A cruise ship emerges from the fog bank
Snettisham
2014 - 5: Stairs in the Woods
July 10-13
A cruise ship emerges from the fog bank
Sometimes a trip just feels right. By the time we
left I was
wildly sleep deprived, a condition not helped by a late Tuesday night
at the
Imperial to see Torsten off. Yet there was a favorable forecast ahead,
and
somehow I managed to run all my errands, take care of all the birds,
pack, fuel
the boat, etc. on Wednesday and Thursday without breaking down.
Wednesday after
work I purchased a 2000 watt Honda
generator (Joan) before I went grocery shopping, sit spotting, dinner
making,
food packing, and dishes cleaning. Thursday I got up early and cleaned
Bebop’s
mew and paid bills before work. At lunch I took Cailey for a short walk
at
Sandy Beach so I could fuel and haul all
my jerry jugs to the boat. I
left work
at 4:10 and had time to pick up extra beer, pack clothes and
perishables, feed
all the animals, and back up the photos on my phone before returning to
the
liquor store for ice (which had been half the point in going there in
the first
place), picking up Chris, and heading to the harbor. With everything
prepped
and only two quick loads to bring down, we were underway a little after
six
into a lovely, calm evening (myriad wakes aside). We traded off driving
so the
other could eat the Subway sandwiches Chris had picked up and had a
thoroughly
pleasant ride south. The tide was low enough that we decided to wait
until it
rose a bit more before unloading our gear, so I anchored it to the
beach and
opened up the lodge. By the time we dumped our gear inside, two whales
had
blown in the inlet, one in Gilbert Bay and the other quite close to the
sandbars. We were to have whale company all weekend, probably feeding
on the
same prey that had drawn in the many clusters of murrelets we’d passed
on the
way in. We lit a fire and watched the second episode of “The Leftovers”
on my
laptop, then unloaded all the gear when we could bring the boat almost
to the
log.
After going to bed late, I didn’t get up until
around 9:00
a.m. I have finally officially caved and allowed Cailey to sleep on the
bed at
Snettisham all night, so I was uncomfortably sandwiched most of the
time. While
Chris slept in a bit more, I read the manual for my new generator, then
started
her up for the first time and weed whacked the path down to the beach
and
around the benches and campfire. The grass was so long and thick on
some of the
path that I had to stop a couple of times and unwind it from below the
spool,
eventually using a screwdriver to painstakingly draw it out. Later I
also weed
whacked the path up to the lodge outhouse and trimmed some of the
larger shrubs
with clippers. A hummingbird came by, one of two that frequented the
feeders
over the weekend. Then I took two of the half racks of beer to the
freshet,
dumping some and leaving the rest on the porch of Harbor Seal, after
which
Chris appeared. We had tea and quesadillas before heading out on a
small excursion upriver to Whiting Point. This time I didn't cross the
river to the main channel, but stayed out from shore on this side some
ways past the grassy point before hugging the bank. We bothered a
merganser mother with a passel of ducklings just as we left shore to
cross the river and I was relieved to see her double back to them after
she'd left us behind. This time I didn't touch bottom until I tried to
go ashore too far downriver of the point and came up on the sandbar
there instead; nosing into the rocky nook was a little more tricky this
time, but we pulled it off and left the boat securely tied to alders
while we looked around--that point is such a pretty place.
After a little break, I continued my trimming
project while
Chris went to search for artifacts. With the clippers and Swede saw I
finished
trimming the path from Harbor Seal to the point, mostly taking out
small dead
spruces and alder branches. Chris found a bent metal strap in a clump
of
blueberries between Harbor Seal and the edge of the cliffs overlooking
the
creek, then found something that looks like a shovel or perhaps the ash
tray
from the bottom of a stove right in the middle of the new path beyond
the
bridge. I carried Joanie over to the trail junction past Cottonwood and
weed
whacked the paths to the outhouse and to the bridge (old Slugger was so
heavy I
did not carry it unless I had to). Chris then chose two out of many
metal
detector hits in front of Mink and we each excavated one. I found a
larger
piece of filigreed metal with a central dome that matched the one I’d
found on
the other side of the cabin earlier; his hole produced four different
artifacts, most of which could have been part of a stove and two of
which had
numbers and letters that could help us determine what it is.
Throughout the bugs were terrible—noseeums and larger flies--and they
eventually
drove us inside. But by then it was getting toward dinner time, so
Chris
starting taking supplies to the rocky point where we planned to have
dinner. He
started a fire in the small rock circle there while I managed to cut
five 2x6s
and a 4x4 in half with a sawzall in preparation for working on my steps
down
toward Harbor Seal. Naturally I’d left my skilsaw in town, but the
sawzall
functioned well enough with the new blade I put it in it, and Joan is a
joy to
work with, so light and quiet! By the time I was finished the fire was
ready
for alder sticks for grilling, so I got that going while Chris prepped
steaks.
Then we traded off and I heated up some green beans and made stove top
stuffing
while he grilled on the point. The steaks turned out amazing—the alder
wood flavor
is wonderful—but the dining experience left something to be desired. On
top of
the steady, if light, rain, the bugs were still vicious and we quickly
retreated inside once we were finished. That evening we watched Cloud
Atlas on
the couch in the lodge, fueled by dessert café francais that
kept me up hours
past the end of the movie.
 Prepping Joanie |
 The path before weedwhacking |
 The path aftee weekwhacking |
 A clearer path to the point |
 Starting to tame the trail to the outhouse |
 Someone's been eating a lot of berries |
 Chris and a barrel hoop (?) |
 Chris excavates |
 Finished taming the trail |
 Iron artifact |
 Excavating in front of Mink |
 Steaks on the point |
When we got back I carried a load of 2x6s over to
the stair
site, then picked up my clothes so I could put on socks and shoes
(working on a
slope with lumber seemed dangerous to the tops of my feet). First I
nailed a
2x6 to the back of the top of the risers to connect them, then nailed
on two
treads to form a stable set of stairs to work with. I’d already done
most of
the excavation work necessary for the risers, and they were
surprisingly level
when I set them up. On further inspection, though, I decided to back
them into
the hillside a little more to make the slope down to the top step less
dramatic, so I hacked away at that and brought the stairs in another
six inches
or so. That brought the bottom of the stairs up even higher than
before, and I
could see that I would need more than the 4x4 to support them than I
originally
had hoped. I wound up turning the stairs over and nailing a 2x6 across
the
bottom for added height. With some more excavation, I added the 4x4
below that
and nailed it on through the top of the 2x6. With the addition of a
small rock
I’d dug out from the bank earlier, the stairs were stable and square.
All that
sounds very simple, but all the excavating required clipping small and
large
roots many times over. Not to mention all the trips to other places for
more
tools, gloves, and the rest of the lumber.
I nailed in the rest of the treads (two required
shims to
level out, which I had to retrieve from the shed) and admired my work.
It left
something to be desired. The stairs themselves look pretty good (a few
not quite
accurate cuts with the sawzall notwithstanding), but it really needed
another
step to make it all the way down the slope. I knew that to start out
with, but
Don Able doesn’t make stair risers with more than four steps. I did
start
scraping away the topsoil from above the stairs to make a more pleasant
slope
down to them and would up digging out a
large, flattish round rock, which I temporarily placed at the bottom to
ameliorate the drop. By then I was tired, sweaty, and famished, and the
mosquito coils that had helped the deet keep the bugs at bay were long
burned
out. I dropped my tools, stashed my gloves under a log, and headed back
to the
lodge where I found Chris. It was after noon and I was hungry, so I
made lunch
and we relaxed. After a little post-lunch trip reporting listening to
two whales
breathing in the inlet, I fell into a nap. Cailey was on the couch with
us but
eventually escaped over the back (probably from all the legs on top of
her);
this led her to pace around the lodge looking for a comfy place to lie
down
(her bed was outside) until I eventually dropped my blanket on the
floor for
her. All the while I managed to nap and make up a bit of my lost sleep.
In the meantime, it had begun to rain densely on
and off. I
had ideas about kayaking out in the calm inlet with the whales and the
mist,
but didn’t follow through. I read for a bit and then finished cleaning
up the
stairs site and further scraping down a path to the top. I found a
potential
rock to place at the bottom on the path to the rocky point which I
hoped Chris
would help me dig up later. By the time I got back to the lodge it was
6:00 p.m.
and I drank a cold Tecate on the porch while watching two whale fluking
in the
inlet. Crows wandered the beach and, as we’d heard all weekend,
fledglings
begged from adults, flapping their wings compellingly. We both noticed
the
abundance of crows in Snettisham this weekend, starting with a large
flock at
Sentinel Point on the way in. The eagles weren’t very active at that
moment,
but earlier I’d seen one fly a stick into the nest and they were both
working
the area over the weekend so I have hopes that they have an eaglet or
two up
there. There are also an abundance of varied thrushes around and I
often
startled them in the salmonberry bushes near the lodge. They sang
frequently,
that soft fall call that seems strangely out of place mid-summer coming
from so
close and so often. I’d heard Pacific wrens chittering in the woods,
chickadees
calling, and seen a juvenile Wilson’s warbler by the porch. I was also
hearing
a brand new song high in the trees while I worked all weekend,
indescribable
but unfamiliar, and hopelessly lost in the forest. Bonaparte’s gulls,
including
many immature, fed along the water along with mew gulls. Earlier I’d
seen an
unusual congregation of seals near the boat—seven seals stayed in close
association while others were more normally scattered around the river.
They
kept raising their faces up like sea lions—very interesting.
A little later I made dinner (roast beef/bison
melts and
corn on the cob), wandered down to the boat,
and called
it a night.
I slept in egregiously the next morning again, not
rising
until 9:30. It’s quite a change to have an adult dog! Chris followed
shortly
thereafter and we had a little breakfast and tea on the porch. I did a
bunch of
little chores, including putting a pillow case on the pillow in
Cottonwood,
sweeping, bringing lime and wet wipes to the cabin outhouse, and
filling the
wood box. Then Chris and went in search of a large rock to place at the
bottom
of the new steps. We found a couple of likely candidates on the way to
the
rocky point and below it, but he wound up convincing me that it would
be better
left to the group of guys we hoped to bring down the next weekend.
Instead we
set about finishing the stairs which I’d leveled from one side to the
other but
not front to back. This turned out to be quite a bit of work. We kept
excavating under the 4x4 that was supporting the stairs, figuring that
if we
did so they would naturally drop and level themselves out. When that
didn’t
work we excavated along the risers, since the stairs were also resting
there.
Chris suggested that we pivot the stairs straight out from the mountain
to
access underneath rather than awkwardly holding them up or moving them
aside,
and that worked very well. We did this several times until it finally
sunk in
that we were only perpetuating the situation deeper each time. I’d been
reluctant to work from the other end—propping up the stop of the stairs
so they
tilted down a little more—but this turned out to be the correct
strategy.
I
found a handful of rocks about an inch or an inch and a half tall and
placed
them level under the top of the stairs while Chris held them up. With
only a
little more work excavating under the 4x4 again to level it out under
there and
adding another rock in the corner and we were done. I swept them off
with m
gloves, removed the PT tags, and admired them. Coupled with the big
paths
around them, they look great. Hard to believe (well, not really) that
that
whole area was a wild grove of devil’s club just last year. It
continues the
transformation of the property into a slightly more civilized and
easily
navigated homestead.
By that time it was after noon and we were both
hungry and
tired. We had a cold beer on the porch, then ate lunch, and as soon as
I was
done cleaning and packing we headed out around 4:15. Just outside the
inlet, we
passed over a vivid river/salt water transition line; I’m not sure what
conditions create such a stark contrast (most are gentler) but there
could
hardly have been a more sharp contrast between the gray brown water and
the
deep green, and it felt like we lost a bit of elevation too. It wasn’t
even low
tide.
The seas were blissfully calm through the port and
out into
Stephen’s Passage up to about Limestone Inlet where we encountered
sharp, cruel
seas from the northwest or so, coming down and across Admiralty. It’s
not a
wind direction I’m familiar with there, as most northwesterlies aren’t
very
lively in that section below Point Arden. I hoped we’d get some shelter
from
Grand Island and then be in the trough of it past Arden, but like
virtually
every solid seas prediction I’ve made this summer, I was dead wrong.
The seas
did lighten up just a bit past Grave Point, but we still fought them
into Taku
Inlet. Ahead of us a fog bank lay across the inlet and the eerie visage
of a
cruise ship emerged from it. Before we knew it, we were inside the fog
and the
green water was glassy calm. It was some of the densest fog I’ve ever
been in,
dark, with no hint of a sun through it. We quickly ran up on a gillnet
and
lurched to avoid it. It was the first of several encounters with
gillnetters
fishing in the fog. Once we rode up on another net in the water. The
terminal
buoy was lost in the fog and the boat was half shrouded, though not far
away.
It was pretty exciting! At one point there was a dim shadow of land to
the left
and we’d run out of gillnetters so I figured we’d passed Point Arden.
However,
there was no glimpse of Douglas to set a course by! I continued in the
direction we’d been traveling in, as I don’t generally change course
significantly on the way into the channel, and we cautiously continued
on our
way. A boat emerged from the fog to our left in a slow and terrifying
way—it
turned out to be the Alaskan Dream and we passed safely across her bow.
That was the last boat we saw. We stayed on course
and went
on and on and on, peering into the fog for any sign of Douglas. I
wasn’t timing
the ride and we weren’t going at full speed anyway so I wasn’t sure
where we
should have been, but it did seem like we ought to have found the
channel by
the time we saw the hazy shape of land to our left. But it wasn’t
Douglas. I
thought about taking a close look to orient myself, but instead decided
that it
must be Admiralty and turned away from it in the hopes of running into
Douglas.
We were soon shrouded in fog again and the longer that went on the
eerier it
became. I wasn’t scared, but it was very unnerving to genuinely not
know where
I was. Chris and I both had an idea, but there was no way to be sure!
To make
sure the compass on my boat was working, we dug out our iphones, losing
the
signal just before Chris got the GPS program to work (which suggested
that we
were, in fact, on the back side of Douglas). We shut down, hearing
boats in the
distance in two directions, then decided on a northerly trajectory. We
would
either hit the mainland or hit Douglas.
We probably didn’t travel in that direction very
long before
the shape of land finally appeared off the port bow. I thought it was
the hump
of a mountain contour and sped toward it, only to pull back 100 yards
from a
rocky shoreline, realizing that the mound I thought was a distant
mountain was
only the first line of trees on a nearby shore. Believing it to be
Douglas, I
hung a right and followed the shore, shocked to suddenly come upon a
huge cove,
the inside of which was almost lost to sight through the fog—I could
certainly
see no details. Ahead was a reef jutting out from the other side of the
cove.
It was the most unnerving thing yet. I could think of no place I knew
that had
these features, and I was nervous about entering the cove because of
possible
rocks in an unknown place! I was very out of sorts. And then I realized
that
the cove was at the southern end of Douglas and the reef and land ahead
was
Marmion Island! We were back on track, and had been exactly where Chris
and I
had thought we were. We hugged shore so we kept it in sight all the way
up the
channel, which mean staying closer than I would normally feel
comfortable. The
fog lightened a little closer to town and it began to rain, so our
fog-damp
faces and hair became soaked. We wound up home a little later than
expected,
but it was well worth the adventure!
 Artifacts from Mink cabin |
 Cailey "helps" |
 High tide |
Lost in the fog