Home Mark Stopha,Alaska

Juneau Camp Out

We hiked the mountain above Juneau – Mount Roberts – for our first scout camp out since the pandemic began.  All the scouts had to pack their own tents and cookware and food.  Only stoves would be shared. Sam had a full pack, but he made it.  The hike is uphill to nearly the top of the mountain.  Keith planned the camp out so we could watch the big fireworks show put on by the city, but the fireworks were cancelled.  However, the camp out was already planned, and we knew there would be plenty of people lighting off their own fireworks.
We from the trail head about 4 pm and hiked uphill for about two and a half hours.  I’d been up to the tram on the trail once, but never past it to the camping spot a half mile further.  Our site looked up to the top of Mount Roberts another half mile away, and over looked the bowl under the face of the mountain.  The bowl was like our own little zoo.  We saw a sow with cubs, some black tailed deer, mountain goats, a ptarmigan and brood, and marmots were whistling all day.  We could see everything with the naked eye.  
Sam had his tent set up by himself first, then crawled inside, at the dinner his dad cooked and sent with him, and was down for the count and in recovery.  He was up a couple hours later, running around with the other scouts.  I inflated my sleeping pad, laid it out on the grass, and laid down for a couple hours and then went up to the edge of the bowl to look at the wildlife and talk with some of the parents.  I slept in the open with a light blanket and tarp as there was no rain in the forecast.   We looked down on the fireworks and it was very pedestrian, although lots of noise.  The fireworks continued til long after midnight, but did not keep me up.
We rose about 8 am, and the scouts quickly had their tents down and packs packed and ate breakfast.  It took about an hour and a half to climb back down the mountain.   As Sam and I drove through town on what is usually the busiest day of the summer, with about 7 cruiseships in town and the big parade with locals packing the streets, the place was a ghost town.  No one was on the streets.  Like a science fiction movie.   I wondered if this would be the same scene next year, or the pandemic would pass.  I know by this time next year, we’ll have had a presidential election, and it may be a new normal all the way around.

The Harvest is On

Sara and I volunteered on the harvest crew at the Craig kelp farm today. The kelp farm is set up like a football field.  The “side lines” are engineered lines anchored to the bottom and held at the surface by large buoys.  The “10 yard lines” attach at either end to the sidelines and are the lines where the kelp grows. 

It takes a village to harvest a kelp farm.  There were two commercial fishing boats hauling the grow out lines aboard.   A skiff tended the lines for each commercial boat, untying the grow out “10 yard” lines on each end from the anchored “side lines” so they could be hauled aboard.  If only it was so easy.  Most of the lines had some sort of tangle with the lines next to it, and the boys in the skiff had their work cut out for them, tossing a grapple hook to bring the line to the surface, then pulling themselves along the heavy, kelp-laden line to figure out what was tangled where.   A fifth skiff worked independently of the harvesting boats, collecting anchors and buoys from the grow out lines so they were ready to be pulled aboard.  Four crew were jammed on this boat, and all were young and full of youth and flexibility and strength.  A tender vessel – a small commercial seine boat with a crew of three- arrived mid-day to take what we’d harvested back to town.  

On board our harvest vessel, the skipper (Melissa) pulled the line with a hydraulic crab pot hauler over the gillnet roller at the stern, across the hold to a block tied about 7 feet high at the mast, then through a line stripper to the crab block.  A crew member with a long sharp heavy knife (Alan) whacked the ribbon kelp at the holdfast off the grow out line and into brailer bags in  the hold.  Another crew member (me) coiled line as it came off the pot hauler.  Sara served as a gopher, gathering stray kelp that didn’t fall into the hold and helping tangles over the gillnet reel.  The skipper was also in charge of clearing the line stripper, which regularly clogged and had to be dismantled and the tangle of holdfasts and seed twine cut away. This left lots of time for Alan, a constituent from Haines, to talk with Sara about the goings on at the legislature.

We started harvesting about 7 am, and by midday, we’d filled all 8 braler bags.  As the lines came over heavy with kelp, I could only think – this farmer is onto something.  All this food produced from native kelp seed planted the fall before,  which grew with just the sun for photosynthesis and nutrients from the ocean.  No additional fertilizer needed as with land farming, nor disturbing of the marine environment other than the anchors sitting on the bottom. In fact it was creating it’s own habitat of neat crustaceans and invertebrates we saw come aboard among the kelp which certainly were food sources for little fish in the food chain.   All this food grown in one little spot of the ocean – no wandering around the sea searching for it.  And it tasted good.  Real good.  Right off the line.  I keep thinking of this farmer like I do Bill Gates.  He saw the future and made it happen.  

We untied the commercial boat from where it was tied off along one of the “side-lines”, and motored over to the tender.  There, the tender crew pulled the brailer bags out of the hold and dumped the kelp from the bags into fish totes onboard their vessel to take to the processor in town.

 
They let our volunteer crew go at 330 pm and the rest continued on through the evening. The commercial boats have fishing to do soon, and were giving it their all to get the kelp harvest in before they had to leave for the salmon grounds.

Field of Dreams

Went back to the pasture today for more fiddleheads.  It was a rainy day and I was hedging on whether to go or not.  I stacked firewood in the morning, made some bread with the rhubarb I had in the fridge, and was about ready to get my rain gear and go, as it was a light rain.  Then heavy rain let loose and I lost interest.  A couple hours later, the sun was out for about 5 minutes, and in that time I collected my empty gallon pretzel jars and scissors and headed up the mountain.
I dropped off some pesto I made from the first batch of fiddleheads, nettles and devils club buds, along with some bagels, for Laura and Bob. 
I parked up the mountain and headed for the creek crossing.  As Laura predicted, the creek was running pretty high.  There was still some snow along the creek, and as I walked on it, it was very hard and supported my weight.  Until I broke through in a little overflow channel along the creek.  Down on I went sideways.  Up to my elbows and soaked my pants. Oh well.  Not going back now.  I quickly pulled my pant legs out of my boot tops so they wouldn’t soak my socks, and walked to the tree that lay across the creek and served as my bridge.
I crossed without incident, but when I climbed up and over the root wad on the far side, I slid down the roots and figured I couldn’t get back up that root wad when I came back – how did Laura do it a few days ago?  
All the devils club on the other side of the river had buds that were perfect for picking.  But I didn’t need any more than those I’d already picked this year, and I didn’t have the salad tongs for picking them.  But noted to self for next year.
When I broke out of the rain forest onto the hillside, I decided to explore to the left, as we’d gone to the right the last time.  I already saw plenty of fiddleheads and wanted to see if nettles were more plentiful, as we saw few nettles on the first pick.  I pulled out a plastic 1 gallon (?) container and stuffed it in my bib overall top.  There was a zone of fiddleheads that were ripe for picking along the lower part of the hillside where the forest ended and the open avalanche chute began;  not far uphill from this zone the ferns had already grown and unfurled past picking.  
Maybe this zone was somehow more shaded by the mountains above and the tall spruce and hemlock behind than the plants further up the hill.  And everywhere there was twisted stalk.  I usually eat a few leaves of it when I’m picking fiddleheads but I’ve not collected it as I think it can only be eaten fresh, really, but boy was it everywhere.
Many of the ripe fiddleheads had long stems with a still tightly sheathed fiddlehead on top, and this made for a larger plant for each head picked than picking earlier in the year when the fiddleheads are just coming out of the ground, and I quickly filled my containers.
As I side-hilled and picked fiddleheads, I looked for nettles along the banks of the little creeks that came down the hill.  I didn’t see any in the first creek bed or two.  When I had nearly filled my 4 gallon containers of fiddleheads, I hit the right creek bed, and there were lots of nettles.  After filling all my gallon jars with fiddleheads, I packed  a 1/2 gallon jar with the tops of the nettle plants for Laura.  
She had given me all of the few nettles we’d found on our first trip because she knew I needed it for my Tongass Pesto recipe, so now I could drop these off on the way home for her and give her the good news about finding the mother lode.
I ambled back down to the creek, and made mental landmarks of which direction I needed to go the next time I came across the log bridge to get to the nettles.  As expected, I could not get up the root wad to get onto the tree bridge.  The water was shallower above the tree, and I hopped to the middle of the creek, where I could climb up onto the log bridge from a shallow spot in the creek.  I went over my boots a little, but not bad, and I was already wet from the first time.  It was smooth sailing back to the car.
I dropped the nettles to Laura and relayed the news of the nettle find.  When I got home, I went looking for what I had in my mind would be the best container for cleaning the fiddleheads in the dryer – a nylon duffel bag. I found two nylon sleeping bag duffel bags, each of which held a gallon of fiddleheads, and which I could tie three half hitches with the cinch line to tightly close the bags. I theorized if I used two bags in the dryer, they would tumble against each other and be better than just putting in one at a time.  I was right!  I pulled the first two bags out of the dryer after 15 minutes on air fluff, and they were clean.  I did the same with the other 2 gallons of fiddleheads.  I then put the fiddleheads in the salmon egg basket I garage saled from somewhere that has holes big enough to let the chaff through but not so big that the fiddleheads fall through.  I shook the basket till the chaff had winnowed through and left behind cleaned fiddleheads.
I rinsed the winnowed fiddleheads again through the basket to remove any remaining chaff, and put the cleaned fiddleheads in colanders to fully drain and dry out a bit in the fridge.  We’ll eat some fresh, and freeze the rest.  

Kelp Marathon

Got after the kelp today.  I was going to make salsa, relish and pickles, but after the salsa looked so good, I decided to do more of it and not any pickles.
The bull kelp stipes are very interesting.  I had peeled some to make pickles, and left the rest with skin on.  The pieces with the skin on were so slippery I could barely pick them out of the bowl to put in the food processor. The stipes left behind this clear sort of gelatin coating on the bowls – maybe that’s the stuff they use to thicken ice cream.   The recipes called for running the kelp through a grinder, but the old food processor we garage saled seemed to do just fine.
The kelp stipes turned from brown to dark green in the fridge.  During cooking, it turns from dark green to a vibrant lime green.  The stipe is very fleshy – I’d guess maybe the texture a cross between a cucumber and a grape.  It chopped beautifully in the food processor.  
It’s been an all day affair, chopping, processing, or canning since 8 ish this morning and getting done now at  830 this evening with the last batch of salsa coming out of the water bath canner.  Luckily, this is water bath canning and not pressure canning, as that would stretch it out to another day, at least. 

Upland greens

Laura and I went to the fiddlehead pasture today.  Fiddleheads were plentiful.  Nettles were sparse.  I made Tongass Pesto last in 2017 and we are on the last bag of it from the freezer, so I needed some nettles to go with equal volumes of fiddleheads and devils club buds to make more.  I need to look around for another nettles honey hole.  
A nice day to be up the hillside in the high country.  The fiddleheads at sea level are largely passed picking, but up in our pasture they were fine.  We also saw the whole top of the hillside giveway in an avalanche, which made us look up the chute we were in to be sure we weren’t in danger.  
I brought the book by Janice Schofield’s book of Alaska plants back from the cabin after I “discovered” it there a few weeks ago.   When I looked around the chute we were in, I realized there really aren’t  that many species of greens coming up in the plant community there.  One plant I noted that was growing all over the place and identified from the book was False Hellebore, which is poisonous.  Good to know.  Lots of twisted stalk coming up, too, which Chef John Cox and Hanni introduced me to many years ago, but I don’t know if there’s a way to preserve it, so I just snacked on some of it fresh, but didn’t collect any.
Only one or two other green plants coming up I need to learn and then I’ll know about all of them on the slope. 
When I got home, it was time to clean the fiddleheads.  Normally, I put them in a pillow case and put in the in clothes dryer on air fluff.  This time, I thought I’d try it in a little backpack that had a zipper that I thought would be a nice convenient closure for doing batches of fiddleheads, instead of tying off a pillow case.  It worked great until the last batch.  I put a little rock in the outer pocket of the pack to see if it helped clean the fiddleheads.  Not sure if that made the difference, but the zipper on the main compartment opened, and I had fiddleheads and chafe all over the inside of the dryer.  I put the fiddleheads back in the backpack and removed it from the dryer, cleaned out the chafe as best I could, then pulled out the lint screen and turned the dryer back on.  The chafe was sucked out the dryer vent in short order, cleaning out the dryer, and I put the lint screen back in.  Problem solved.

Hooters gone silent

I took Nick, the son of my inlaw’s cousin, hooter hunting today.  He had deckhanded on his uncle’s seiner for several years, and just finished his marine biology degree at UAS.  
A glorious day about 70 degrees, sunny and a slight breeze.   We went to Admiralty Island where Bob and I got 2 birds and missed out on two others a few days earlier, when birds hooting all around us.  Not sure why, but we couldn’t hear any birds hooting as we climbed up the hill.  Usually, you can hear birds up on the ridge, but if those birds were calling, they were barely audible.  I noticed (again) I’m getting old, as Nick could hear birds further away that I could not.
About half way up the hill, we stopped to listen, then took off our packs for a drink of water.  We started talking- one of the joys of hooter hunting, because you don’t have to be quiet as the birds don’t care – and sat there a good half hour or more.  And then a bird hooted about 50 yards away.  And another one answered 100 yards up the hill from that one.
We had to negotiate a train wreck of dead falls to get to the tree the bird was calling from.  As we got close, I could see ahead there was a deadfall across little swale I could duck under to get to the tree the bird seemed to be in. As I neared the deadfall, the bird exploded from his perch on that deadfall, to a nearby tree, landing low in the tree.  Nick saw it right away.  It was still so close that when we tried to get in position for a shot, it exploded again, flying to a nearby tree below us to a low branch.  We moved down in the bird’s direction, and Nick soon saw him, again in a low branch. 
Nick had my .22, and was getting a rest for a shot.  I had the 12 gauge further down the slope and would be back up.  Nick kept trying to shoot, but the gun wasn’t firing.  I asked him to look at the shell from the chamber to see if it had a dimple in it so we’d know if the problem was the ammo or the gun.  No dimple, he said.   He finally, told me to take the bird, which I did.  
As soon as I shot, Nick realized he was actually moving the safety in the wrong direction.  I felt bad for him as I know what it’s like to use an unknown gun for the first time.  I should have checked the gun when it wouldn’t fire but we were too anxious to get the bird.
I showed the bird to Nick, put it in my pack, and we climbed half way from our position to the upper muskeg at the base of the mountain to try for the second bird we’d heard.  We spent another 30 minutes waiting there, and eating some smoked salmon Nick had made with cohos he caught from the beach in Juneau last summer, using his mom’s smoking recipe.  It was very good.  The bird never piped up.
We worked our way up to the lower muskeg. We could hear birds rather softly hooting further up on the ridge, but there wasn’t time to get to them as I had to get back for scouts.

We saw a lot of scratching on the muskeg up there.  Just barely scratching of the surface, and not deep down digging.  Don’t remember seeing this before.  There were lots of these little ~ 3 ‘ x 8’ scratches.  Seemed like a brown bear would have scratched deeper but maybe they have that dexterity.  Nick noticed a last little patch of snow, so I plucked and cleaned our bird, and packed it with snow to cool it down.

We headed back down to the beach.  The mountain greenery had exploded since being here just a few days earlier.  We came across some skunk cabbage dug up by a smaller brown bear.  It was one of the first times I’d actually seen the foot prints in the mud of these digs, as it was a recent dig and there had been no rain for a week.   I wondered if this was the young brown bear that was terrorizing some residents of a nearby island with summer cabins.  Not really for any bad deeds, but merely by it’s presence, much of which has been discovered on web cams. Bears have been coming and going from the island long before people put their cabins there,  and long after the cabins were built, but were not under the modern surveillance, so they went unnoticed from the cabins that are used only part time by all but one of the island residents. 

I was happy to see the boat floating nicely at anchor when we got back.  Finally, a trouble free end of trip.  Just pull the anchor and go.  Except the anchor was hung up.  We could budge it a foot or two once in awhile, but it would not come free.  Finally, Nick stripped down to his boxers and tee shirt and waded out.  The anchor chain had fouled in a tree on the bottom.  I saw the tree on the beach when I set the anchor on , but didn’t figure it would be a problem – why didn’t it float?  He freed the anchor and brought the boat to shore.  I told him to just hop on the boat and I would hand him his clothes and gear.  But, too late, he realized why I was telling him this – all the barnacles on the rocks.  He felt a pain in his foot.  As we were motoring away, he saw he cut his foot in the meaty pad underneath the base of the toes pretty deeply, but it did not bleed and was incredibly clean.  He got out his first aid kit and dressed the wound. 
Back at the launch ramp, I handed Nick the bird.  He thought I should have it since I shot it, but I told him shooting isn’t the tough part – seeing the bird is, and he’d done that.  He looked excited to try his first grouse.
Andrew and I were to go hunting on Friday, the last day of the season.  I got a text from him when I got home.  He said more Covid 19 had been discovered at the prison, where he sometimes works as part of his job.  The state was going to test all the staff and prisoners, including him, and he did not know who the infected people were so he could not guess if he had been in contact with them.  Did I still want to go hunting with him?  We decided it would be better to wait to do something else, as the birds had gone largely silent.  I also told his son not to attend scouts tonight until we had Andrew’s results back.  Andrew seemed relieved with my answer.