Mark Stopha,Alaska – Page 3 – Alaska Wild Salmon Company

Family in Town

My sister, her husband, and their grown daughter and son were here last week. Fishing was pretty good. Everyone caught fish. Everyone went fishing but didn’t want to go everyday. Which was great for me, because of course I did want to go and so got to go almost every day and I got a lot of fishing in.

We started the week as crew for my friend Larry’s landing craft. We spent the day traveling to Tenakee and back. We saw whales bubble net feeding down near Tenakee and Larry was more than happy to stop and watch awhile. Everyone who wanted to drive for awhile was welcome to do so with Larry by their side for conversation and instruction. I sent the crew ashore in Tenakee to explore the town while Larry and I offloaded. Everyone in Tenakee is happy to see Larry coming to town with their freight.

We spent most of the rest of the week out fishing. We got enough coho and pinks from our boat, and bought some sockeye from Chris, to fill a couple smaller fish boxes for the parents for the winter. I took some of the crew up to Little Island to see the sea lions. We cooked what we normally do – salmon and halibut and venison – and everyone seemed to enjoy it.

Nephew Matthew stayed on for an extra week before leaving for graduate school in Hawaii. We hand trolled out in Chatham and caught a few fish every day. Matthew was content driving while I ran the gear and cleaned the fish. It is purely a pleasure to be able to just fish with someone else at the wheel. Matthew was a natural at driving, avoiding kelp and other boats, and always asking if he had a question.

He’s had quite a life in in his 20 something years, having lived in Canada, Vietnam, Haiti, and most recently South Korea. As a result, we hadn’t ever spent much time together and so slow days hand trolling were a perfect setting to catch up.

Late spring greens

Laura and I went to our spot at Eaglecrest looking for nettles and late fiddleheads. It was a glorious day today of sun and temp in the 60’s. We made it across the log that crosses the creek, and took our time threading our way up through the devils club. We followed a dry creekbed uphill as these usually hold nettles. We soon found lots of young nettles plants. Most of the ferns had unfurled from their fiddlehead stage, but we still found some fiddleheads emerging. This was the latest we’d ever looked up here I think, and we noted that maybe in the past when we thought there were no nettles in a spot that maybe they just hadn’t come up yet. We also found what we thought maybe currants amidst the devils club and salmon berry bushes, so I may have to look later in the summer to see. Supposed to rain hard starting tonight so glad we got out today.

Cross Country Ski boot challenge for large feet solved.

Well, after skiing all season with these boots last year, this year they have caused me trouble with my right foot from the start. I contracted Morton’s Neuroma, which is where the nerves bunch up on the ball of a foot under the middle toes. According to what I could find on the internet from medical sites, it is more regularly an ailment of women wearing narrow toed shoes. My cross country boots – like most all of them – have a narrow toe box and soon after starting skiing, my right foot started to feel like my socks were bunched up under the ball of my foot.

John the town cobbler tried widening the toe, and that did help some, but there’s only so much room in the shoes – they barely fit lengthwise as it is, so not a whole lot can be done.

Cross country ski boot makers just don’t make boots for people with big wheels. I need at least a 52 (size 16 or 17), and I was lucky to find the size 51’s I did get, but now they aren’t cutting it, either.

People with regular size feet like my wife and friends think “someone MUST make big boots, because all those big footed Norwegians or basketball players get their boots SOMEwhere”. I welcome them to find me my size. Even someone who custom makes boots who would make a pair for me. And I’ll take a boot for any binding – nnn, sns, 3 pin – anything. I’ve yet to find them.

First, I tried a technique I’d seen online. I removed the soles of some old SNS boots, and then cut the boot in two near the heel. The front part with the pin that fits in the binding I taped to my extra tuff boots. It worked okay, but not great, and was uncomfortable on the soles of my feet because of the tracks on the bottom of the SNS sole.

So, I looked at an old pair of army cable bindings I bought when I was desperately looking for boots the last time I was looking, when my old 3 pin boots fell apart. I searched online for how to mount them and use them. I soon found a video of the Army base in Anchorage using the same bindings with bunny boots. I got to work.

I mounted the bindings. First I tired using xtra tuffs, and they worked okay, but it was hard to keep the toe in the toe box of the binding, even with the cable around the heel holding the boot forward. I re-reviewed the Army video and noticed many of the soldiers had a strap across the toe box to keep the boot toe in. I found some Army boots in closet I got somewhere and had never used, and these looked better than the extra tuffs. I took them out today on some old llllllloooooooonnnng heavy cross country skis, and they worked okay. But boy, are the bindings and boots heavy as compared to lighter cross country gear used on groomed trails.

So, I came home and took the bindings off the old heavy skis and replaced the nnn bindings on my lighter, shorter skis I’ve been using all season with the cable bindings. That was the ticket. Lots better.

The only problem left with the bindings was that it took all the strength I had to pull the cable around the back of my boot. In fact, I had to put the boots on first with both hands with the ski on my lap, and then when I got to the ski trail, slip out of the boots I had on into the boots attached to the ski.

I started looking for cable substitutes that I could make longer. First I called a bike shop in town as the cable is similar to bike brake cable. The shop keep said he might have something, so he was option 1. Then I thought – the cable looks like a manual choke cable. So I went to Western Auto and found a choke cable – but the inner sliding cable was just a thin wire that was not big enough.

Next I went upstairs and showed the clerk in the marine section what I was looking for as I had the cable with me. He had just what I needed. 3/15 steel cable in a vinyl sheath. And crimps to go on the end. And crimpers to crimp the crimps! I measured out the cable I’d brought plus another 3/4 inches, and headed home to try it. It would work, but was still too tight to be able to put the boots on while I had them on my feet. The cable set up cost less than $3, so I returned with the whole ski and binding and thought I’d experiment until it worked. I moved up another inch and a half, and that one worked. It was a little loose, but I realized I could shorten it, and add a little bit of beefiness to the cable, by doubling up on the crimps at each end, plus the bindings themselves had an adjustment nut that gave me maybe an inch to tighten.

So, now I have cross country ski bindings that will fit whatever boot I want to use in them. They are a lot heavier than with the traditional set up, but I figure that’s only gonna make me work harder, which is the point of my skiing anyway.

Here’s a photo of the ski binding, which will fit a size 16 Keen hiking boot. The bindings are Ramer military cable ski bindings, which are not made anymore I don’t think, but can be found at times on Ebay or from Army Surplus Stores, etc.

March Boating with Larry

Larry sent me a text on Wednesday evening that he was going to Tenakee for a trip to pick up some lumber and did I want to go. We’d had one of the biggest storms in a while raging on Wednesday, but by the evening when I got the text, it had mostly blown itself out and was supposed to lay down the next day.

Off we went the next morning about 6 am. There was still a little chop heading down Chatham Strait, but it was laying down more and more the whole way. By the time we got to Tenakee about 2.75 hours later, it was flat calm and blue skies. I drove most of the way as Larry was working on little projects on the boat, or just enjoying having someone else drive.

While we waited at the Tenakee dock loading lumber and waiting for the lumber owners riding back with us, we watched a pair seals swimming in less than 10 feet of water in crystal clear water, right below us. I had never seen a seal swimming this clearly before. They move their back feet side to side, like a fish moves its tail, and not up and down, like a whale moves it’s tail.

As we were getting ready to leave, a pair of humpback whales came past the point by the boat harbor. I wasn’t sure if it was a cow and calf, but by the closeness of the two, it sure looked like it. Seems real early for a cow and a calf to have swum from Hawaii to here already, but there they were.

We loaded lumber and the couple and their 1 year old daughter and started back to Juneau. Now it was flat calm in Chatham Strait. Larry handed the wheel off to the father as the two of them talked, and I took a seat on the bench with my back against my survival suit on the back wall, and was soon put to sleep by the sunshine beaming through the windows.

We came all the way to the downtown Juneau dock, arriving at dark, and they decided they would unload in the morning.

We awoke the next morning to another blizzard of sorts, which lasted til about noon. We had threaded the weather needle perfectly.

Blueberries

Blueberries are at their peak now. I don’t seem to have the gusto to pick that I used to. I used to pick steady for the day. Now, I pick a couple berry rake fulls of berries, which I found takes an hour, then come in and drink coffee and read and listen to the radio for an hour. I did this four times so got a few gallons of berries. Our blueberries and blue huckleberries have worms in them and so you can put the berries in water and this makes them come out. It takes awhile to get all the leaves out and then pick the berries out of the water little by little by hand and flick away any worms. I’m sure you never get them all, and I’m sure the berries are healthier for you with the added protein.

I did some good reading of 1970’s era Alaska magazines, when the pipeline was being built, before the permanent fund dividend existed and long before it became the focus of state lawmakers and their constituents, and when the magazine was as much for Alaska residents as it was for Outsiders. Regular people writing about their canoe trip down the Yukon or the elder basketball game between Kotzebue and Noorvik.

The blue huckleberries weren’t even much started two weeks ago and now are coming on strong and will be ready to pick in another couple weeks.

Got a half dozen crab in the pots, most of which I gave to a city worker who has been running ragged helping to manage the covid virus situation. For the most part, it seems our town has pulled together to try to control the virus, and it’s good to see.

Pandemic Bears

A friend from Haines sent her car down to Juneau for service, and this morning we put the car back on the ferry to get it back to her. I drove out our only highway from downtown to the ferry terminal. No one was going my way at all, and I passed only a handful of cars heading to town. Early am or not, this is not the usual during a non-pandemic, cruise ship filled summer. As I neared Lemon Creek, I saw something black moving out in the grass a couple hundred yards from the road. Two young black bears were sparing in the early morning quiet.

After I put the car on the ferry, Sara picked me up for the ride home, a couple miles from the ferry, another bear strolled across the road. Then it squatted wayyyyy down on all fours to squeeze under the guard rail, then sauntered up the bike path.