrangell shelter but also the Shoemaker Bay Overlook, located about 3 miles away across another valley. I gave Jack the option of staying back and he took it.

Bob and I also marked the GPS location of stacks of surplus lumber stashed in the bush so that it could be located quickly by a helicopter for pickup at a later date.

The view either shelters is spectacular when the conditions are right but this was not one of those days. The summits of both mountains were far above the cloud line allowing us to see all of about ten feet.

The battery powered palm sander that Bob purchased for the job worked like a charm. It took about thirty minutes to get all of the "artwork" off the walls us each shelter.

Back at camp, Jack and I had lunch and then hit a couple of the closer sites before heading down to take showers and do a load of laundry.

The weekend movie playing at the Nolan Center was Disney's latest "Epic". As we sat in the theater, I couldn't hear a thing as all I could hear was the far away sound of Walt Disney spinning in his grave. They follow up "John Carter" with this? If you own Disney stock, I'd recommend a visit with your broker. I'm hopeful that Jack will be reviewing it shortly.

The Summer Solstice

The longest day of the year! Bob stopped out at the site early to have some coffee and to about the weekend. As we talked, the clouds that had been dropping water for most of the night began to part and reveal the start of fairly decent weather. We decided the we should try to get some fishing in that afternoon before the start of the potluck.

Jack and I hopped into the truck and worked the sites along the Nemo loop road and then headed for town. Jack drove while I quizzed him on the first Japanese lesson.

The weather did hold did the better part of the day before finally falling back to rain in the early afternoon. The water was dead calm and, although we never saw them, we did hear a group of whales exhaling somewhere nearby.

The king salmon continued to elude us with nary a bight. We did, however, manage to catch a 35 pound halibut.

We got back to the harbor with just enough time to get a fire started back at camp before the first potluck guests began to show.

The guest speaker was a wilderness ranger who spoke about the several wilderness areas in the vicinity and the regulations that govern their use. The potluck ended a bit sooner than normal as the no-see-ums decided to bring a full out assault. They have been terrible this summer.

June 20th

Jack's Japanese packet arrived from BYU while we were in our trip to Garnet Ledge. He'a been anxiously awaiting its arrival so I decided to give him the day off so that he could dig into it. The coursework packet consists of a language disc, which allows you to hear the pronunciations by a native speaker, and a companion text which incorporates the disc recordings into the curriculum.

While Jack worked on schoolwork, I made the rounds on the main road into the forest. I cut brush at the Anita Bay overlook and at the Earl West landing, repaired the siding on a building at the Yunshooka area and split some of the logs left at the Lower Salamander area.

I invited roughly ten tourists to the potluck tomorrow night and got a very enthusiastic acceptance from all. I'm hoping for a good turnout with some new faces.

Jack and I drove into town to resupply at the USFS and at the local grocery and then headed back out for another relaxing evening at Nemo Point.

Bob called later in the evening to reschedule a fishing trip that we had planned for the morning as the wet weather has returned with a vengeance and the morning forecast called for miserable conditions.

June 19th

Last night's rain subsided after only 30 minutes or so. I'm beginning to wonder if it will ever rain again this summer.

I got Jack up early this morning so that we would have plenty of water over the flats. The water level is not completely dependent on the tides - the level of the river also determines the depth at the mouth. The Stikine drains the majority of British Columbia so its level depends on a wide variety of variables such as inland temperatures, rainfall in the areas of one or more of the tributaries many of which are hundreds of miles away so predicting the river level is a difficult, if not impossible, thing to do. That being said, we did run aground on the flats. The walking this time was only a few hundred feet and we were once again in our way.

We did stop for a drink and a snack before making a break across the two plus mile wide channel. Even though we were crossing what the locals refer to as the Bermuda Triangle of Wrangell, we encountered nothing more than some mild chop and a small set of waves that seemed to appear out of nowhere.

As we approached the takeout, the flight carrying Bob and the rest of his crew flew over our boat, dipping its wings just as it had yesterday.

After retrieving the truck from tge ranger office, Jack and I stopped to pick up a frozen pizza. The only pizzeria in Wrangell charges the equivalent of your first born for a pizza (although it is a very good pizza) so, naturally, we tend to skip it. We baked the pizza in the bunkhouse oven while we took showers and ate it in the truck on the way back to camp. We spent the remaineder of our day off unpacking and sitting by a campfire.

Garnet Ledge

We awoke around five o clock to get started well before high tide. The Stikine, the fastest flowing navigable river in North America, empties into the ocean just North of Wrangell. It is a large river (56,000 cfs at its mouth vs the Mississippi at 122,000 cfs) that stretches over 400 miles in length. In spite of its size and speed, the mouth of the Stikine is surprisingly shallow. The river's mouth is probably over two miles wide. As the river widens, the flow slows allowing the heavier particles to fall, creating wide sandbars, or sand flats as they are called locally. Navigating the flats is tough even for locals and boats frequently get stranded. I was hoping to be to cross the Blake channel and past the flats before the tide receded too much. Our timing was somewhat correct. At the flats, we hit bottom several times but were able to step out and drag the canoe over to deeper water. We managed to locate the deeper channels by observing the behavior of the water at the surface, although this worked only marginally well. Boaters who hang up on the bottom are often faced with a six hour delay until the tides return. We were fortunate to be in a canoe.

We made it across the Blake with little fanfare, although the rec crew buzzed our canoe on their way to Virginia Lake which livened things up a bit for us.
It took us a good four hours to reach the cabin - the last mile was the toughest as we had to battle the swift current.

After unpacking our gear, we hiked to the ledge from the cabin which took us through an incredibly dense section of forest. The Garnet Ledge is home to an exposed slab of schist that is literally filled with garnets. Every protruding rock was flecked with garnets, ranging in size from a salt grain to the the size of a green grape. Kids from Wrangell collect them and sell them to tourists at the ferry dock.

We spent the afternoon reading at the cabin. Jack was racked out from the paddle - he crashed around 5:30. It began to rain around seven. I love the sound of rain falling on a metal roof- second only to the sound of studded tires rolling over blacktop.

I'm hoping that the weather holds for us tomorrow. The forecast calls for a chance of rain with temps in the 70's.