Monday, December 18, 2006

It was just gonna be a quick trip....

Hello everyone and I hope this Monday finds you warm and dry. Over the weekend, we had another tremendous snowstorm here, piling snow and then ice in huge drifts all over the island, filling the bay up with more floating chunks of menacing ice. This time they were too big for my boat to cut through - I had to try and avoid them.

Jim Paul and I decided to go hunting at low tide , which was 3:30 a.m. Saturday night/Sunday morning because with all this snow, the deer would be flushed down out of the woods onto the beaches. You have to go at low tide because there's room for the deer to come out of the woods - not to mention you have to have room to beach your skiff after you shoot, go get the deer, and get it into the boat. This is all considerably easier to do after low tide has passed, because the tide starts to come back in. Now obviously, this makes sense, or should anyway, because with the water rising, there is no danger of your boat getting beached. If the tide is going out, and you beach your boat, and turn your back for one minute, it's really beached. With constant vigilance, you can do this if you keep pushing it out repeatedly while holding on to the bow rope, and you can still get in it and leave. If not, you're screwed for about at least 6-8 hours unless you can move a 1200 pound aluminum boat filled with equipment and an engine mounted on the back.

Now, having said that, here we go. We took off around the back side of Wadleigh, and headed towards 11-Mile, which is heading almost to open Pacific Ocean waters - inside the Archipelago, we have the security (or danger) of many little islands and rocks to break the monotony of the open seas. That is why we run around in little beach seining skiffs that aren't really meant for ocean usage.....but I digress.

We were fine when we first started out - it was actually kind of nice, not bitterly cold, with a pretty steady pelting of huge snowflakes. If you opened your mouth for a few seconds, it was kinda like a little snack. Instead of bailing the boat out when we got in, we used a snow shovel! We crept along (now mind you it is PITCH dark outside - and we're using the moonlight to navigate - if you even turn on your flashlight when it's snowing, you're blinded for hours - the only thing that works is an amber light_) , easing past island after island, along the shores, watching over the sides of the boat for rocks, making our way past Chinaku, towards the 11 Mile Marker. During the day, this is where I bomb out in my little skiff to fish - it takes me about 30 minutes - it took considerably longer this night because we couldn't see.

Then, the snow really started to swirl, swirl, swirl, around us, and as we rounded the corner which allowed us to view the marker, an 8 foot wave picked us up and slammed us down. It killed my back, as I was closer to the bow than I should have been, but I was looking for rocks. Now Jim Paul is excellent in these situations, and he was not worried, not one bit. We rode out these waves for a while, until we finally fought our way there. When we finally found a spot to turn around without getting bashed onto rocky cliffs, we did, and started our journey back to the house. However....we still had no deer. But, this was when we were supposed to start looking for them anyway, right? So we did - but it seems as if the storm we encountered actually turned around and began to follow us in. We thought we'd get out of it when we turned, but we were wrong. We saw 12 deer over the next few hours, and Jim Paul shot at 5 of them. Now Jim Paul never misses - I've seen him come back from an evening drive down the road with 5 bucks on top of his car, and he wasn't even going hunting! The waves precluded shooting straight. They were 6 feet, 7 feet, 8 feet, it was so scary to watch him. He would stand up, hold the boat motor with his left thigh, put his right foot up on the seat, hold his gun, wipe the scope, and shoot. But about that time, the waves would throw us for another loop. His rifle kicked at the same time a wave threw the boat around sideways, and he cut his nose open. He could have cared less. The waves were brutal, and merciless. Then they started crashing over our heads, and we both got water down inside our Mustang suits. BAD. WET BAD. WET COLD.

Long story short, the journey home took hours. We hit rocks, we had other troubles that aren't worth mentioning. I ended up in the floor of the Lund between the middle seats, wrapped in a blue tarp, waiting for the stupid sun to come up. We got home at 10:30 in the morning, and let me tell you - I have never ever been so glad to see this place!!!! Needless to say, we didn't get any deer, but we didn't care. The best part of my journey, however, was when Jim Paul looked over the side and said "WOAAAA!! ROCKS!!" and immediately shut off the motor. How we didn't destroy the prop I still don't know, but we were drifting over the biggest reef I've ever seen, and it took us a while to get off of it. But, while I was looking over the edge, swathed in my tarp, I saw a family of seals, bobbing up and down in this beautiful floating mass of kelp, happily playing with each other, chasing food underneath the icy surface, flipping and bobbing with no cares in the world. I looked at one of them eye to eye - and for a moment, he almost winked at me, telling me to hang in there, slow down, and this too would pass.

Truthfully, even though it was an awful circumstance that most people would have considered to be horribly scarring, it was glorious. It was one of the most glorious nights of my life where I got to see and hear things that I never would have, and won't again, till the next time......

Love you guys, Jamie
By the way, here is Wikipedia's definition of where I live:
Alexander Archipelago (ärkĭpĕl'əgō) , island group off SE Alaska. The islands are the exposed tops of the submerged coastal mountains that rise steeply from the Pacific Ocean. Deep, fjordlike channels separate the islands and cut them off from the mainland; the northern part of the Inside Passage threads its way among the islands. The largest islands are Chichagof, Admiralty, Baranof, Wrangell, Revillagigedo, Kupreanof, Mitkoff, and Prince of Wales. All the islands are rugged, densely forested, and have an abundance of wildlife. The Tlingit are native to the area. Ketchikan (1990 pop. 8,263) on Revillagigedo island and Sitka (1990 pop. 8,588) on Baranof island. Lumbering, trapping, fishing, and canning are the main industries. The archipelago was visited by the Russians in 1741 and was later explored by Britain, Spain, and the United States.

Only seven-hundred miles up the coast from Seattle lies Alaska’s magnificent Alexander Archipelago. The outer islands of the archipelago form one of the most wild, beautiful, and little-explored temperate rain forest coastal ecosystems on earth. Inaccessible by any means other than private vessels appropriately outfitted, these wilderness areas lie far off the beaten path of tourism, waiting for your exploration and discovery. Among the designated wilderness areas of the Tongass National Forest that we visit are Coronation Island, Kuiu Island, South Prince of Wales Island, and remote Forrester Island, a part of the Alaska Maritime Refuge.

Called by some biologists "the Galapagos of the North", 2800 acre Forrester Island is home to some one-million seabirds, including horned and tufted puffins, Leach’s and fork-tailed storm petrels, Cassin’s and rhinoceros auklets, ancient murrelets, as well as one of the largest healthy Stellar sea lion rookeries in the world. Other wild residents of the Archipelago include the pigeon guillemot, yellow billed loon, Barrow’s goldeneye, harlequin duck, oldsquaw, red-necked phalarope, whimbrel, red-breasted sapsucker, varied thrush, Townsend’s warbler; numerous marine mammals including the sea otter, humpback whale, minke whale, orca (killer whale), Dall’s porpoise, Pacific white-sided dolphin; 49 terrestrial mammal species including the Alexander Archipelago wolf, and massive black and grizzly bear; a spectacular variety of colorful inter-tidal and marine life; an endless collection of unique temperate rain forest flora and fauna.

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