Snettisham 2013 - 2: Barefoot
  May 24-27

Loons near Seal Rocks

It's Friday afternoon, clouding over after days of sunshine, and I'm at the harbor jittery from utter exhaustion following a very long week. I fueled the boat while Chris brought most of the gear down the rather steep ramp and we were underway at 5:30, right on schedule, drinking leaving-the-harbor beers. The evening was mild with promising patches of faint blue far down the channel. We fought through too many boat wakes in the channel, then encountered nothing but pleasant ripples all the way to Snettisham. No whales again, but there was a huge flock of Pacific loons at the entrance to the port and Chris heard lions when we changed fuel tanks a little farther inside. Unfortunately, we arrived yet again at low tide in very similar conditions to the last landing. The first time I shut off the engine I was too far from the edge of the sandbars and drifted rapidly downstream in the river current. Chris pointed out that the channel ran right along the sandbar there so we were able to putter back up a ways before grounding just a few feet from "dry" ground. We unloaded the tote, cooler, backpacks, and a couple of other items and made one trip each to the lodge.

Chris built a fire and I started dinner; while the pasta cooked I made 12 cups of hummingbird food in the big pot and filled the newly waterproofed feeders after dinner (I'd fixed the major leaks they had in their bases with non-toxic aquarium glue). They're so big I can even hang them without a stepladder! We watched the most recent episode of Hannibal on Chris's laptop while the numbness of exhaustion wore off, and headed to bed relatively early.

Cailey should have been worn out too, but instead she thought 5:00 a.m. would be a good time to get up (she would never choose such an early time in Juneau). I eventually relented to her incessant pacing and let her out, only to let her back in perhaps an hour later when she kept walking across the porch and waking me up. Thankfully, she seemed to have spent her excess energy and promptly curled up on the bed, allowing me to sleep until about 10:15, a feat I doubt I've accomplished in a year and a half. By the time we got up, the morning was mostly spent and we finished it with Russian tea and cookies on the porch in the sunshine (the cloud cover from the night before had burnt away). Two female and one male hummingbird were frequenting the new feeders and we watched a greater yellowlegs near the water (and, briefly, a smaller sandpiper). The most exciting activity I only heard about--down the beach, perhaps in the vicinity of the eagle's nest, I heard crow calls followed by a strange gurgling sound, the unmistakable noise of a nestling being fed. So there WAS a crow colony down there! I've noted for years the prevalence of crows perching around the eagle tree and harassing the eagles there...I suspect the crow colony was there before the eagles moved their nest (assuming that nest replaced the one in the center of my property that came down with its tree in 2003), but only because it seems an unlikely place to select. Perhaps there are crow reasons to nest near an eagle. Soon I hope to locate the actual nests and see just how close they are to each other. There were other birds about too (I heard varied thrushes, Wilson's warblers, golden crowned kinglets, sooty grouse and, later, hermit thrushes), but noticeably less than on my previous trip; spring migration has largely passed.

Soon we had lunch, also in the sunshine, and then I was off to start on some chores. When setting up the water system a few weeks earlier, I'd identified a couple of bear bite leaks in the hoses that I wanted to fix. I gathered up hose clamps from the box of plumbing supplies in the attic, screwdriver, hacksaw, and leatherman, cut some lengths of garden hose (the one the bear destroyed a few winters ago) and headed up to the water source. There were two leaks close together up there a few feet below the valve. I estimated the length of hose needed to wrap around the black pipe, cut it off with the saw, then sliced it open with the leatherman. I wrapped each piece around the hose, lightly screwed a hose clamp around them, then slid them over the single-tooth holes and tightened like crazy. One leak stopped entirely, the other one continued to drip, but since it dripped into a wet seep that runs into the freshet gully I decided that was alright. The final leak was on the length of hose that branches from the main line to Cottonwood cabin. This fix also continued to drip and I wasn't able to tighten it sufficiently with all my strength, so I dug a little hole under the drip and put a clump of dead moss there to absorb it. I'll keep that hose off when I don't have guests, so the drippage will be minimal.

Unfortunately, I'd discovered another leak--this time in a valve. The hose leading to Cottonwood from the main line had apparently been pulled and manhandled enough so the plastic coupling that screws into the valve and connects to the hose was angling out of the valve (as though it had been cross threaded). To fix it I'd have to remove the hose from the coupling in order to unscrew the coupling from the valve and start over again. So I returned to the lodge for a kettle of hot water to soften the hose before putting it back together again. Everything came apart easily enough; I added a little scrap of hose tape to the coupling, screwed it into the valve, refit the hose over the other end, and everything worked great. But a couple of other couplings were leaking there as well, including the two sides in the main line of the T-shaped coupling that splits the hose toward Cottonwood. I poured some hot water over them to soften the hose, then tightened the hose clamps on both with great success, stopping both leaks. The last leak was from the coupling just in front of the valve, which wasn't even pushed all the way over the coupling. I'd probably run out of hot water by then when I first put it on and wasn't able to push it all the way over before the hose cooled and shrunk. So I decided to loosen the hose clamp a little, pour hot water over it, push it on all the way, and then tighten it. That effort failed badly. I was initially impressed by how quickly the hot water worked, as I could see the leak visibly grow stronger moments after I started pouring; that impression lasted only a split second, as the coupling then gave way entirely, shooting off the valve and releasing a torrent of free flowing water, soaking one leg and, well, irritating me. I could have predicted that!

Well, there was nothing for but to fix it, and that required turning off the water source. So I tramped all the way back up there, came back down, fixed everything back up, and turned it back on again. Having improved all four links in that juncture, I declared the job done. Oh, did I mention I did all this barefoot? I've decided to make a serious attempt to desensitize/toughen up my feet for the summer, so started a crash course. I'd walked in xtratuffs to the lodge that morning, then stripped to bare feet. So all my wandering around the woods was on tender soles! It turns out that those nice looking pine needles littering the ground are still quite sharp. I certainly moved slower that way (not a bad thing) and lost productivity, but it was an interesting experience, and hopefully will reward me later in the summer with less painful barefoot excursions.

After that I bustled around doing a few other chores, including scraping the muddy ground around the shed well away from all the plywood siding so I can clean and paint it later this summer, washing the windows on the cabins (still squeegee-less, so not as effective as I'd like), scrubbing the roof of the cabin outhouse (which was quite overgrown with algae and debris from years of growth), and covering the shed windows with newspaper (while mourning the death of a Wilson's warbler, the first and, I hope, only casualty to those windows as I will soon replace the paper with ultraviolet images to deter them). While I was crossing the boardwalk to the cabins I heard a lot of intense zeeeing calls from the spruces in front of me and was delighted to see a pair of golden crowned kinglets. Their songs are ubiquitous at Snettisham (and Juneau) but they are, in my experience, rarely seen, their songs emanating from the high, inaccessible evergreen canopy.  But here were two in plain sight. I've long suspect the zeeing chatter I often hear near my house in Juneau to originate with them, and this lent credence to my theory, but I could not tell for certain whether they were actually making those sounds. It did stop after they flew off, though. As I was moving around the property I also took some photos of the bark that had loosed itself from the great tree that fell down across the property many years ago, only now hanging down in great sheets, piling up underneath.

After that I was ready for a corona and some relaxing and reading on the porch. After a good break, I headed off for my sit spot behind the lodge where I watched (and listened) to some interesting squirrel activity. On the way back to the lodge, I took a roundabout path through the hillside of devil's club groves, harvesting young bundles of leaf buds. I took as many from along the path to the water source as I could (figuring I might cut them later in the summer anyway), and otherwise tried to space out my harvesting. Though they are super abundant, I still hope I made no impact (and perhaps it's early enough to send up more buds to replace them). That night I made bison burgers and stir fried the devil's club buds; the latter were delicious, though greatly reduced in bulk under heat, their herby/minty flavor very pleasant. Mostly they tasted like butter, so I think I'll reduce that the next time to try to retain more indigenous flavor. After dinner Chris and I decided to walk down the beach in search of the crow colony, but my tender feet made such slow going over the rocks that we stopped at the boat, picked up a few items I'd left behind, and returned to the lodge. The eagles were on site in and near the nest.

Cailey's collection of interesting sticks	One bear bite fixed	Inside the sloughing bark
Eagles at home	Neat anchor tracks	Cailey appreciates sticks with character

The next morning Cailey got up at 5:20 a.m., but instead of heading outside, she climbed on the bed to warm up (she was shivering). At 7:45 I let her out, but she kept up her annoying habit of returning to the porch periodically; I'm not sure when her porch presence became persistent, but at 9:00 (still pretty late for me) I couldn't take her constant porch noise and got up. She was so excited about my emergence from the cabin that she took the path backwards in front of me, dancing and prancing and grabbing sticks ecstatically. She treated Chris the same way when he got up later. I heard the roar of the river as soon as I got far enough away from the roar of the creek running by Hermit Thrush. It was just past a -4.6 tide, just about as low as it gets, and the river was split into two main channels, each with large sections of standing waves at the end. It was very noisy and very exciting. Eagles stood by the channels waiting for or eating their meals. I headed up into the woods behind the lodge again where I listened to golden crowned kinglets move from the trees upriver into the trees overhead without ever seeing them. In 20 minutes I saw a single bird, but it was spectacular! A hawk came out of nowhere, flew straight toward me, banked when it was about 15' away, and disappeared into the trees upriver. The kinglets went silent, a Pacific slope flycatcher I hadn't heard before inexplicably started singing/calling nearby, and in the distance I heard what sounded like an alarmed ruby-crowned kinglet. I decided to abandon my post in the hopes of tracking down the kinglet (if that's what it was) and hopefully spot the hawk in a nearby tree. I did manage to get closer to the alarm call, but it stopped before I tracked down the maker (not surprisingly on my still-bare feet).

After that excitement I did a few more little chores, delivering supplies to the cabin outhouse, measuring the log bridge so I could plan its completion, and greasing the corroded doorknob and hinges on Harbor Seal cabin (which I did not protect last winter). I sat in the sun on the point for a few minutes before heading back to the lodge and getting ready to cut a piece of plywood for the shed door. I gathered skilsaw and related tools and laid the plywood that covered the opening all winter on sawhorses and began studying the door opening. I could see that in order for it to swing out, I'd have to carve away a good bit of the ground in front, as it slopes up. The idea of putting the door on rollers was sounding better and better and I decided that was definitely the better solution, so I put everything away and worked on inventorying the pressure treated wood in the lumber pile instead. I want to at least plank the log bridge this summer, so thought I'd see what I had in stock first. While I was working around the shed, I was tantalized by a warbler-like song emanating from the salmonberry bramble at the edge of the beach. I've been trying to differentiate classic warbler songs this spring, to some frustration, largely because every warbler with a different song I track down turns out to be a Wilson's warbler. I am not confident at this point that I could distinguish between them, yellow-rumped, and yellow warblers. Something about this song seemed different, so I grabbed binoculars and started looking for him even though I figured he was probably just another Wilson's with an unusual song (they are very common in that area). Of course, as soon as I directed my attention on the bushes the singing stopped and I could only tell he was still there by periodic chips. I knew that I was going about the stalk all wrong--riveting my attention on any sound or movement is about the most alarming thing I could do--but I really wanted to find him, and didn't want to take the time to simply wait and hope he appeared in my peripheral vision. Eventually I was rewarded after I snuck behind the shed to follow his movements. What I saw through my binoculars was no Wilson's warbler--it was an exotic, fancy looking bird unlike anything I'd ever seen! In fact, I had no idea what it could be. Excited, I got a few good looks and left him alone to peruse my bird app (Sibley's) and field guide (Armstrong). I struck out. This bird was yellow on the underside, dull on the back, had a black band through the eye and white crescents above and below the eye. It was so distinct and yet I came up with absolutely no hits! I returned to the bushes a little later and had another fabulous look, further solidifying the fact that I could not find the bird anywhere in the guides. It wasn't altogether surprising that the field guide didn't help (it was one of the earlier versions of Birds of Alaska and has rather poor photos), but I was really baffled that I couldn't find him in my smartphone app. A few days later two birding expert friends in Juneau suggested McGillivray’s warbler and he was the spitting image. Rare in Alaska, Sibley's bird guide app doesn't have them appearing here at all, hence its failure. A new bird for me, and impressions of his warbler-like song were correct.

While I was sorting and measuring lumber and pleased about my bird encounters during the morning, Chris came down the path and stopped to chat. Soon my attention was distracted by some crackling in the woods above me--too big to be a bird rustling. Excitedly, I turned and peered around, finally spotting a brown bear on the steep mountainside. And then another bear shot up the slope to the right of the first, a much smaller bear! The mother turned and peered in our direction, then started huffing and heading up the mountain. I grabbed my binoculars in time to see her disappear, followed by no less than three yearling cubs.

We soon broke for lunch--more quesadillas in the sunshine--then I scrubbed the roof of the lodge outhouse before having more tea and cookies on the porch. I could have sat on that porch all day long, but it was nearing time to leave, so I instead took the motion sensor camera and set it up on a spruce tree looking down the game trail behind the lodge. The day before we'd captured 125 photos of Cailey chewing sticks on the porch, then moved it to behind the shed which didn't yield any photos despite the fact that Cailey had raced just in front of it chasing something (another mink)? Chris got it working again, so we're hopeful we'll capture something on the game trail soon. Then I did the dishes and cleaned the lodge, scrubbed the bottom of the shed siding to remove the mud stuck to it from winter (so I can paint next time), and buttoned up my cabin. We relaxed a little inside before I finally drug myself out to the boat (leaving Cailey in the lodge for once) and prepping it. We pulled away at 3:35, fighting a nasty chop across Gilbert Bay and all the way out of the Port. I headed to the shore to get in the lee of Mist Island, but even it did little to assuage the chop (I noted on the way that one clump of sea lions remained on the colony, perhaps 30-50 animals). The sea conditions in the Port were almost identical to those I encountered on my last trip, which had led to a very uncomfortable, slow banging plod up Stephen's Passage, so I was expecting and dreading the same. With good cheer, Chris pointed out that we had sun and that Cailey appeared to be so worn out as to not mind the banging so much. I learned a long time ago that you can never predict the seas, and sure enough if we didn't wind up with a following sea all the way home despite the persistent clear skies (clear skies almost always come with winds from the north/west or calm weather). I couldn't explain it, but I was grateful, and we had a lovely ride home. The huge group of loons had moved just south of Seal Rocks and a humpback sounded just north of there heading south.

Standing waves across the river at low tide

The mouth of one channel at low tide

Pacific Loon near Seal Rocks

The back of Cottonwood cabin through a crack in the bark of the fallen tree