View upriver from Bullard's Landing
Taku
2014 - 4: Overnight
July 4-5
View upriver from Bullard's Landing
On my way back down the channel the previous week
on the way
up the Taku after being thwarted by three foot seas across from Marmion
Island,
I’d soothed my disappointment by checking the tides for the following
weekend.
A high school friend and her family were visiting me all week, but had
plans to
spend time with another friend on the 4th and 5th.
What
if I could sneak away for a quick overnight up the Taku? The tides were
late—6:44 and 7:30 p.m. It might just work.
So we did it. Chris and I left in the rain at 5:45
p.m.
Friday night and found the channel delightfully calm save for numerous
wakes.
We soon left the rain behind. Other than forgetting Cailey’s boat
blankets and
encountering a NW wind coming across Taku Inlet instead of the SW wind
that was
supposed to carry us north, the trip went without incident. I tried to
take a
GPS track along my route from Flat Point past Scow Cove and then to the
middle
of the river past Taku Point on my parent’s GPS. The river was high
enough that
the water was less than a foot from the top of the grassy meadow when
we
arrived there just after high tide and there was a lot of small flotsam
in the
water. We tied up the boat, grabbed the card out of the motion sensor
camera,
and opened up the cabin. After a simple dinner of macaroni and cheese,
we
watched a movie downstairs, interrupted by huge deer mouse that
scurried around
the screen outside the picture window (see photo).
Unfortunately, the long, quiet slumber I’d hoped
for was not
to be. Though we’d been careful about letting mosquitoes in though the
door, we
were plagued by one buzzing female after another; each time we hunted
down and
killed one, another showed up. In desperation, at least an hour after
we would
have been asleep, we resorted to dire measures, spraying the upstairs
with Raid
and sitting downstairs for 15 minutes while it did its job and
dissipated. The
upside of that adventure was that we saw a bat sweep back and forth
across the
window while we waited.
Despite that I would have guessed her exhausted,
Cailey
started to get antsy around 7:00 a.m.; I locked her downstairs once,
but more
sleep was not forthcoming. I finally got up and headed upriver with a
Swede saw
and clippers to clear the trail. My intent was to go to the end of the
trail
and work backwards, but I just couldn’t resist all the overhanging
branches in
the middle and w
ound
up trimming quite a bit along the way, leaving my
rain
jacket and Swede saw along the trail when it became clear I didn’t need
either
of them (I used clippers that morning instead). The bugs in the woods
were
ferocious, their objective aided by the fact that every time I cut a
spruce
bough from over my head I was showered with water from rain the night
before,
washing off my deet and causing it to run painfully into my eyes.
Eventually
I
made my way into the remnant meadows near the property line and began
cutting
all small trees that I could manage with the clippers. I started in the
meadow
on the mountain side of the trail and then worked my way toward the
river. In
the end I cut around 90 small spruces and small alders, which seemed to
barely
make a dent. Hopefully it’ll make more of a difference when I come back
and cut
the larger trees with the Swede saw or chainsaw. But after two hours of
wet and
sweaty work, I called it a morning and retreated to the lodge, enjoying
the
slightly more comfortable trail along the way and dong a bit more
trimming.
Cailey had cleverly abandoned me about 45 minutes earlier and returned
to the
cabin on her own, soaked down to her skin from the wet vegetation.
