KODIAK 2006

by Mary Parrott

It was day 8 of our trip, gale day. The wind had started picking up the previous evening and had been howling and blowing rain for more than twelve hours by now. Our tents were trying to shake free, resisting our efforts to anchor them to driftwood and to each other. Things were getting a bit soggy but Christy, Mary and I cozily played Quiddler in Christy’s tent while Phil napped. Occasional runs to the cook tent completed the day’s main scope of activities. There would be no paddling today and it appeared, from the weather forecast for this area, that our “plan” to paddle around Raspberry Island would need to be changed. We were rapidly learning that a paddling plan up here was really just a “plan” and that rest days are really weather days. We were also learning to flow with changing conditions and use times like this to chill out and think about our adventures so far.

The day after Mary, Phil and I arrived in Kodiak, Alaska ten days earlier, the skies began to clear. After five weeks of clouds and rain, the town was in a celebratory mood. Pictures of the sun and statements of good cheer dotted store windows, and even the tsunami warning system’s weekly plaintive bleep couldn’t dampen spirits. Christy Lyle, Mary and Phil Lyle’s daughter, lives in Kodiak and had invited us to join her on a kayak trip to explore a bit of the immense Kodiak archipelago. Christy teaches middle school here and runs kayak trips for at-risk teenagers in the summer. She has good, seaworthy Necky kayaks we could use, and a husband who works on a fishing boat in the summer and supplies her with King Salmon. It didn’t take me many minutes to accept her invitation.

Christy and Mary organized most of the food for the trip, and a lot had been brought up from “the South”, aka “the Lower 48," Alaska prices being what they are. Earlier I had a few apprehensive moments thinking of sharing food for possibly two weeks with Mary and Phil, whose email handle is Nuts and Twigs. But, as we packed and loaded the truck with huge bags of raw materials like rice, oats, powdered milk and pasta, these moments passed and were replaced by others. It was clear that we wouldn’t starve. There was even the largest jar of peanut butter and the biggest bag of jelly-bellies I’d ever seen. Were there expectations that gourmet meals could be produced from these food sacks? And how could all of this stuff fit in our boats?

Amazingly, we were able to cram it all in.  We departed from Anton Larson Bay on the north side of Kodiak Island about mid-day on July 27 and paddled the clear, protected waters around an island rookery for Tufted and Horned Puffins. Flocks of Black-Legged Kittiwakes and various arctic gulls and terns shared the real estate. A 15-knot headwind while making the four mile crossing over Kizhuyak Bay reminded us that we wouldn’t always be in protected waters.

We camped on the NE side of Whale Island, on a small beach with towering cliffs behind us. Fresh water sources were plentiful on the trip; a stream tumbled down the mountains near us here. We heard an occasional whale’s blow, and boulders tumbling from a slide area down the beach. We were spared the challenge of hanging food bags at this first camp because of the inaccessible location. On two previous kayak trips in Glacier Bay (with Nancy and Keith Wellman and others), we were required by National Park rules to store food in bear-proof containers. This eliminated the chore of hanging food bags, but the cylindrical containers were not a good shape for packing in kayaks. Fortunately, Phil brought along his whitewater z-drag rescue pulley/ropes/carabiners system, and proved amazingly adept at climbing trees and using this system to hang the food bags throughout the trip.

Our plan at this point was to skirt past Little Raspberry Island, then head up the straits along the left shore of Raspberry Island and, if we had a favorable four-day forecast, continue out into the Shelikof Straits and around Raspberry. The next day dawned gloriously sunny and calm and we were optimistic about achieving this goal. As we rounded one bend we became part of a huge rafting of sea otters and their babies. Pigeon Guillemots and Marbled Murrelets demonstrated their difficult take-offs when they felt that our boats were too close. After paddling about eight miles we camped on a small island which we named “Two Oceans” since at high tide we were on a narrow ridge with ocean on both sides. The wind came up that night, nearly blowing Christy’s tent away and giving us a taste of what was to come.

The forecast in the morning called for westerly winds of 20 knots. We hoped that this would be a maximum and that as our route turned slightly more north when we entered Raspberry Straits, we would get some protection from the wind. Neither thing happened. After about five miles we were paddling directly into the wind, which was probably blowing more than 25 knots at the point where forward progress ceased, conditions became dicey for safety, and we headed to shore. A combination of boat lining and cove hopping got us to a decent place to camp, in a small bay with a stream. This was to be home for three nights.

The wind howled at 30-35 knots most of this period, day and night. We pitched our tents up in the green woods on the soft, spongy, moss-covered floor. There was lots of evidence that bears liked these woods also - scat and bear trails; we kept our bear sprays close. There wasn’t much rain with this weather system so we had a good time doing beach and woods hikes. Mary seemed at her happiest beachcombing for treasures and we had to remind her to look up sometimes. There were several eagles in the area watching us and an occasional seal or otter poked his head up in the bay. In the woods we learned to dodge the thorns of Devil’s Club and avoid the Pushky, a toxic cow-parsnip relative that causes blisters and burns. We grazed for salmon berries and saw Iris, Single Delight, Bog Orchids, Horsetail and Sundew, a carnivorous swamp plant. We made clam chowder and Phil baked biscuits on rocks. We even had company. Three young guys from a cabin up the beach came over to chat the first afternoon. Deer season was starting August 1^st and they were getting ready to hike up into the mountains the following day to be up at sunrise for the hunt.  These animals are the Sitka Black-Tailed Deer, non-natives introduced in 1924. They are about the size of Bambi and I had a hard time imagining anyone shooting them. The next day and old man and his dog landed down the beach in a small skiff. As the man hobbled toward us on two uneven wooden sticks he used as canes, we thought he might be coming to check  our permit. The Afognak Corporation, organized by the Alutiiq native people to manage their vast land holdings in the Kodiak archipelago, requires all campers on their land to obtain a permit prior to trip departure. There is no charge unless one plans to hunt or fish (in which case a hunting/fishing license is also required). But the eighty-six year old was just a local being neighborly and curious; he and his wife were on an annual two month cruising trip in the area and were anchored in nearby Seliek Bay.

With a good forecast, we were up at four on day 6 and paddled thirteen miles with the tide and no wind to a prospective camp between two major streams. We could see salmon jumping near each stream. As we were checking out one stream from our boats, we saw a red fox cavorting and scavenging and an eagle in a nearby tree intently watching the shenanigans. As if on cue, a large brown bear appeared out of the brush and began to interact with the fox in a very surprising way; it looked like they were playing together. The bear finally lumbered down the beach and disappeared in the tall grass. There are over 2700 brown bears living in the Kodiak archipelago. Because of their isolation, these bears have evolved slightly differently than other members of their Alaskan grizzly family. They are larger overall and their heads and collars are proportionately more massive. The largest males can stand more than nine feet tall and weigh more than 1500 pounds. Before setting up camp we saw a second bear in the same area. We were careful to pitch our tents close together and well away from our cooking area, and locate our food hanging area high up on a hill, away from both. A mama raven on a nearby nest objected to our choice of trees but we promised her no harm.

The next day brought classic overcast, misty Kodiak weather but, most importantly, the seas were calm. We saw a pair of whales working the rocky shore about two miles across from our camp. We paddled midway across the strait and sat close together in our boats, quiet except for the taps we made on the boats' sides. The two huge, curious fin whales rewarded our patience by coming close enough for us to get a good look. We paddled out into the Shelikof Straits. The seas here, even under relatively calm conditions, had a big ocean feel about them. At this point the Straits are about fifty miles wide and separate Raspberry Island from the Alaskan Peninsula. We watched several fishing boats set their nets for halibut, and paddled to a beautiful bay with a river flowing in where we picnicked and walked on the beach. Christy caught a Pink Salmon. On the way back to camp she stayed in her boat, with the fish in her hatch, while the rest of us went on shore to get water from a stream. Mary was the look-out while Phil and I pumped. We were alerted to something unusual going on when we saw Mary dancing around and stammering "ba-ba-ba…" A small, dark, furry fox revealed himself from behind a rock. Mary thought it was a baby bear and expected mama to be close by; she was trying to warn us! That evening we cooked the salmon, wrapped in various plants, in an "oven" built in the fire. It was delicious. An attempt to roast a piece of kelp on a stick did not, however, provide the mouth-watering hors-deoevre we had hoped for.

After two gale nights and the gale day, conditions improved mid-day on Day 9. We crossed over to the other side of the strait and paddled fourteen miles to a campsite at Shoal Point on Afognak Island. We saw a herd of Roosevelt Elk on the way, and passed an old native settlement that had been abandoned after the 1964 tsunami. It was after 11, just getting dark, by the time we got into our tents.

The next day we paddled another fourteen miles, in beautiful weather, to the Lipnik cove area, a prime habitat for bears along the Afognak River. We learned that the bears weren't hungry this time of year, were picky about their salmon choices, and wished to be left alone. Though we had no sightings we kept up our guard to avoid startling any of the resting citizens. We played in two gorgeous waterfalls on the way back to our previous night's camp.

Our plan on day 11 was to paddle to a spot at the start of the infamous Whale Passage and just hang out until we got a slack outgoing tide, then paddle through the Passage and if favorable conditions existed, make the four mile crossing back to Kodiak Island. The narrow Whale Passage has a reputation for turbulent whitewater during outgoing or incoming tides, and is respected even by boats far larger than ours. Despite having to paddle around and through several large kelp beds, we made good time and arrived at the top of the Passage at a slack incoming tide. We took a short leg break and decided to go for it since conditions looked good. We were quickly through, and had to hug the side to let a fishing boat hurry past in its effort to make it in the slack tide.  A pod of orcas fished on the other side of the channel. We headed for home, changing course only to avoid a large "war tide", the effect of several bays still emptying water at different rates.

We had a couple of wonderful days of R&R back on Kodiak Island, exploring other parts of the island, grazing for more salmon berries, visiting taverns and coffee shops, drying gear on Christy's deck and, best of all, resting in front of the fire in her wood stove.