Natural Hazards
Posted by Erin on 11 May 2008\em> | Tagged as: trip reports, southwest alaska

Crossing paths
Crossing paths
When it was day-old tracks in the mud, he yelled “Bear!” And when it was an actual bear, he whispered “video camera”. Hig will claim he was actually trying to get across both concepts - that I should both pass him the video camera and ready my pepper spray. All I can say is what I heard. Unable to see from my vantage a few steps back in the willow brush, I thought Hig had seen a moose, or maybe a cute little fox he wanted to film…
The bear soon rendered any question of his identity moot, with a slow lumbering run across the tundra. Towards us.

May snow
“Our first spring bear.” Hig said, mostly for the benefit of the video camera.
The pepper spray’s bright orange safety clip lay discarded on the remains of yesterday’s snowfall. I was poised, thumb at the ready, waiting to see what the bear would do.
You’re supposed to talk to a bear. It lets him know you’re a human - or at least that’s what all the books will tell you. But what do you say?
“Hello. I’m a human. And I’m holding something that will make your eyes water, so perhaps you shouldn’t come over here and take a swat with one of those paws that looks about twice the size of my head?”
Or “Hello. I’m a human. And we humans have been using technology to kill you guys for generations, so you should recognize me as more than the fragile slab of meat that I might appear to be?”

Walking a beaver dam
Or “Hello. I’m a human. And whatever you do to me, bears that mess with humans usually don’t end well, so it’s not a good idea?”
Hig was busy with his video camera, leaving me to do most of the talking - which ended up as a series of mostly inane and rather unconvincing attempts to tell the bear to leave.
I wasn’t sure quite what it meant - but I was pretty sure that the drool streaming from the bear’s mouth was not a good sign. He circled, cautiously. Slowly inching closer, stalking behind the willows to peer out at us under the branches… Taking his sweet time deciding.

Cottonwood sunset
He started to leave. He started to return. I held my breath, silently willing the bear’s decision… Then it was finally over. He turned abruptly, and we were treated to the familiar and welcome sight of a bear butt galloping away through the bushes.
We backtracked along his platter-sized tracks, crisp and perfect in the remains of the early May snowstorm.
Erin: “Wow - that’s an enormous bear. Somehow it’s easier to see in context, looking at the tracks, than it is to tell from the bear itself.”
Hig: “I don’t think the ears grow as much as the rest of the bear. So when you see really small ears, that means it’s a really big bear.”

On the bear’s path
I’m sure we’ve encountered well over a hundred bears through the course of our various adventures. This ranks up there as one of the few most frightening. But for a close encounter, also reassuringly normal. As improbable as it seems when I stand face to face with an animal that could crush me with one backhand swat, bears almost always do run away.
The snow has melted. The grass shoots are coming up. Bear hunters are being flown in to all the lodges out here, brimming with dreams of killing a bear like ours. Spring is here.
A mountain spread thin

Aniakchak pumice field
First we saw the names on the map. Pumice Creek. Lava Creek. Cinder River. And as we stepped out of the last cottonwood forests, we stepped onto Aniakchak volcano. Gusts flew down the Cinder River valley, stirring up plumes of fine volcanic sand. Between patches of tundra, we walked on plains of bare pumice gravel. Even 3500 years after the eruption, the kinnikinnik and cranberry plants are still struggling to spread over the empty ground.

Brushy tent
From the ocean, the rim of Aniakchak caldera is hardly a noteworthy mountain. Just a low snowy ridge, far off in the distance. But on the beach, we walked beneath fluted cliffs of pumice, pumice cobbles sinking into the sand beneath our feet. What had once been a great mountain was spread thin across the whole landscape - in the form of pumice, ash, and crushed rock. Hig the geologist scrambled up the cliff to shoot picture after picture of the remains, carefully placing his ice axe as a scale bar. Pumice floats, and at the mouth of each creek, the drift line was almost entirely composed of this strange weightless rock. Washed up on shore were the remains of Aniakchak, a few pieces of cedar floated in from southeast Alaska or Canada, and from across the Pacific - glass balls.
A weighty addiction
Clink, clink, clink… Three netted glass balls swung from Hig’s pack, slapping against one of our narrow drybags. Awkwardly tied on to the outside of his backpack, the drybag was also full of glass balls. The big orange drybag that comprised the majority of Hig’s pack was also entirely stuffed - glass balls, glass balls, glass balls, and a sleeping bag thrown in for padding. My pack was similarly encumbered with as many glass balls as I could fit around our hiking gear. Luckily, we were only 10 miles or so from Port Heiden, and had run just about out of food (save for some peppermints and a small bag of very salty dried salmon), so we had plenty of room.

Sunset grass
Why the addiction to Japanese trash? The sparkle of a glassy green-blue sphere on a field of pumice, lying on the beach, just begging to be picked up… This one frosted, that one an intense shade of green, one with barnacles, with bubbles, with funny indentations, streaks of color, stamps on their base… All just a little bit different. And in some places, they’re a rare beachcombing treasure. Here?
Jack, who runs the grocery store watched us unloading our pile of over a hundred to mail to Seldovia. “I have hundreds in 5-gallon buckets at home. When I want to send them in the mail I usually pack them in apple boxes.”

Fluted pumice bluffs
“Usually about 80% of them make it through the mail without breaking” said one of the teachers. “We’ve got a pile of 1500 in our backyard in Anchorage - we put a fountain in the middle.” Another teacher was planning to sell her horde of 300 to a shop in Oregon. “I might be able to get $5-$10 apiece!”
The postmistress lifted our packed full boxes onto the scale, slapping on a ‘fragile’ sticker. “As long as they don’t rattle too much, they’re generally OK.”
We’re planning to make a window out of them.
Mothers

Japanese trash
My mother and I were joking on the phone the other day about how she could get a new job as an expedition logistics manager. For the past 11 months, she’s been storing a pile of our gear in her basement, mailing out shoes, skis, maps, socks… Running to the store to buy things we can’t find in 50 person villages. We’ll breeze into town, and I’ll call or email, often starting the conversation with some version of: “These are the things we need in the next village, here’s the zipcode, and could you do it soon so it gets there in time?” Only later do we get a chance to catch up on life and news.
So this Mother’s Day, I’d like to take a moment to thank Niki, Dede, Faith, Carolyn, Bert, Edythe, and Janine. All our mothers and grandmothers who are helping, watching, and supporting our journey. And to Huna, who passed away while we were traveling.

Port Heiden school
Schedule
As unpredictable as we’ve been this past year, we are indeed nearing the end of our journey. I’ve just updated the Schedule page to reflect the latest plan. This time, we even have a deadline - tickets to take the ferry from False Pass to Seldovia on June 29, arriving in Seldovia July 1st.





































































































