Snettisham 2013 - 11: Closeup
September 24-25

Humpbacks gathing in Stephen's Passage

For years I’ve imagined myself taking advantage of those beautiful late September days, when the sky is achingly clear and the water is equally calm, to close up Snettisham—week day, weekend, whenever the opportunity arose. It’s never quite worked out that way. Either the timing is wrong and I’m unable to get away or the promised days never materialize and I wind up crashing my way south in one boat or another or chartering a plane to escape the seas and ensure that I close up at the right time. This year, Chris and I spent the first weekend of September up the Taku on a big tide, the next weekend in Washington for the Puyallup Fair, and the third weekend saw a huge storm rage over Southeast. Checking the weather that Sunday, however, suggested that we had a break coming on Tuesday and the forecast just got better and better from there. By Monday evening they were calling for light and variable winds on Tuesday and Wednesday morning, building to four foot seas Wednesday night. It was my window and I took it.

Cailey and I packed light, bringing along a tote only so I could haul back excess food. We swung by the grocery store to pick up bread and cheese (and donuts—an unusual craving) and then to the gas station. I tried to exchange a propane tank as part of the Amerigas tank exchange system there and fill one that wasn’t, but the latter tank was expired and they had no more filled tanks for the exchange. The gas station attendant did fill my Amerigas tank, though, so I did wind up with a spare to overwinter at the homestead. After hauling my gear down and pumping out the water in the boat (necessary every few days now), we took off at about 10:30 on a stunning morning on flat calm water.

By the time we left Gastineau Channel I could already see groups of whale blows in Taku Inlet. I thought they were much farther away and off my course, but the majority of them turned out to be just off Point Arden. I could see at least ten whales, including a group of five and a group of two nearby plus several farther away. I kept a polite distance and shut down, alone in the inlet among whale blows. The two groups nearest me fluked and I floated, waiting. They came up some minutes later, having broken up. Two came up together to starboard, about 50 feet out, two more came up off my bow, and another off the port bow. Suddenly, one of the whales to starboard breached, followed by its partner, then one of the whales off the bow, the one off the port bow, then the other one off the bow. As I tried to follow the breaches as best as I could, the two off to starboard breached again, followed by the others, and then it stopped. For a few moments there I’d been surrounded by breaching! It was the closest I’d come to the Stephen’s Passage group-up in years. Lots of whales, loosely grouped and playful. In the distance, more whales blew in Doty Cove. Delighted and a little awed, I left the whales and headed south, passing another close to shore north of Taku Harbor, two more on the way south, and another off the entrance to Snettisham. Just south of the bite below Limestone Inlet, a splash to port caught my eye and I watched, thinking perhaps it was a late season salmon jump that would repeat. Instead I saw a porpoise porpoise. Of course the immediate assumption was Dall’s porpoise, which I’ve seen in that area several times, and which tend to porpoise much more often than their shy counterparts. As the image sank in, however, I realized that the body of the porpoise was gray with a pale stripe down the side, not striking black and white. It was a harbor porpoise porpoising! That may only be the second harbor porpoise I’ve seen down there, the other inside the port and also on the last trip of the season. Perhaps they are attracted to the same prey that draws the fall humpbacks.

I encountered another pair of whales in Gilbert Bay just around the corner of Sentinel Point and three more over near River Point, but didn’t stop for either as Cailey and I were both very cold by that point. It was just past a high low tide, so we pulled up a hundred yards from the cabin and offloaded the minimal gear I was carrying. I wasn’t going to anchor the boat very far away, so I managed to leave Cailey on shore to simplify the trip; I even refueled in the sunshine before kayaking back.

As soon as I walked up the path to the lodge, I was stuck with the usual feeling of how much I love to be down there, and how I wish I could stay and watch fall proceed and slide into winter, and then see the winter storms come in, and see what creatures pass by. Maybe someday! For the moment, I had a little lunch and a cup of Russian tea on the porch and watched the birds in the current bushes to either side. Cailey snacked on the berries. Inside I was impressed to see two strands of spider web connecting the oil lamp on the table to the couch. How do spiders spin horizontal threads in a calm environment?

Much of fall closeup involves putting systems away that are useful—water, namely—so some of the less pleasant tasks were put off to the next day so I could continue to use the sink. But all the cabins have their own water systems, so that was the first task on my agenda, after I finished the bridge. With only two small tasks there to do (thwarted the previous trip only by lack of a driver to match my screws), I expected to finish it up in a jiffy. Instead, I worked on it on and off for an hour or two with increasing frustration, interspersing that with other work. I’d brought along the right driver this time, but left behind Chris’s maquita since I knew I had three fully charged batteries for my maquita on hand and surely that would be enough…. Which they would have been, if they’d been fully charged. My only guess for the cause of its inability to drive in the screws that had previously gone in so well every time was low batteries, which perhaps lost some power while sitting inactive for a month. In the end, I wound up using shorter screws to screw in the supports under the last tread (which I had to do multiple times as I had trouble screwing them in level). Then I had to finish screwing in the treads themselves, some of which had only one screw holding them down on either side. But I just could not get them to screw all the way in, so wound up pre-drilling the holes (which was only a surprise because I hadn’t had to do it before). Quite a few screws had by that time been lodged so tightly that the drill didn’t have the torque to loosen them, and so I would up doing so by hand with a screwdriver before the drill could make headway.

All of this, of course, required many trips back to the lodge for more batteries and tools, and I interspersed work on it with work on the cabins. First I inspected and removed any linens that needed washing, then got to work taking apart the water systems, another task that required repeated trips to other places to fetch rubber gloves for unscrewing the housings, Vaseline to lubricate the o-rings, my leatherman to extract them, and tinfoil to cover the open valves. I also removed all the plastic coverings from Cottonwood (last occupied by fledgling swallows learning to fly) and swept all the cabins out. One of the filters on that cabin lacked an o-ring (I’m not sure if I lost it as I removed the housing, but it was nowhere to be found), and I was happy to find a replacement that fit among the spares that I’d purchased earlier this summer. I even put away the water system on my own cabin, though it meant I wouldn’t be able to brush my teeth there that night.

I also tarped and wrapped up the cabin outhouse, tarped the lodge outhouse, tucked the hose away from naughty bears, and filled the wood box inside. With little more I could do to prepare for winter, I managed to work on some non-essential tasks I’ve been wanting to tackle for a while—most importantly organizing the shed. Though roomy, it has only been filled haphazardly, and used as needed, with little care taken to maintain any order. Consequently, there was hardly room to turn around. I delved in and used one of my few strengths: organization! Once I’d tidied up and made room against one wall, I swept through the lodge, dumping items onto the porch that were more at home in a shed. This included the shoe shelf with its line, chainsaw, and other items which fit neatly under the upriver window in the shed, all the cleaning supplies, the tool bucket, and so on. After quite a few trips back and forth, the lodge was cleaner than ever and the shed was fantastically organized. I even put a few nails in the wall to hang some items, though I still have a packet of hooks to put up next summer for handy tool retrieval.

Before it got dark I also found a small cardboard box, gloved up, and picked up all the broken glass stashed under the porch from the extra shed window that broke en route to Snettisham. Eventually I had chili for supper, then stuck around the lodge to do two more chores. First I laid some plastic on the floor and went through all the myriad paint cans I had on hand, determining whether they were still salvageable and marking the ones that were. I was actually pretty surprised that so many seemed to be in acceptable shape. In the end I think I only brought three old cans back to town. Then I drug out several large cardboard boxes I’d brought down for fire starting, ripped them up, and tucked them into storage behind the couch. The lodge looked fantastic, tidy and homey.

That night I used a match to start the little buddy propane heater in my cabin (the starter had failed) and Cailey stuck close to it while I let it run.

In you look carefully you can see horizontal spider web strings	Cailey eats currents	I can't stop taking pictures of this bridge
A fall evening	An organized shed	A tidier lodge

The next morning I got to work right away closing up my cabin (stripping the bed, sweeping, putting the propane heater and tank inside). The windows were foggy, but I locked up anyway, not wanting to have to return later if I let it air out. At the lodge I filled a second gallon jug with water and hiked up to the creek to take the olive barrel out. I had to remove quite a few of the rocks that were damming it in, but after that it wasn’t difficult to roll it onto the forest floor to the side of the creek. In the process I noticed that the fine mesh over the mouth of the barrel was ripped in two places and would need to be replaced, and the hardware cloth over that wasn’t in great shape either. I took the former down with me so I’d have a pattern in the spring to make replacements.

Back at the lodge, I pried off the three water filter housings, lubricated their o-rings, and put them back on, leaving their filters inside. This task required a return trip to Hermit Thrush, as I’d managed to drop my other jar of Vaseline off the porch the night before and lose it entirely. The windows were still fogged up, so I went ahead and left the door and the window open. The next step was less pleasant work, the kind of work I have to hold my nose and bully through (almost literally). When I cut off the zip tie that was holding the top filter bag over the outfall of the sink drain into the gray water olive barrel, I was surprised to find the bag chock full of water. It was so sludgy from a summer of filtering that the morning’s water had not made it through. It was an unpleasant bag of disgustingness, compounded with the sour smell of the waste water sitting in the bottom of the barrel. I dumped the water out of the filter and bagged it, then manhandled the olive barrel out of its box and dumped its contents onto the ground. Then I pulled out the lower hose contraption through which the wastewater leaves the barrel and cut its soggy filter off too. I may have to consider changing filters mid-summer, or leaving a longer bag on the top. I replaced everything, screwed the lid back on the olive barrel, closed up its box, and tried to the put the whole experience behind me.  

By then I was ready for a break, so I rested on the porch for a bit, rewarded with a wonderful long look at a delightful thrush sitting in a gray current bush to my right, along with other sporadic bird activity.

Now that the big projects were done, I went for my final COASST walk of the year on a relatively high tide. There wasn’t very much beach in front of the homestead, but just above the rocky point it opened up again. As I strolled upriver, I noticed that the mud seemed to be covered in prints of myriad sizes, but all so degraded as to be unrecognizable. It could be that the beach had seen intense activity since I’d  been there last, or something non-terrestrial was making those marks. As I was walking around the upriver edge of the grassy point (the turnaround point), I smelled the distinct aroma of dead fish. It’s not uncommon for salmon to wash up on the beach there, so I assumed that was the source. But, I thought I’d have fun and experiment with using my nose to track something down. I’m glad I did! Not far away on the grassy point itself (a few feet from the edge of the grass, but also a few feet higher than the surrounding sandbars), I found a monster. A long-nose skate lay on the beach, perfectly intact but for the film of sand covering it and the missing eyeballs. It was huge, probably three feet across, and facing the shoreline upriver. I photographed it dorsally and lifted its pointed snout up to photograph its mouth, and wished I’d brought my leatherman along so I could extract the jaw with its rows and rows of tiny sharp teeth. Years ago a friend found a skate jaw on the beach at Snettisham, but I never would have expected one to show up so far upriver. Was it alive when it stranded? Might a dead skate float? It seems unlikely, but I don’t really know. I’m not 100% sure on the identification, either, but it does look significantly like a long-nose skate, which are fairly distinct among the many Alaskan skate species. Unfortunately, I couldn’t see any markings beneath the sand covering its skin. I did run my fingers over the rough surface and the many small spines, though, and over its teeth. It was by far the best find I’ve had on a COASST survey! On the way back, I saw Cailey lingering far out on the sandbars with a lump of something and found her at a complete salmon carcass, slightly humped with snaggly teeth, but not identifiable without additional work.  

After my survey, I hauled most of the gear down toward the water and finished closeup chores, spraying WD-40 on the door hardware of Harbor Seal to deal with the salt blown in during winter storms, closing up Hermit Thrush, tying the tarp around the lodge outhouse, pulling down the smoke stack and covering the hole, covering the windows with newspapers, and finally setting up the motion sensor camera. We got wonderful footage of the homestead looking downriver during storms the previous winter, but I wanted to put it low enough this year to pick up wildlife. Since the lower deck might easily get covered with snow (and could yield more swirling snow to set the camera off), I opted to leave it in the woods along the trails where I’ve seen the most bear scat. I didn’t find any likely trees in the right places, so I wound up placing it on the downriver corner of Mink Cabin where it should pick up wildlife either coming along the path up from Harbor Seal (which often has bear scat on it) or straight up from the beach. Then I spent about 15 minutes picking gray currents from either side of the porch and from along the boardwalk to the cabins, quickly filling my 3.5 cup tub from the abundant ripe berries and leaving volumes behind untouched.  

When I was finally ready to go, I heated up some water and sat for a last cup of Russian tea on the porch, in no way eager to leave the place, but glad that the closing up was behind me. The day was sunny and wonderful; I was pleased that the breeze blowing down the river that morning (unusual, and a sure sign of a northerly) had ceased, replaced by a mild breeze from Gilbert Bay. Wisps of fog blew across Gilbert Bay from the Speel end of the arm, stacking curiously against the mountains on the opposite side of the inlet.

Fall light in the forest	A thrush	Tracks?
A mustelid (based on the pattern?)	Skate mouth	The skate
The happy lodge	Motion sensor camera	All cleaned up for the winter

I certainly could have stayed a couple more hours in the sunshine, but I had another adventure planned. For the second time all summer I had time, energy, and a rising tide on the way home and I intended to use it to explore further the road to the Crystal Mine. Two summers before, we’d found a likely start to the road at the ruins of the Friday Mine, and I’d recently looked at a photo that confirmed our suspicions. And so we headed out for a short boat ride while I tried to explain to Cailey why I hadn’t laid out her bed to lie on (which she clearly missed). As we cruised through Gilbert Bay I saw several whales fluke near Point Sentinel and then I saw very little of anything at all. We left the sunshine behind and entered a dense fog bank. In the entrance to the arm I could not see across Snettisham and had to cruise quite close to the shore in order to see it. In fact, the fog was so dense that I had to slow down and scrutinize the shore (which was quite close) a few times to make sure I wasn’t passing the mine.

Somewhat farther along the coast than I expected (probably because of the disorienting fog), I did come across the right beach and pulled up, placing the anchor high on the rocks and taking off up the road with a camera and SPOT. The road quickly became a tangle of alders, but I pushed through, soon finding a clear trail just uphill. I’m not sure if I missed the turn, or perhaps there were two roads there near the beach, but in any event, I found a promising clear path and turned to follow it, suddenly taken aback by the quite obvious, straight road before me! Sure enough, there was a very clear road heading down the coast, no large trees growing in it. The ground was overgrown with vegetation, but here and there were what appeared to be parallel logs or other man-made improvements. I was delighted, sure I could find my way to the mine with that kind of trail, even if the bottom of the road itself left something to be desired.

Unfortunately, about at the farthest point I could see when I first discovered the road, it ended at the edge of a deep, wide gully. If there had been any bridge or other infrastructure to cross, it was long gone. Surely the road had curved uphill before reaching the gully, and though there was a skunk cabbage swamp that could have been an old road curving uphill, I found nothing conclusive. Nevertheless, I kept looking, slowly making my way along what I thought was the most likely route for the road to take, traveling down short and probably false leads, ever hopeful to find something that was, again, conclusively a road. In some likely places I found survey tape of various vintage, but those could have been marking something else entirely. I was also heartened whenever I came across obvious tree stumps, perhaps indications that trees were cut for the road. And every time I crossed a gully I looked up and down, searching for some clue as to how the road crossed, but never found anything.

Traveling southeast down the coast, I slowly gained elevation until I was moving along the base of a steep slope. I eventually came to a very wide, steep gully with an opening in the canopy caused by an enormous fallen tree. I left my SPOT blinking on a log and pushed on to see what was on the next ridge over. I found myself in a narrow sunken passage between a ridge on my right and the steep slope up on my left; though I could see no details on the other side due to dense canopy and fog, I could tell that the ridge fell away and guessed that I was looking down toward the beach where the start of the other road to the mine is.

By that time I’d been away for about 50 minutes, so I turned back, fetched my SPOT (which had not found a satellite signal), and booked it back to the boat. As I went, I tried to memorize the topography so I could track my progress on a map back home. I went over the large final gully, two small streams close together, and then another larger stream with a barrel in the forest nearby before descending down to the cove with my boat. It took me 20 minutes to get back. Before I left, I explored the area at the town again, hiking up the channelized stream to the rock dam and back through the iron ruins to the boat. Cailey and I took off at about 3:30 into dense fog. I took an educated guess at the direction of Point Styleman and watched my compass as I disappeared into the fog. It was rather disorienting, especially as the minutes ticked by! It’s a 20 minute run from Sentinel Point to Point Styleman and I was only a little farther along than Sentinel when I left shore. I ran without seeing land for 10 minutes and, though I was reasonably confident of my course, I did start to get more conservative toward the end, bearing more toward the opposite side of Snettisham than Stephen’s Passage. I could see where the sun was through the fog, and was consistently quartering the seas, so I knew I wasn’t getting too far off course, but didn’t want to miss the turn and wind up in the middle of Stephen’s Passage without realizing it. I did see a mountaintop on the other side of Snettisham for a few minutes, which was heartening, but it disappeared again.

When land did emerge from the fog, I was dead on course for Point Styleman. Going around Seal Rocks I saw something I’d (perhaps surprisingly?) never seen before: three seals were hauled out on the northern most islet. At least, that’s what I thought at first. A closer look at my photos suggests that they may have been large gulls, given that the gray blobs seem to be about the same size as the gulls on the water around them. Chock it up to the fog, I guess! From there I could still see the mainland fuzzily to starboard and kept it in sight as I traveled, certainly hugging shore more closely than usual. Everything took on a slightly different appearance as landmarks were obscured. About the time we passed Limestone Inlet, the fog became more dense and I lost any hint of the sun; the air was dark, the fog gray. Coming around Grave Point I knew I’d have to make a crossing soon—either the shorter crossing to Grand Island, thence to Arden and to Douglas, or the longer single crossing from Circle Point to Bishop. The former seemed the better choice, but Grand Island was not in sight. I started to bear left, but never managed to leave sight of the mainland, not being as confident about running into Grand Island as I was about crossing Snettisham. Before I knew it I realized I was upon Circle Point and had passed most of Grand Island already! That did enable me to take a quick look at the sea lion haulout at Circle Point, though; I wasn’t close enough to get a good count, but there was a group—perhaps at least 30 animals.

Thankfully, at that moment, a shaft of sunlight appeared through the fog and illuminated the northern tip of Grand Island, directly across from me; it came and went a few times before making a permanent appearance, and the fog in the inlet was definitely breaking up. Using Grand Island as a landmark, I made for Point Arden, from which I could see Douglas. When I reached the channel I was once again in unfettered sunshine; behind me lay a white fog bank all across the Taku Inlet. The highest of the mountaintops that showed above were frosted with the first of the year’s termination dust. It was, officially, fall.

The port is fogged in	The road!!	Manmade structures on the road?
Overlook from the ridge	Grand Island emerges from the fog	On the other side of the fog bank across Taku Inlet