Belated Alaska stories

So, I'm a little late with the Alaska postings... but, I did see bears and I have a great helicopter story from my last trip out to the field. We left King Salmon in a fixed wing because there were four of us that needed to go down south with about 400 pounds of gear- it'd take a long time in the helicopter. So, Dave flew three of us in the Found 5-seater plane with half the gear to Pumice Creek, a state police cabin about halfway down the peninsula. Mark (the helicopter pilot) met us there with Kristin, picked up Brendan and ferried them to their site further down the peninsula. When he got back, Susan and I, along with our gear, loaded into the helicopter for the flight over the mountains. To give a little background, the Alaskan peninsula has a line of volcanoes/mountains along the eastern side, giving the eastern (Pacific) coast a very rugged, rocky coastline. The western side of the peninsula is flat, as you could see in some of the previous postings. This was my first trip over to the Pacific side and I loved it. I'm much more a mountain person than a swamp person. That's not really fair, I guess, but what I mean is that I find mountains far more beautiful than open spaces. And there were waterfalls and glaciers/ice fields and jagged cliffs... and a bear! We reached our 5 km X 5 km plot, but were still over the mountains (we were only surveying areas under 100 m), when I spotted a medium-sized grizzly sprinting nimbly over the tundra. Bears can run! It was still running a minute later when we popped up from the other side of the ridge. Watching a grizzly run is an impressive site. We also saw a moose nearby. Then, we reached Yawntarney Bay, where we would be surveying, and saw three bears out on the tidal flats. We continued a little further and found a good place to camp. We loaded the shotguns, then set up our tents and bear fence. That day of surveying was uneventful, but we carried both shotguns and yelled "Hey Bear" every 10 seconds. On the way back, we found bear prints along the beach next to our camp. I'll post the picture on the next entry.

The following day, we tried to head back towards the tidal flats where we saw the bears earlier. Unfortunately, one bear was in the tidal flat about 400 meters ahead of us eating grass, directly in line with our transect. The wind was blowing at about 12 mph towards us, so the bear didn't know we were there. We were tossing around the idea of walking around it, when Susan spotted another bear about 300 meters behind the first one. And another one a few hundred meters to the north of that. Data isn't that important, in the big scheme of things, so we turned around and headed in the other direction. The remaining survey was uneventful, but I'll post some pictures of the landscape, which was definitely remarkable.

The next day, we packed up our stuff in a light sprinkle and loaded into the helicopter for the flight to our next plot near the lower Ugashik Lake on the western side of the mountains. We flew about 100 miles (I think) along the coast before cutting across the mountains. On the flight up, I saw probably 20 bald eagle nests, 4 bear, and many other unidentified birds. The day was foggy, with an intermittent light rain. I can't imagine the rocky, remote coast in any other weather, though. We got to Wide bay and started to fly up the pass. Let me set the scene. I've already said it was foggy and rainy- this means the windshield was covered with raindrops and the visibility was poor. The interior of the windshield was getting a little foggy as well, reducing visibility even further. The valley was narrow and steep, with a small stream at the base. We had to fly low in order to avoid the fog and slow in order to maneuver in the canyon. I felt like we belonged in a war movie, dodging through canyons. We were flying lower and lower, which surprised me. And lower... at one point I thought to myself, I could jump out here and be fine. We were probably 20 or 30 feet above the trees, when the low RPM light blinked on accompanied by a beeping in my headphones. Then, it became steady, with a steady, high-pitched tone in my ears. And we were getting lower, almost touching the treetops (all trees here, are short- probably 10 feet tall at the most). I was convinced, positively sure, that we were going to have a 'hard landing'. I put on my Nomex gloves because that's all I could think of to do. Someone, Mark edged us up to a bit of a clearing in the valley and we hovered. Slowly, he moved us up vertically until we had gained maybe 50 feet in altitude. Then, somehow, he turned the helicopter around in the valley using the equivalent of a three or four point turn. Again, I was pretty sure he was going to hit a rotor blade or the tail rotor on the canyon wall, but he didn't. And we headed back down the canyon. Apparently, there was a 40 knot tail wind and our helicopter didn't have enough power to maintan lift. So, we dropped gear on a cliff to lower our weight and tried again. No dice. We went back to the cliff where we dropped our gear and discussed our options. Wait it out? Stay here for the night? Bring someone over and then come back for the other person, leaving both with loaded shotguns? We couldn't go over another pass because there weren't any low enough in the vicinity and we didn't have enough gas to get to any of the passes further away. We ate some lunch and told stories for a bit while we mulled over the options. Finally, about an hour later, the fog looked like it had lifted a bit so we gave it another try. We flew much higher this time because the visibility was better and got over the pass no problem. And that's my near-helicopter-crash story.

The next plot was also in the mountains, but we didn't see any bear. Couple caribou, a few birds, lots of wind, but no bear. Stay tuned for a cool picture of a beaver dam we walked across, though. We were scheduled to leave that site on Sunday, but when we woke up Sunday, it was raining and the wind was blowing at about 12-15 mph. It's not so much fun to pack up camp in the rain and wind. Then, everything is wet and when you get to the next site, all your stuff is still wet and, well, it's not a lot of fun to be wet and cold. And, we can't survey in the rain. So, if it's raining, we have to sit in our tents for the day and wait for better weather. But weather is very spotty over the peninsula, so it's hard to predict what weather will be like in a different place. Anyhow, Susan made the call that we were going to go back to King Salmon and head back out in a day or two. So we did.

We flew out again in the helicopter on Tuesday for our last site. It was also my last helicopter ride, which was very sad. I'm hooked. This site was on Becharof Outlet, the river that flows out of Becharof Lake, the second largest lake in Alaska. The wind didn't drop below 10 mph for the two days, making surveying a challenge. I did get lots of pictures of wildflowers- I'll post the best of the bunch. And that concluded my field work in Alaska.

I had a couple days back in King Salmon to hand my gear in and pack up my stuff. I was too early for the salmon run, but the fishermen were just getting back in town to start the fishing season. As I may have said earlier, my roommate, Sonja, fishes on a boat out of Naknek. Her captain and some other fisherperson friends were back in town getting ready to start the season. I've heard Naknek comes alive in June and July when the canneries are full of workers and the fishermen are around. I got a taste of that before I left, but I'd love to go back for a season of salmon fishing.

And thus ends my Alaska adventure.