Kodiak

I've been sick this week.  With that, plus the final weeks of the school year and all the craziness that goes with that, I have been slacking off on blogging, particularly given the massive numbers of Kodiak photos I am currently sitting on.  Chris was on the phone with Dennis though, and I heard him promise to get some pictures up and figured I ought to handle that.  So, here we go - these aren't even up on my photo blog yet! The above is sunset our first night on Ugiak Bay.

 Overlooking the beach and our base camp.  We were dropped off on the beach and hauled our full set of gear (about 300lbs) a little ways into the trees to protect the camp.  It worked quite well.

 Rocky beaches and shrimp pots.  There were a great big pile of pots, some of which were clearly damaged but most looked fine to my untrained eye.

Sitka deer eating kelp on the beach.  It was a hard winter for them - we counted almost three dozen winter kills.  Spring is here though, and they should have a better time of it now.

The harbor seals were pretty funny.  Within minutes of your arrival on the beach there would be 2-7 seals following you up and down the beach, staring constantly.  I felt like I was on some sort of seal reality tv or something!  It was pretty creepy, but I missed them later on the trip when we'd only get one or two.

We couldn't see much of anything from base camp so we took backpacking gear and bushwhacked up a nearby hill that overlooked the creek drainage and set up a spike camp.  We stayed there much of the trip, heading back to base camp once to resupply with more food.

Sunset at spike camp, which, of course, comes rather late at night this time of year.  I've really missed the summer sun in Alaska - even if it meant I couldn't get a shot at star trails or aurora shots!

Dawn over Ugiak Bay from spike camp.

Hunting bears here requires 12-16 hours a day of glassing. The spotting scope is a necessity!

Yes, Kodiak has buffalo.  They look like bears from far away.  They also did not like us very much.

Buffalo tracks on the beach.

I did manage a little collection of sheds and other beach treasures, so we didn't come home empty handed!