Snettisham 2009-1

Taku 2010 - 1: Simon Cutthroat
August 27 - 29

Taku
Taku Glacier

Fall was closing in alarmingly fast. Although I was anxious to return to Snettisham to make more progress while I still could, I had to jump on an opportunity to go up the Taku with my folks. I'd promised to (and wanted to) help out this summer, and it looked like this would be the only time to do it. I took off early from work on Friday to catch the tide and Nigel and I met up with my folks at Aurora Harbor at 2:00. We took off in the Kathy M, fueled up at Tesoro, and headed out for a calm, uneventful ride up the river. The river has changed a bit in the last few years, so we can no longer pull the boats up to the traditional landing spot near the cabin (it's all sandbars); instead, they'd set up an intermediary set of steps closer to the guest cabin downriver. We pulled up there and unloaded gear, which grew to an embarrassingly large pile given the short duration of our trip. One of the excess items was a crate with my chainsaw and supplies. I'd brought my Poulan back from Snettisham, thinking I might use it up the Taku, along with bar and chain lube and my little one gallon gas tank of mixed fuel. Earlier in the week I'd made a trip to Western Auto for oil and a measuring tool to get the 40:1 ration of gas to oil correct and had filled up the tank. The dogs came off last, awkwardly over the stern. My dad headed up to get the 4-wheeler to haul the gear while my mom anchored the boat. After I finished hauling all the gear up the steps to the woods, I wandered to the cabin, thinking I'd open it up. I searched and searched for the key, but found nothing. Puzzled, I started taking the shutters off the windows and discovered that the key was in the door (my dad had opened it before fetching the 4-wheeler). He came back with the first load and I volunteered to go back for the rest, assuring him that I'd driven it a few times before. The refresher he gave me on its operation was unfamiliar, and it wasn't until I was half way to the boat that I realized they'd replaced the 4-wheeler the previous winter! I had a little trouble getting the machine into reverse, but managed to load the remaining gear and make it back to the lodge with no trouble. My dad had hired a neighbor on the river to widen the trail through the alders down to the boat landing and it looked like a superhighway (well, as wide as a country two-land road anyway). This neighbor had also mowed the whole meadow; I didn't mind either, except for the loss of the blueberry bushes in the middle of the latter.

Once everything was unloaded and a fire going, it was time for a pleasant round of cocktails and then dinner. I made halibut fettuccini and salad, then my mom and I took a walk upriver through the forest, the rapidly diminishing "meadow" where the strawberries and nagoonberries were once lush (now overgrown with young spruces), then through the brush, and up to the meadows around the property line. I was encouraged by the presence of ripe nagoonberries. On the walk back, we saw an adult eagle sitting in a spruce tree surrounded by reddish cones, not far from where I'd seen the nest several years ago. We also passed the previous nest, now on the forest floor. Back at the cabin, I picked out a movie for us to watch from the three DVDs my mom had brought, but by the time it started I was too exhausted and went straight to bed in my Mexican hammock upstairs. That hammock is extremely comfortable--like sleeping on a cloud--but Nigel was pretty uncomfortable much of the night, so I spent a good portion of it listening to him pant, getting him water, and opening the window. He eventually settled down. At 7:00 I woke up with my internal alarm clock and decided to go for berries. Although there were closer nagoons, I first went all the way to the far meadows upriver near the property line and started picking, heading north along the old path. It was my best timing for nagoons in years--I can't remember the last time I was there when they weren't mostly hard or overripe. I picked about 10 cups of the best berries and made it back to the cabin around 9:00, finding the eagle's nest in the same tree we'd seen the adult in the day before, only lower. We heard the baby on and off all weekend. I'd meant to pick some blueberries for pancakes, but had focused on nagoons; it turns out nagoonberry pancakes are pretty good too!

Nigel and Rosie on the Kathy M	Fallen eagle's nest	Eagle
Firewood on the back porch	Eagle nest (at the bottom)	Precious nagoonberries

Not long after, we all got to work on various projects. My mom improved the plumbing under the kitchen sink, my dad went down to fix the stairs at the boat landing, while I started to stack wood on the back porch. One of my parents' main goals this summer was to split all the rounds that they'd stashed nearby when they built the cabin 16 years ago. They'd managed to split about half of it on the previous trip, but the stack my mother had made on the back porch had collapsed. My first task was to restack it. Turns out that didn't take long, so I then sought guidance about the septic drain pipe. My folks had installed a flush toilet this summer, plumbing it to the existing septic tank. Now they needed a drain field. I consulted with my parents and they decided to start with a single 10' length of pipe. My dad pointed out where he thought it should go and my mom got out some 45 degree angles to see if we could make it work. It looked like a straight piece about two feet long connecting to an angle joint and then the drain pipe would work. Before I started digging, I took a few minutes to put the chain back on my chainsaw, which had flown off while I was trimming some spruce limbs that morning on a nearby trail. I had to re-learn how it all fit together and took the handle off several extra times to get it perfect, but eventually it was all set. Back outside, my mom laid some tarps out for sand and for sod, and I set to work. First I placed the pipe where it was to go, then axed a silhouette about 16" wide around it, and cast it aside. The first thing to do was cut the sod out, which I did with an ax and a flat shovel in about 1' sections, laying them out on a tarp nearby. That was probably the hardest part. Below the sod was sand, pure, beautiful, damp sand. I'd really been looking forward to digging in this sand, for some reason--like night and day from the rooty, rocky ground at Snettisham. The digging went quickly, the day was beautiful, and I had an ice cold corona (complete with lime) as I finished the trench. In the meantime, my parents had managed to get a very stubborn splitter started (they had to open it up and clean the rust off the magneto) and had begun to split wood. When my trench was complete, I filled their little trailer with split wood and helped my mom push it up the path to the back porch, pitching the wood onto it to stack neatly later. After that they hitched the trailer to the 4-wheeler for the short ride up the hill, and I drove another load up.

We broke for lunch around 12:30 and I made quesadillas for everyone. We were feeling a bit lazy by then, having worked hard all morning, but my mother and I finally roused ourselves for a little adventure. We grabbed our gear, poles, mini gas tank, and tackle and headed down to the waterfront where I'd left my mom's canoe and its outboard. We got everything aboard, hopped on, and waved goodbye to my dad as we drifted downriver into deeper water. Just below where the boat was anchored we headed out into the channel and upriver on our way to Sockeye Creek. Though it was a bit early for coho to be in the creeks, apparently they like to check out the mouths of creeks on their way upriver and we planned to fish the confluence. I had to refuel in front of Hole-in-the-Wall Glacier, but other than that the trip was uneventful. I remembered how to reach the entrance to the creek from visiting it the year prior with Chris, though we found the channel on the inside of the island a little shallow in places, even for the canoe. But we made it past the island and turned left into a muddy creek running off the glacier, then quickly turned right again and into the turquoise water of Sockeye Creek. We went ashore on a grassy bank covered with goose feathers and cast for about 20 minutes, with no luck. My dad had told us again about his fishing hole where a brown water slough emptied out into the creek and my mom thought she'd recognize it, so we decided to explore upcreek. That whole area is really beautiful--too wet for large trees in many places, the banks are primarily lined with grass and willows and numerous brown water sloughs drain into it. We soon flushed a flock of Canada geese, and saw their footprints, droppings, and feathers everywhere. We also came across many small groups of ducks here and there (photos suggest at least some of them were green-winged teal). On our way up this idyllic little creek we went aground many times and paddled through a few shallow areas, but eventually came upon an island separated from the west shore by a narrow channel. Two sloughs emptied into the channel, one narrow, the other wide and full of aquatic grass. My mom thought this might be the spot, somewhat changed from the last time we were there, so we took the canoe ashore on the west bank; she started casting in the narrow slough and I cast over in the creek. I quickly shifted my attention to the grassy slough. It was only about 25 feet wide, shallow enough to see the bottom, and was full of clumps of grass; I expected nothing more than snags, but I gave it a shot anyway, trying to aim for the grassless channels. On my first cast I thought I had a nibble, so I repositioned a little further in where I had a better angle for a clear patch. Of course, it's pretty treacherous walking there, and I wound up losing my balance and stepping into a deep pool between clumps of uneven grass and getting water in my boots. A little cranky, I settled myself and made a surprisingly well-placed cast into a clear stretch of water. On the second or third cast, I had a fish on--a trout--and called my mother over. As the little guy rose to the surface we could see the myriad tiny black spots. "You have a cutthroat!" my mom said. Wow! It was the most beautiful fish I've ever seen, those dense black speckles over a silvery body flashing with hues of yellow and rose. I really wanted a photo, but my camera was back on the canoe and, although my mother offered to get it, I'd decided to release him and wanted to let him go as quickly as possible. But not before I looked for his markings! I turned him over gently and, sure enough, saw the trademark red streaks under his gills. Delighted, I removed the hook and watched his swim leisurely away in the shallow water, his glimmering beauty muted to impressive brown camouflage. He swam right in front of my mother and she almost missed him.

So I was pretty happy about that. We drifted down the river, surprised at how quickly it passed, watching ducks and enjoying the scenery. The big glacier looming before us was an impressive backdrop. We made our way back out into the river, passing on the other side of the island at the entrance to the creek, and headed home. The tide was higher, so the channels less defined, and we went aground briefly in front of the glacier when we got a bit off track. We arrived back home at 5:20 just after my dad saw a little black bear on the front porch. He soon had an alder fire going in the stone barbeque and my mom cooked Taku Lodge style salmon for dinner. Exhausted, and with a sore throat that had persisted all day, I went to bed early.

Splitting firewood	Drainage ditch	Crossing the river
Fishing the mouth of Sockeye Creek	Green-winged teal	Hole-in-the-Wall Glacier

The next morning my mom and I got up at 6:30 for a little early berry picking. We first went way upriver to a clump of cottonwoods where I'd found dense clusters of ripe nagoonberries the day before and worked our way back. We picked until 8:00 when my mom went back for breakfast with my dad. I stayed on and picked a few blueberries (a bit sparse by then). Nigel lost me a few times when I went off trail and I caught him running down the path nearby looking for

me. He's a bit deaf these days, so calling him is a noisy affair. When I came back I was pretty exhausted and my sore throat was worse. I had a little breakfast, rested a bit, then went back to work on the drain field at 9:00. Down at the work shed I found the hack saw, estimated the length of connecting pipe I needed, and sawed a piece off from a scrap of solid pipe. This turned out to be just the right length, so I slid it in one side of the angle piece and the other side into the fitting on the septic tank. It was satisfying to immediately see water draining out the angled piece! From there I attached the drain pipe to the angle and gathered some blocks of wood lying around to support the angle and the end of the pipe, using them to level it. Once it was level I found that the pipe was a good six inches off the ground; we only wanted a few inches of gravel under it, so I filled the trench in a bit with sand. Then the really hard part started. Near where my parents were cutting firewood was an old pile of rock they'd brought up in the bucket of their backhoe when they built the cabin. I took a wheelbarrow and a shovel and started digging.... It turns out that, like digging in the sand, this was surprisingly easy, as the rocks loosened up easily. Four wheel barrow fulls later and the pipe was sitting snuggly on a bed of gravel, perfectly level.

In the meantime, my parents had been madly splitting enormous rounds of wood, so I hauled two more loads behind the 4-wheeler. By this time I was getting a little shaky--a combination, I think, of hard manual labor and an impending sickness. I picked blueberries for about ten minutes (rounding out the cup or so I'd been working at), then packed up my gear, grabbed a cold beer, and took a lawn chair to the edge of the river to sit down and rest. The day was warm and sunny and beautiful. My parents finished splitting all the wood while I drank, then I met them back at the cabin. They laid felt across the top of the pipe to help prevent sand from filtering down while I made another round of quesadillas for lunch. We all sat in the sunshine and ate, enjoying the spectacular view of the Taku Glacier across the river.

After lunch I walked with my mother upriver where she helped me cut a few trees in what used to be a large berry meadow. In the last decade or so, the strawberry fields around the cabin have been growing up with verdant spruces, such that they are all but gone. In the foreseeable future lies a dark, dense first growth forest, which is what now immediately surrounds the cabin. In an effort to save a small portion of the closest meadow upriver, I cut quite a few trees and created an open area. Though I suffered from the moral qualms of needless tree slaughter, I was immediately delighted by the result. We hauled the cut trees and stacked them by the riverbank, then headed back to the cabin. Having done its duty, my parents wanted to put the wood splitter away, so we hooked it to the back of the 4-wheeler and pulled it to the wood shed where I helped my dad get it inside. Then, as we packed things up back at the cabin, I loaded the 4-wheeler with our gear and delivered it to the boat landing, returning it to its home behind the wood shed. On the way down, my mom and I pulled the canoe up off the riverbank and turned it upside down nearby.

Loading the boat went smoothly and we headed out in good spirits in the sunshine. I've never seen Nigel so calm in a boat, and he even spent most of the ride lying down on the floor. We ran into a westerly chop coming down Stephen's Passage beyond Point Bishop and again as we went up the channel, but nothing serious.

Crowberries	Meadow scene	Me and my ditch
Taku Glacier from the front yard	My re-created meadow	Nagoonberries

Nigel in the meadow