Snettisham
2022 - 4: Atmospheric River
August 4 - 8
Six o'clock and the warmth of
the
lodge was putting me to sleep, so I've returned outside to the more or
less still evening. Shortly after arriving, the breeze picked up,
gusting from Gilbert Bay and making me very grateful I'd come down
early. Now it appears still, so perhaps it wasn't an early front to the
impending storm after all. We've had weeks of rain of varying ferocity,
admittedly interspersed with cloudy, dry afternoons that were very
pleasant. After the dramatic departure from the July Taku trip (in
which we "overnighted" in Taku Inlet and braved too-rough seas on the
return at 4:00 am), I was in poor
condition to plan a group trip just four days later, but I managed it
and had
the boat loaded with everything but perishables and backpacks by Friday
morning. The forecast, though mediocre for the day, called for
a storm on Sunday, 3-4 foot seas, nothing I'd want to come back in, let
along with guests. And so started half a day of agony worrying about
the
weather. By the time I'd finished my three and a half hours of work and
headed up to my mom's house at noon to meet up with her and Jia Jia, I
was reconciled to canceling the trip since Kyle had work on Monday, and
the other two were leaning in that direction too. I was torn--on the
one hand, I was supremely exhausted, but on the other hand, this was
the first opportunity to have a family trip to Snettisham since Jia Jia
was eight. In fact, just that morning, Shutterfly had sent me an email
with
a picture of Jia Jia at Snettisham from 13 years before and it seemed
like a sign. To our surprise, Kyle was quite willing to come despite
the potential for a longer-than-planned stay and, once he confirmed
that he didn't have jury duty on Monday, we gathered our things and
headed to the harbor. [Side note: I just felt
shaking which I thought might have been an earthquake (6:11 pm on 8/4)
but nothing was noted during that time.]
It was a quick departure and Ezra saw us off, despite the fact that I was so distracted and stressed that I'd forgotten to tell him we were on our way. We stopped to fuel the Kathy M and then drank Pacificos down the channel, more cold (and thus more enjoyable) than previous trips when they'd been more warmed up. We chatted amiably on the way out, encountering unhopeful seas in the channel, hopeful seas on the way to Arden, and then rather unpleasant seas thereafter. With sea water sloshing onto the windshield and the boat rocking around in the 2-3 seas with white caps, we called it and turned around. Back at my house, I unpacked the groceries, started a fire in the fireplace, made drinks for Jia Jia and Kyle and, later, my mom, then made bison burgers for everyone's dinner. Afterwards we played Wingspan, which we'd long planned to do, so at least we had pleasant evening together. I crashed that night, and the rest of the weekend.
The exhaustion lingered into the next week enough for me to decide to forgo Pavlov Harbor yet again in favor of more time up the Taku later in the month. I've been so enjoying our trips there and we're making such good, long-term progress that I hated the idea of missing a month, not to mention the potential for picking any berries this year. With having been away from Snettisham for a month and Sweetheart pending, it didn't seem likely I could do everything this month. It felt like the right thing to do. So I took another weekend off (even getting all caught up on the garden and doing some fall chores like oiling the kitchen cabinets) to rest up and get ready for the last push of the summer--August harvests and then closeup. And now I'm here, on the following Thursday, having left on the one rain-less day (in the extended forecast to come). Although there were pockets of blue sky over the Coast Mountains, the clouds were low most of the way, especially near the entrance to the port where the ceiling must have been no more than 100-200 feet. But, by the time I made it to Snettisham, the sky was mostly blue and the sun was shining. The water was calm down the channel, then we encountered some mild seas coming from the Taku and swells enough to slow us down around the gillnetters at Arden before they turned with us and died out entirely past Grave Point. The kind of run that I love to make, so much more pleasant than most I've made this year. I saw a porpoise in the channel, but nothing else jumped out at me on the way down other than a long line of scoters at Point Styleman.
The flats were much larger than I expected an hour before a 2.4' tide, but thankfully I had only a tote and bags to carry and made it in two trips, anchoring the Ronquil where she sat. I soon had all the systems going, ate lunch, put up a hummingbird feeder, and set about my first bird survey of the weekend, starting on a camp chair at the log across the path and facing the forest. There was plenty of tittering in the bushes and shrubs, which was good to hear, but I could see little more than an occasional darting bird, so it wasn't a very satisfying survey. I finished it on the porch, but added little to the list there. Highlights were a Pacific-slope flycatcher hawking from the bottom of the alder and perching in plain view (one had been calling earlier) and fifteen mergansers in the inlet who came up to preen on the edge of the flats downriver. Overall today I've seen many of the expected locals: Wilson's and orange-crowned warblers (both sexes and small groups), chickadees, varied thrushes, wrens, the flycatcher, plus ravens and jays and gulls. After the survey, we went for a COASST walk, my last of the season I expect in bare feet. I initially thought it would also be the last of the season in a t-shirt, but I quickly put my sweater back on against the steady breeze. The mud felt great on my feet, though. I moved the anchor farther out on the flats so the Ronquil would float farther out on the next tide. There were at least 130 gulls wading or sitting on the flats or bathing in the river. They were mostly short-billed as far as I could tell, but there were at least two adult Bonaparte's among them. On the way back, two little short-billed sandpipers (not their name) were sharing the flats, which was unusual, and a yellowlegs greeted me when I neared the lodge.
When we returned, I picked up the trail camera cards, opened up Hermit Thrush, and then decided, since the weather was fine, to trim the spruce branches that are next to the satellite dish. I recall them being difficult to reach and, though I thought they were probably not interfering at present, they could well grow out, so I thought I'd be proactive. I put up the step ladder on top of the riverboat and laughed when I glanced at the front of the nearby satellite dish. Several branches of gray currents were growing right against the dish, covering about a quarter of it. I couldn't believe internet was working at all with that growth! The branches I targeted were surprisingly easy to reach and I felt good about the open area upriver of the dish; nothing there now would seem to be able to intercept any signals, and the currents soon came down as well. I tested the speed before and after cutting the currents: the download speed appeared unchanged, but the upload speed did improve, which may or may not have been related. Then Cailey and I settled down for the afternoon as the sun finally hit the porch, the deck dried out, and it grew hot. I first retreated to the sun-dappled end of the porch and drank a beer (cooled in the freezer) and then under the canopy in the woods. Cailey sweetly made her way over after I'd been there a few minutes and laid down on a brush pile until a squirrel came by and disrupted us--mainly because I thought it might be a mink and so jumped up and yelled at it to run. The bird life picked up a bit in the late afternoon, but quieted down while I had dinner inside. All in all, I feel a bit worn out and hope for a long, deep sleep tonight. It is very good to be away from traffic noise and from people. Tomorrow an atmospheric river and strong winds are predicted to descend on northern Southeast, so I expect a cozy day. There are no expectations.
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Although the tranquil evening beckoned me, I headed to Hermit Thrush relatively early to light a fire and dispel the expected dampness. It seemed much better than last year, but the top layer of the down quilt was a little moist. I discovered that my flashlight was almost dead, so I wound up reading by the light of the large battery powered lantern that was gifted to me years ago, awkwardly holding it in my lap. We slept reasonably well and plenty warm and I was pleased to see only a little moisture on the windows this morning. I must have slept in a little, to 8:30 at least, and had a good long snuggle-rubbing session with Cailey before we got up. I brought the down comforter back to the lodge to dry out, hanging it on the rocking chair with the expectation of a fire later. After I changed out the propane tank on the range and got cleaned up, I ate some yogurt and granola for breakfast--not as cold as I would have expected, which made me uneasy about the fridge--and then drank a cup of weak jasmine tea. I'd told a couple people over text that I was going to have tea and watch the storm come in, but that didn't turn out to be quite accurate. It had drizzled in the night and started again shortly after we reached the lodge; soon it was steady rain, but not dramatic, and was accompanied by no significant wind. The birds had been energetically tittering and passing through while I puttered inside, but at 9:15 when I emerged they had mellowed, whether because of the hour or the increasing rain I don't know. But I did camp out on the porch as promised, spending much of the morning editing trip reports from earlier in the summer until my laptop battery died. Lunch and some reading followed, then the wind finally started to pick up in the early afternoon and the rain became heavy. Naturally, this was the time I decided to suit up and do a little work before retreating inside. I'd noticed that the roof of the shed had a hefty layer of material on top again (I'd scraped it all off a few years ago), so grabbed my medium-sized ladder and set it up on the downriver side, pushing the dirt down each section of the metal roofing with a hoe. Then I moved to the lower end and pulled the material down toward me, ejecting it off the roof with my hands, then hoed most if it away from the building and cleaned out the stream channel (not running) on the edge of the building at the same time. This went reasonably well (much easier than last time when the accumulation was deeper), so I moved onto Mink Cabin, which has been nagging at me for years. I started on the downriver side, which had a couple inches of dirt on most of it. Like the shed, it took three ladder positions to reach the whole side. What that part was done, I used the clippers to cut several large devil's club boughs that had overhung the path to Schist House and the at the bottom of the nearby stairs along with surrounding new growth and newly-leaning salmonberries. Then I tackled the upriver roof of Mink which had a heavier layer of soil and broken branches along with some small devil's clubs, several elderberries, and a few patches of enchanter's nightshade. The rain was very heavy by then. The shed was fairly well protected from rain by the great overhanging tree, but Mink offered no such protection and the rain falling on the newly-cleared metal roofing bounced onto my face. Finally, I trimmed back more vegetation that was reaching onto the trail to the bridge and along it. With guests hopefully coming in a few weeks, I want it looking nice! I left the ladder at Mink to tackle a large branch near the roof and to hopefully trim the edge of the metal roofing which has now been partially enveloped by the growing spruce tree next to it.
I met up with an anxious dog back at the lodge and we headed inside where I divested myself of my flannel and hoodie (both damp in the neck and cuffs), lit a fire, checked in at home, and settled in for the rest of the afternoon, much of which was spent reading about Welsh history. I heated up leftover homemade pizza for dinner, which was amazing, and ate it where I was camped out at the card table by the picture window. I had tried to do some errands online earlier, but found that I did not have any motivation to do so. The new stove is working wonderfully and I've been rotating the down comforter to try to dry all edges of it before we head to Hermit Thrush for the night. The stove did put off a bad odor after a couple of hours and I wound up opening most of the windows and the door to help air it out. Now that I've closed them I realize how much heat it is putting out. I love the way it slowly burns through its fuel, releasing steady heat for long periods of time, needing little tending once underway. A wonderful little stove, and hopefully this was the last of the chemical odors to burn off, maybe produced because this is the first long-term fire it's had (the first time I've added wood to it). And, throughout, I've enjoyed the sound of the heavy rain on the metal roof, free of its forest floor since last summer. Seas are still rolling in from Gilbert Bay and the forecast is calling for wind through the weekend, so I may be here an extra day. Perhaps tomorrow I'll see if I can connect with my work laptop with the potential for a work day here on Monday.
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I watched a bit of Glitch on Netflix before heading to bed (my tablet won't turn on), arriving around 9:00, the comforter wrapped in a dog blanket on the way to protect it from the heavy rain. It was nice to have a dry comforter! It was a somewhat fitful morning of sleep, and I woke to a cloudy, breezy, but mostly rain-free day. The property had flooded overnight from the atmospheric river and there was a rushing stream just in front of the steps up to Schist House, leading down to the beer cooling pool. Having looked forward to only a handful of mild tasks today, I was disappointed to find that something had happened to the water system overnight as indicated by the low water pressure at the lodge. I ate breakfast and finished a book on the porch before suiting up and heading down the trail with hoe, gloves, swede saw, and tinsnips, all ready for my various tasks. As expected, I found the creek raging and the olive barrel washed out. For the first time, the hose had disconnected from its fitting on the barrel and the barrel itself was deeply wedged under a log downstream. I first pulled the hose up and along the bank, then crossed the mossy log to the barrel. It was severely wedged, top down, between rocks and the log, with a large dent in its side. I was able to pull it up a foot or two by grasping the fitting along the bottom, but could not free it, even when I lifted it, held it in place with my shoulder, and reached into the torrential flow to grab the lid. There just wasn't enough room to rotate it out. I tried for a while, despairing, and then gave up, quite upset. I will manage with the water I have--and I even have camping water still stashed on my boat from the South Island trip--but it was so frustrating not to be able to fix it. The only thing I haven't tried is reattaching the hose (if it's not too damaged) for extra pulling leverage, but I don't expect it'll work. I do so love my running water.
By the time I got back to the lodge, though, I was feeling a bit better. After all, I had a working range, a working refrigerator, working internet, and two working stoves, and everything was okay, even though I'd hit a snag with another project on the way back--cutting off the corner of Mink's roof that was being enveloped by the neighboring tree. It turned out that the whole corner of the roof, flashing and all, was in the tree. I'll have to take a sawsall to cut the whole thing off, but that's a task for drier weather. I did use the swede saw to cut off the branch that hangs close to Mink Cabin, several others nearby that overhang the trail, and the large one that was across the bridge (all from the great fallen tree), and pulled off other overhanging branches. Then I had a cup of cafe francais and lost myself in my fantasy novel and actually had quite a pleasant time on the porch all wrapped up in my quilt. Every now and again, the wind would blow mist all over me and I eventually stashed my binoculars under the quilt. A few obliging Wilson's warblers came by, a varied thrush (I think) called shrilly nearby, two sandpipers flew down the beach, five mergansers were in the inlet, plus the swift songbirds that buzzed by and disappeared into the brush here and there.
When I got hungry, I made a quesadilla and did some online shopping, including for a garmin inreach SE+ to replace the broken and lost SPOTs, and texted with Ezra. This weekend is the Iron Man in Juneau, and I wonder what the participants are making of this very very wet, stormy, cool weather. The wind is supposed to drop a little tomorrow, but the rain is meant to continue, so it should be quite a different experience from what most of them have been training in! I'm secretly delighted that they are experiencing full on Southeast; I hope no one is too much troubled. It'll be one to talk about back home I'm sure and I doubt anyone will think of moving to Juneau any time soon! By then the rain had started coming down in full force again, but it was low tide, so I went for a walk, stopping by Cottonwood to drop off the jar of Hershey's kisses and grab the oil lamp to take to Hermit Thrush to fill. Then Cailey and I walked up to the grassy point and back in the rain. When we were back, I carried the old wood stove to the shed for dry storage and tidied up the plastic sheeting that I've been haphazardly using to protect the generator and the floor from the slightly leaky roof (I was pleased to find a pool of water on the plastic when I arrived--on the plastic and not on the floor!). I did a few other little things, including getting some asphalt shingles ready for cutting to replace pieces that have been ripped off, and dried Cailey off before we went inside. I edited one trip report, turned to this, and now it's cocktail hour. I've finally cooled down from working in raingear, so I think I'll light a little fire (needed to dry off clothing if nothing else, including my raincoat which got wet when I plunged my arm into the creek to grab the olive barrel) and finish a book.
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I cooked a box of yellow rice for dinner and steamed canned green beans and Sweetheart sockeye over the top of it (not this year's!). I headed to Hermit Thrush around 8:00 I think and listened to some music while stretching in front of the oil stove. This morning I was up at 8:00 and cleaned and locked up the cabin. Leaving all my gear on its porch, I first headed straight up to the olive barrel, having had two ideas to fix the water line. I was unable to easily reattach the outlet hose to the fitting on the olive barrel (partly because the olive barrel fitting is the end that turns, which made securing them together an awkward proposition), but the second idea worked quite nicely. It occurred to me that maybe water would flow through the outlet hose directly without the olive barrel. I'd initially imagined that a catchment of some sort was needed to funnel water into the pipe, but maybe not. I put it back into place in the creek and, after filling and lifting it a few times to make sure some water was making it down, I laid rocks over it to keep it in place. Unsure if it was working, I went to the nearby valve, turned it off and then on again, hearing water gurgling in the leaks and feeling the rush of it through the pipes. Back at the lodge, I definitely had water, if at somewhat less pressure than usual. Hallelujah!
So I had breakfast and sat on the porch for a few minutes watching the surprisingly dry inlet whip up in the brisk southeasterly. It seems that the Iron Man competitors had a dry morning after all --even somewhat bright, if windy--which must have been a relief for them. I can't imaging running a marathon (and biking I don't know how long) in the drenching rain. Perhaps they had someone's ear. I was just getting interested in some heightened bird activity when one flew right in front of my face across the upper porch and landed vertically on the bark of the spruce on the other side. I had a wonderful look at this very pale, almost ruddy and beige spotted brown creeper and decided to do a bird survey which I completed from a camp chair down by the bench (the bench being far too wet to utilize). The other highlight was a Pacific-slope flycatcher, the overcast sky enhancing his yellowish belly, his features perfectly clear including the flattened flycatcher beak with bristles around the base of it. While there I glanced down and noticed a familiar plant growing a few feet away behind the bench....a potato! This was where the potato pot had been overturned last summer and where I'd seen a similar plant growing from a discarded potato I hadn't found. I'd harvested the potatoes it produced there last fall, but....perhaps not all of them? Or maybe there had been a second seed potato which I hadn't seen? A volunteer potato! I must have weed whacked it at least once this summer, too. Amazing.
When I felt I'd seen all there was to see, I set about working on a few tasks that had built up, given that it was a fine morning for work. Around the lodge I trimmed a couple of branches off a spruce tree growing near the alder (which I discovered I'd already topped, though this impressively curved branch looked all the world like a proper tree top from a distance). I checked in on the new cottonwood--growing strong on its island, undisturbed, I was happy to see, by the flood--and checked on the potatoes I planted this year. The leaves of the commercial potatoes have largely been eaten up, but the Tlingit potatoes in the meadow are thriving; I'm not sure if the difference is location or variety. Movement at the latter potatoes revealed a big, reddish toad which I wanted to bother, but refrained from doing so, partly because Cailey was then walking through the potatoes. I also put away the basket feeder full of hair for nesting birds and replaced the asphalt shingling on the steps up to the porch, first pulling most of the nails from the old pieces. Because there are chunks of the board missing from the bear rampage, I cut out notches in the shingles to match them so they don't break off when stepped on. From there I worked my way upriver, replacing a few pieces of asphalt on the boardwalk, delivering the oil lamp (now trimmed and with oil in it) to Cottonwood and locking it up, replacing a piece of asphalt on the edge of Hermit Thrush's porch, and securing some fine screen and hardware cloth around the opening of the water pipe (as was over the mouth of the olive barrel) with zip ties to help reduce large debris in the water system. I added more rocks to it and dammed up the area near it a little for when the water drops, as the dam had almost entirely been washed away.
Quite satisfied with my couple hours work, I had a cold beer and then finished the rice for lunch, cleaned up and packed a little, and then wrote a letter on the porch while bright light shone in patches of the rough river. At 4:30 I started up my work laptop, connected to wifi (it wouldn't accept the network cable for some reason), and worked for an hour and a half since I know I'll be late to work tomorrow and my timesheet is due. I ate the rest of my bag of salad and made a quesadilla for dinner, watched part of a Glitch episode, then finished cleaning and packing and fetched my toothbrush from Hermit Thrush. When I was all done, I sat on the porch and read for a little bit while a gorgeous rainbow faded just across the inlet. For a few minutes, it was a double rainbow with one arc on either side of the Ronquil. When they were gone, I noticed in the evening light that the green of the avalanche paths and the brown of the spruces are markedly contrasted, the result I suppose of the black-headed budworm infestation eating the new growth on the spruces. There are quite a few brownish trees behind me including a number of hemlocks that may not survive, but I was interested to see no obvious damage to the great spruce nearby from which frass rained down on me a month ago. Curious. Now I'm on the couch in the lodge and Cailey is on one of her dog beds on the floor. I'm hoping to leave around 7:00 tomorrow and won't have much to do to get ready in the morning.
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I had a somewhat fitful night of sleep on the couch and I don't think my fidgeting was appreciated by Cailey either. I finally got up to go outside and was surprised to see that it was 5:57 and my alarm was about to go off. I was even more surprised to look outside and see bright blue sky and puffy clouds over the shadowed inlet...and my boat high and dry. The Ronquil had not been aground that I'd seen all weekend, but the tides were shifting and I hadn't been up this early before. It was an hour and a half past a .5' tide. So, it would be a low tide departure after all. I dressed and carried a load of gear to the boat, fueled up, and drug the anchor up the flats, returning with two more loads before breakfasting and closing up. I was at the boat at 7:05 and, after arranging everything and pushing into deeper water, we were underway around 7:15. Only moderate seas met us in the port, changing to a mild following sea in Stephen's Passage, building into two foot seas and slowing us down just a shade south of Grave Point, then diminishing a little later. We made it to Grave in 45 minutes and continued on toward town, passing at least five boats that were probably bound for Sweetheart Creek (one had come into Gilbert Bay at 6:15 am) and a number more that may have been. I ran at higher RPMs than I usually do, partly because I could in many areas and partly to get home to work. As it was, I sat down in my car at 9:27 and logged onto the network at 9:35 am--perfect for the hour and a half I worked the night before!
It was a quick departure and Ezra saw us off, despite the fact that I was so distracted and stressed that I'd forgotten to tell him we were on our way. We stopped to fuel the Kathy M and then drank Pacificos down the channel, more cold (and thus more enjoyable) than previous trips when they'd been more warmed up. We chatted amiably on the way out, encountering unhopeful seas in the channel, hopeful seas on the way to Arden, and then rather unpleasant seas thereafter. With sea water sloshing onto the windshield and the boat rocking around in the 2-3 seas with white caps, we called it and turned around. Back at my house, I unpacked the groceries, started a fire in the fireplace, made drinks for Jia Jia and Kyle and, later, my mom, then made bison burgers for everyone's dinner. Afterwards we played Wingspan, which we'd long planned to do, so at least we had pleasant evening together. I crashed that night, and the rest of the weekend.
The exhaustion lingered into the next week enough for me to decide to forgo Pavlov Harbor yet again in favor of more time up the Taku later in the month. I've been so enjoying our trips there and we're making such good, long-term progress that I hated the idea of missing a month, not to mention the potential for picking any berries this year. With having been away from Snettisham for a month and Sweetheart pending, it didn't seem likely I could do everything this month. It felt like the right thing to do. So I took another weekend off (even getting all caught up on the garden and doing some fall chores like oiling the kitchen cabinets) to rest up and get ready for the last push of the summer--August harvests and then closeup. And now I'm here, on the following Thursday, having left on the one rain-less day (in the extended forecast to come). Although there were pockets of blue sky over the Coast Mountains, the clouds were low most of the way, especially near the entrance to the port where the ceiling must have been no more than 100-200 feet. But, by the time I made it to Snettisham, the sky was mostly blue and the sun was shining. The water was calm down the channel, then we encountered some mild seas coming from the Taku and swells enough to slow us down around the gillnetters at Arden before they turned with us and died out entirely past Grave Point. The kind of run that I love to make, so much more pleasant than most I've made this year. I saw a porpoise in the channel, but nothing else jumped out at me on the way down other than a long line of scoters at Point Styleman.
The flats were much larger than I expected an hour before a 2.4' tide, but thankfully I had only a tote and bags to carry and made it in two trips, anchoring the Ronquil where she sat. I soon had all the systems going, ate lunch, put up a hummingbird feeder, and set about my first bird survey of the weekend, starting on a camp chair at the log across the path and facing the forest. There was plenty of tittering in the bushes and shrubs, which was good to hear, but I could see little more than an occasional darting bird, so it wasn't a very satisfying survey. I finished it on the porch, but added little to the list there. Highlights were a Pacific-slope flycatcher hawking from the bottom of the alder and perching in plain view (one had been calling earlier) and fifteen mergansers in the inlet who came up to preen on the edge of the flats downriver. Overall today I've seen many of the expected locals: Wilson's and orange-crowned warblers (both sexes and small groups), chickadees, varied thrushes, wrens, the flycatcher, plus ravens and jays and gulls. After the survey, we went for a COASST walk, my last of the season I expect in bare feet. I initially thought it would also be the last of the season in a t-shirt, but I quickly put my sweater back on against the steady breeze. The mud felt great on my feet, though. I moved the anchor farther out on the flats so the Ronquil would float farther out on the next tide. There were at least 130 gulls wading or sitting on the flats or bathing in the river. They were mostly short-billed as far as I could tell, but there were at least two adult Bonaparte's among them. On the way back, two little short-billed sandpipers (not their name) were sharing the flats, which was unusual, and a yellowlegs greeted me when I neared the lodge.
When we returned, I picked up the trail camera cards, opened up Hermit Thrush, and then decided, since the weather was fine, to trim the spruce branches that are next to the satellite dish. I recall them being difficult to reach and, though I thought they were probably not interfering at present, they could well grow out, so I thought I'd be proactive. I put up the step ladder on top of the riverboat and laughed when I glanced at the front of the nearby satellite dish. Several branches of gray currents were growing right against the dish, covering about a quarter of it. I couldn't believe internet was working at all with that growth! The branches I targeted were surprisingly easy to reach and I felt good about the open area upriver of the dish; nothing there now would seem to be able to intercept any signals, and the currents soon came down as well. I tested the speed before and after cutting the currents: the download speed appeared unchanged, but the upload speed did improve, which may or may not have been related. Then Cailey and I settled down for the afternoon as the sun finally hit the porch, the deck dried out, and it grew hot. I first retreated to the sun-dappled end of the porch and drank a beer (cooled in the freezer) and then under the canopy in the woods. Cailey sweetly made her way over after I'd been there a few minutes and laid down on a brush pile until a squirrel came by and disrupted us--mainly because I thought it might be a mink and so jumped up and yelled at it to run. The bird life picked up a bit in the late afternoon, but quieted down while I had dinner inside. All in all, I feel a bit worn out and hope for a long, deep sleep tonight. It is very good to be away from traffic noise and from people. Tomorrow an atmospheric river and strong winds are predicted to descend on northern Southeast, so I expect a cozy day. There are no expectations.
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Although the tranquil evening beckoned me, I headed to Hermit Thrush relatively early to light a fire and dispel the expected dampness. It seemed much better than last year, but the top layer of the down quilt was a little moist. I discovered that my flashlight was almost dead, so I wound up reading by the light of the large battery powered lantern that was gifted to me years ago, awkwardly holding it in my lap. We slept reasonably well and plenty warm and I was pleased to see only a little moisture on the windows this morning. I must have slept in a little, to 8:30 at least, and had a good long snuggle-rubbing session with Cailey before we got up. I brought the down comforter back to the lodge to dry out, hanging it on the rocking chair with the expectation of a fire later. After I changed out the propane tank on the range and got cleaned up, I ate some yogurt and granola for breakfast--not as cold as I would have expected, which made me uneasy about the fridge--and then drank a cup of weak jasmine tea. I'd told a couple people over text that I was going to have tea and watch the storm come in, but that didn't turn out to be quite accurate. It had drizzled in the night and started again shortly after we reached the lodge; soon it was steady rain, but not dramatic, and was accompanied by no significant wind. The birds had been energetically tittering and passing through while I puttered inside, but at 9:15 when I emerged they had mellowed, whether because of the hour or the increasing rain I don't know. But I did camp out on the porch as promised, spending much of the morning editing trip reports from earlier in the summer until my laptop battery died. Lunch and some reading followed, then the wind finally started to pick up in the early afternoon and the rain became heavy. Naturally, this was the time I decided to suit up and do a little work before retreating inside. I'd noticed that the roof of the shed had a hefty layer of material on top again (I'd scraped it all off a few years ago), so grabbed my medium-sized ladder and set it up on the downriver side, pushing the dirt down each section of the metal roofing with a hoe. Then I moved to the lower end and pulled the material down toward me, ejecting it off the roof with my hands, then hoed most if it away from the building and cleaned out the stream channel (not running) on the edge of the building at the same time. This went reasonably well (much easier than last time when the accumulation was deeper), so I moved onto Mink Cabin, which has been nagging at me for years. I started on the downriver side, which had a couple inches of dirt on most of it. Like the shed, it took three ladder positions to reach the whole side. What that part was done, I used the clippers to cut several large devil's club boughs that had overhung the path to Schist House and the at the bottom of the nearby stairs along with surrounding new growth and newly-leaning salmonberries. Then I tackled the upriver roof of Mink which had a heavier layer of soil and broken branches along with some small devil's clubs, several elderberries, and a few patches of enchanter's nightshade. The rain was very heavy by then. The shed was fairly well protected from rain by the great overhanging tree, but Mink offered no such protection and the rain falling on the newly-cleared metal roofing bounced onto my face. Finally, I trimmed back more vegetation that was reaching onto the trail to the bridge and along it. With guests hopefully coming in a few weeks, I want it looking nice! I left the ladder at Mink to tackle a large branch near the roof and to hopefully trim the edge of the metal roofing which has now been partially enveloped by the growing spruce tree next to it.
I met up with an anxious dog back at the lodge and we headed inside where I divested myself of my flannel and hoodie (both damp in the neck and cuffs), lit a fire, checked in at home, and settled in for the rest of the afternoon, much of which was spent reading about Welsh history. I heated up leftover homemade pizza for dinner, which was amazing, and ate it where I was camped out at the card table by the picture window. I had tried to do some errands online earlier, but found that I did not have any motivation to do so. The new stove is working wonderfully and I've been rotating the down comforter to try to dry all edges of it before we head to Hermit Thrush for the night. The stove did put off a bad odor after a couple of hours and I wound up opening most of the windows and the door to help air it out. Now that I've closed them I realize how much heat it is putting out. I love the way it slowly burns through its fuel, releasing steady heat for long periods of time, needing little tending once underway. A wonderful little stove, and hopefully this was the last of the chemical odors to burn off, maybe produced because this is the first long-term fire it's had (the first time I've added wood to it). And, throughout, I've enjoyed the sound of the heavy rain on the metal roof, free of its forest floor since last summer. Seas are still rolling in from Gilbert Bay and the forecast is calling for wind through the weekend, so I may be here an extra day. Perhaps tomorrow I'll see if I can connect with my work laptop with the potential for a work day here on Monday.
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I watched a bit of Glitch on Netflix before heading to bed (my tablet won't turn on), arriving around 9:00, the comforter wrapped in a dog blanket on the way to protect it from the heavy rain. It was nice to have a dry comforter! It was a somewhat fitful morning of sleep, and I woke to a cloudy, breezy, but mostly rain-free day. The property had flooded overnight from the atmospheric river and there was a rushing stream just in front of the steps up to Schist House, leading down to the beer cooling pool. Having looked forward to only a handful of mild tasks today, I was disappointed to find that something had happened to the water system overnight as indicated by the low water pressure at the lodge. I ate breakfast and finished a book on the porch before suiting up and heading down the trail with hoe, gloves, swede saw, and tinsnips, all ready for my various tasks. As expected, I found the creek raging and the olive barrel washed out. For the first time, the hose had disconnected from its fitting on the barrel and the barrel itself was deeply wedged under a log downstream. I first pulled the hose up and along the bank, then crossed the mossy log to the barrel. It was severely wedged, top down, between rocks and the log, with a large dent in its side. I was able to pull it up a foot or two by grasping the fitting along the bottom, but could not free it, even when I lifted it, held it in place with my shoulder, and reached into the torrential flow to grab the lid. There just wasn't enough room to rotate it out. I tried for a while, despairing, and then gave up, quite upset. I will manage with the water I have--and I even have camping water still stashed on my boat from the South Island trip--but it was so frustrating not to be able to fix it. The only thing I haven't tried is reattaching the hose (if it's not too damaged) for extra pulling leverage, but I don't expect it'll work. I do so love my running water.
By the time I got back to the lodge, though, I was feeling a bit better. After all, I had a working range, a working refrigerator, working internet, and two working stoves, and everything was okay, even though I'd hit a snag with another project on the way back--cutting off the corner of Mink's roof that was being enveloped by the neighboring tree. It turned out that the whole corner of the roof, flashing and all, was in the tree. I'll have to take a sawsall to cut the whole thing off, but that's a task for drier weather. I did use the swede saw to cut off the branch that hangs close to Mink Cabin, several others nearby that overhang the trail, and the large one that was across the bridge (all from the great fallen tree), and pulled off other overhanging branches. Then I had a cup of cafe francais and lost myself in my fantasy novel and actually had quite a pleasant time on the porch all wrapped up in my quilt. Every now and again, the wind would blow mist all over me and I eventually stashed my binoculars under the quilt. A few obliging Wilson's warblers came by, a varied thrush (I think) called shrilly nearby, two sandpipers flew down the beach, five mergansers were in the inlet, plus the swift songbirds that buzzed by and disappeared into the brush here and there.
When I got hungry, I made a quesadilla and did some online shopping, including for a garmin inreach SE+ to replace the broken and lost SPOTs, and texted with Ezra. This weekend is the Iron Man in Juneau, and I wonder what the participants are making of this very very wet, stormy, cool weather. The wind is supposed to drop a little tomorrow, but the rain is meant to continue, so it should be quite a different experience from what most of them have been training in! I'm secretly delighted that they are experiencing full on Southeast; I hope no one is too much troubled. It'll be one to talk about back home I'm sure and I doubt anyone will think of moving to Juneau any time soon! By then the rain had started coming down in full force again, but it was low tide, so I went for a walk, stopping by Cottonwood to drop off the jar of Hershey's kisses and grab the oil lamp to take to Hermit Thrush to fill. Then Cailey and I walked up to the grassy point and back in the rain. When we were back, I carried the old wood stove to the shed for dry storage and tidied up the plastic sheeting that I've been haphazardly using to protect the generator and the floor from the slightly leaky roof (I was pleased to find a pool of water on the plastic when I arrived--on the plastic and not on the floor!). I did a few other little things, including getting some asphalt shingles ready for cutting to replace pieces that have been ripped off, and dried Cailey off before we went inside. I edited one trip report, turned to this, and now it's cocktail hour. I've finally cooled down from working in raingear, so I think I'll light a little fire (needed to dry off clothing if nothing else, including my raincoat which got wet when I plunged my arm into the creek to grab the olive barrel) and finish a book.
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I cooked a box of yellow rice for dinner and steamed canned green beans and Sweetheart sockeye over the top of it (not this year's!). I headed to Hermit Thrush around 8:00 I think and listened to some music while stretching in front of the oil stove. This morning I was up at 8:00 and cleaned and locked up the cabin. Leaving all my gear on its porch, I first headed straight up to the olive barrel, having had two ideas to fix the water line. I was unable to easily reattach the outlet hose to the fitting on the olive barrel (partly because the olive barrel fitting is the end that turns, which made securing them together an awkward proposition), but the second idea worked quite nicely. It occurred to me that maybe water would flow through the outlet hose directly without the olive barrel. I'd initially imagined that a catchment of some sort was needed to funnel water into the pipe, but maybe not. I put it back into place in the creek and, after filling and lifting it a few times to make sure some water was making it down, I laid rocks over it to keep it in place. Unsure if it was working, I went to the nearby valve, turned it off and then on again, hearing water gurgling in the leaks and feeling the rush of it through the pipes. Back at the lodge, I definitely had water, if at somewhat less pressure than usual. Hallelujah!
So I had breakfast and sat on the porch for a few minutes watching the surprisingly dry inlet whip up in the brisk southeasterly. It seems that the Iron Man competitors had a dry morning after all --even somewhat bright, if windy--which must have been a relief for them. I can't imaging running a marathon (and biking I don't know how long) in the drenching rain. Perhaps they had someone's ear. I was just getting interested in some heightened bird activity when one flew right in front of my face across the upper porch and landed vertically on the bark of the spruce on the other side. I had a wonderful look at this very pale, almost ruddy and beige spotted brown creeper and decided to do a bird survey which I completed from a camp chair down by the bench (the bench being far too wet to utilize). The other highlight was a Pacific-slope flycatcher, the overcast sky enhancing his yellowish belly, his features perfectly clear including the flattened flycatcher beak with bristles around the base of it. While there I glanced down and noticed a familiar plant growing a few feet away behind the bench....a potato! This was where the potato pot had been overturned last summer and where I'd seen a similar plant growing from a discarded potato I hadn't found. I'd harvested the potatoes it produced there last fall, but....perhaps not all of them? Or maybe there had been a second seed potato which I hadn't seen? A volunteer potato! I must have weed whacked it at least once this summer, too. Amazing.
When I felt I'd seen all there was to see, I set about working on a few tasks that had built up, given that it was a fine morning for work. Around the lodge I trimmed a couple of branches off a spruce tree growing near the alder (which I discovered I'd already topped, though this impressively curved branch looked all the world like a proper tree top from a distance). I checked in on the new cottonwood--growing strong on its island, undisturbed, I was happy to see, by the flood--and checked on the potatoes I planted this year. The leaves of the commercial potatoes have largely been eaten up, but the Tlingit potatoes in the meadow are thriving; I'm not sure if the difference is location or variety. Movement at the latter potatoes revealed a big, reddish toad which I wanted to bother, but refrained from doing so, partly because Cailey was then walking through the potatoes. I also put away the basket feeder full of hair for nesting birds and replaced the asphalt shingling on the steps up to the porch, first pulling most of the nails from the old pieces. Because there are chunks of the board missing from the bear rampage, I cut out notches in the shingles to match them so they don't break off when stepped on. From there I worked my way upriver, replacing a few pieces of asphalt on the boardwalk, delivering the oil lamp (now trimmed and with oil in it) to Cottonwood and locking it up, replacing a piece of asphalt on the edge of Hermit Thrush's porch, and securing some fine screen and hardware cloth around the opening of the water pipe (as was over the mouth of the olive barrel) with zip ties to help reduce large debris in the water system. I added more rocks to it and dammed up the area near it a little for when the water drops, as the dam had almost entirely been washed away.
Quite satisfied with my couple hours work, I had a cold beer and then finished the rice for lunch, cleaned up and packed a little, and then wrote a letter on the porch while bright light shone in patches of the rough river. At 4:30 I started up my work laptop, connected to wifi (it wouldn't accept the network cable for some reason), and worked for an hour and a half since I know I'll be late to work tomorrow and my timesheet is due. I ate the rest of my bag of salad and made a quesadilla for dinner, watched part of a Glitch episode, then finished cleaning and packing and fetched my toothbrush from Hermit Thrush. When I was all done, I sat on the porch and read for a little bit while a gorgeous rainbow faded just across the inlet. For a few minutes, it was a double rainbow with one arc on either side of the Ronquil. When they were gone, I noticed in the evening light that the green of the avalanche paths and the brown of the spruces are markedly contrasted, the result I suppose of the black-headed budworm infestation eating the new growth on the spruces. There are quite a few brownish trees behind me including a number of hemlocks that may not survive, but I was interested to see no obvious damage to the great spruce nearby from which frass rained down on me a month ago. Curious. Now I'm on the couch in the lodge and Cailey is on one of her dog beds on the floor. I'm hoping to leave around 7:00 tomorrow and won't have much to do to get ready in the morning.
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I had a somewhat fitful night of sleep on the couch and I don't think my fidgeting was appreciated by Cailey either. I finally got up to go outside and was surprised to see that it was 5:57 and my alarm was about to go off. I was even more surprised to look outside and see bright blue sky and puffy clouds over the shadowed inlet...and my boat high and dry. The Ronquil had not been aground that I'd seen all weekend, but the tides were shifting and I hadn't been up this early before. It was an hour and a half past a .5' tide. So, it would be a low tide departure after all. I dressed and carried a load of gear to the boat, fueled up, and drug the anchor up the flats, returning with two more loads before breakfasting and closing up. I was at the boat at 7:05 and, after arranging everything and pushing into deeper water, we were underway around 7:15. Only moderate seas met us in the port, changing to a mild following sea in Stephen's Passage, building into two foot seas and slowing us down just a shade south of Grave Point, then diminishing a little later. We made it to Grave in 45 minutes and continued on toward town, passing at least five boats that were probably bound for Sweetheart Creek (one had come into Gilbert Bay at 6:15 am) and a number more that may have been. I ran at higher RPMs than I usually do, partly because I could in many areas and partly to get home to work. As it was, I sat down in my car at 9:27 and logged onto the network at 9:35 am--perfect for the hour and a half I worked the night before!
Early
morning sun