Kodiak revisited

I recently spent another two weeks in Kodiak working for Alaska Airlines after the Covid 19 related bankruptcy of a regional airline that previously had run operations there..  Things are starting to open up again with restrictions and limits but it was nice to see and nice to be able to get to see some of the other aspects of Kodiak, go into some of the previously closed stores, eat in a restaurant rather than just getting take out, etc..  The weather was excellent for the first 8 days so presented me with an invitation to get out and do some more exploring, some more hiking, some more mountain climbing and to fail at seeing one of the famous Kodiak grizzly bears.

I did find out what the two crosses on top of Mt Barometer are for, the one with the mountaineer's axe on it is a memorial to a Coast Guard guy who died climbing the mountain one winter.  It is a very steep and sustained mountain that I am sure gets very treacherous when the snow is hard and icy from being packed down by the wind making it a technical endever requiring more gear than just hiking boots and a camera. .  The other cross memorializes the pilot of an F-15 who crashed into the mountain shortly after taking off from the airport fully loaded with fuel and ordinance.  From what I was told, he was attempting to a take off going toward the mountain which requires a high degree of skill and experience that this pilot may have yet to have gained.  

In the above picture, you are looking at Mt Barometer from the ramp as the recently arrived Alaska Airlines 737 taxis in.  The runway is to the left and ends not very far from the base of the mountain leaving very little wiggle room for a pilot trying to get his airplane into the air and safely avoid this terrestrial obstacle.

Another interesting thing about Kodiak that I learned on this trip had to do with the 6 windmills located on the ridge above the town.  The ridge the windmills are on is called Pillar Mountain and there are several trails on it as well as a gravel road to the top to allow for work and maintenance on the windmills and the many communication towers found there.  

These windmills provide 5% of Kodiak's electricity with the remaining 95% being supplied by a hydropower plant somewhere relatively close on the island although I never saw it or any evidence of it.  I have to admit that this fact hurt my logical brain a bit as I have heard repeatedly that windpower is one of the alternative energies that will save the planet.  Maybe in other places this makes more sense but for 5%, this windmill project seems like an incredible expense to build and maintain with very little benefit.  It also requires changing the character of this entire ridgetop as well as building these huge structures that alter the viewshed of the area.  The windmills weren;t offensive to see and in my opinion were actually kind of a cool feature of Kodiak, but considering that Kodiak already had a hydro plant, this expense and intrusion on the natural landscape seemed unnecessary.  

I spent at least an hour, many times two hours, in the mornings before work walking around the "downtown" area and across the bridge to Near Island to hike the many trails and to become familiar with Kodiak.  These morning walks/hikes led to the discovery of several interesting features and attractions of Kodiak.  I think I am at my best in places where I do not know anyone, it makes me get out and search out the details of a place.

Like this salmon sculpture that I didn't think very highly of the first few times I saw it until one morning I got close to it and really looked at it.  From afar it wasn't very impressive to me but upon closer inspection I found it to be truly a work of art.  It is made from plastic pieces and scraps cleaned from beaches in the area.  Bits of garbage from who knows where in the world gathered from local beaches all consolidated and arranged here to make an interesting and poignant physical statement. Chunks of plastic buckets, barrels, buoys, rubber gloves, tubes, pipes, crates all went in to creating this interesting fish.  I was glad to have taken the time to look at this salmon more closely and appreciate what it is.  I like the "make something ugly beautiful" theme.

Some other pretty discoveries made on one of many morning walks.  Some graffiti art under a bridge that I found particularly fetching, one of many dumpsters in town with some sort of beautification on it, interesting silver salmon on the Kodiak National Wildlife Refuge visitor center, and a dense school of smaller silver salmon on a memorial in town.  The visitor center was closed as were all other government facilities.  Government workers are loving this unplanned paid vacation I'm sure.  Most government workers I know don't seem to be in much of a rush to get back to work.  

The beautiful weather presented the opportunity to do some more hiking and exploring of the many trails and mountains.  There is a really good network of trails just across the bridge on Near Island that were an easy walking distance from my hotel so my morning routine was typically a one to two hour walk before work and walking through the drive through at the Near Island Coffee Shop.  The simple pleasures of forest, ocean, birdsongs, and a 16 oz mocha are hard to beat!  The weekend gave me an opportunity to go further afield and hike one of the other prominent mountains as well as another trip out to the space port complex where the buffalo roam.  Yes, buffalo!!

First, to give some perspective, here are a couple pictures of the island of Kodiak.  The first one is of the whole island where you can see the city of Kodiak in the middle right of the photo.  The smaller islands of Afognak and Raspberry are to the north with the base of the Alaska Peninsula to the northwest and west.  The bottom photo is a close up of the area near the city of Kodiak and the areas accessible by road.  The space port complex is near Pasagshak in the lower right and is also where the road ends at Fossil Beach where there are fossils and surfing beaches.  This is also where the buffalo roam.  Chiniak to the northeast of Pasagshak is also accessible by road and is a very small community without much of interest other than many, many nice black sand beaches.

Okay, now that there is an idea of the island and just how big and inaccessible it is, on to some of the more easily accessible parts.

Some of the rugged coastlines on the way out the road to Fossil Beach.  

Give me a home where the buffalo roam, where the deer and the giant Kodiak brown bears play.  

So I don't exactly know the story of the Kodiak buffalo.  I'm fairly certain that they were originally brought here as ranch animals but as many a buffalo rancher has discovered, they ain't cows.  They are not docile and domesticated and they are strong beyond belief so I think they eventually just became a wild herd.  I have no idea if they can be hunted or if they are "owned" by anyone or if they are herded up and butchered for commercial purposes.  I did not see or hear about any local bison meat for sale in Kodiak but maybe I just didn't go to the right places.  There were at least a couple hundred of them with numerous small calves leisurely roaming and grazing without a care in the world.

Not the best picture I know but getting bison and whales in the same frame was pretty cool I thought.  Give me a home where the buffalo roam and the deer and the humpback whales play!

This area around Fossil Beach also has numerous old military bunkers perched on the sea cliffs overlooking the Pacific making a person wonder what it would have been like to sit there in those concrete holes above a wild ocean while the world was at war.  When an enemy navy was a legitimate threat and foreign boots on our soil was taken seriously enough to guard this wild place.  Seems like something to have been truly concerned about and take action against rather than cowering in our houses while politicians take away our civil liberties.

Moving back closer to town, I did a really fun hike up a prominent mountain called Pyramid Mountain.  From the right perspective, it is pretty obvious why it is called Pyramid Mountain.

I actually hiked this mountain twice while I was in Kodiak this time, once by myself up and down the same route and the other time with 2 of my coworkers.  The second time we went up the popular trail and then over the top and down this side seen in the picture.  That was a fun hike with beautiful views, warm sun, and a mountain goat sighting above the deep ravine at the bottom right of this picture.

This is the view of the mountain from the parking area at the trailhead.  The trail is seen to the left.

Some views from the top.  In the middle photo you can see the airport in the distance and Mt Barometer on the right margin of the photo.

Pyramid Mountain in the rearview after a great hike.

See the mountain goat?  This was actually a different sighting of the same goat when I was scouting where the other trail ends.  When we hiked over Pyramid Mountain and saw this same goat, he was at the top of this ravine.

The snow patterns looked like some good black and white opportunities.

There is a good possibility that I will be back in Kodiak in the next month to work again.  Kodiak was about a month behind Wrangell as far as springtime so if I get to go back it will be cool to see these places again when leaves are out, flowers are blooming, and things are green.  Maybe I could get a glimpse of one of those legendary Kodiak bears or even better - a Puffin!

Agelaius phoeniceus

Some pictures of a male and female red winged blackbird found at the marshy pond next to the driving range in the Muskeg Meadows Nature Preserve aka the golf course.  Andrea and I walk here often and occasionally get some decent pictures.  We spent a half an hour or so trying to get some of these birds while the occasional terrible drive at the driving range sent golf balls kaplunking in the pond.

A Mantra

"I must not fear.  Fear is the mind-killer.  Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.  I will face my fear.  I will permit it to pass over me and through me.  And when it has gone passed I will turn the inner eye to see its path.  Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.  Only I will remain."


This is a mantra from the classic science fiction novel Dune by Frank Herbert.  While I was not always a science fiction reader or enthusiast, I have over the course of my adult life come to appreciate much of it as there is an undeniable prophetic quality to much of it.  This appreciation had its origins when I was in college and took a course called Science Fiction as Intellectual History thinking it would be an easy elective in which I could put in minimal effort and coast through with an A grade.  Well, I was wrong getting a C grade in the course mainly for not reading many of the required books although the ones I did read had a far greater and lasting benefit than any grade I could have received.

I frequently use this mantra to help me control fears that I encounter in life and have found myself repeating at least the first 4 sentences in my mind at times whether at the top of a tree doing work as an arborist or bushwacking through bear country, even when dealing with anxieties arising from potential confrontational situations with other people.  It has worked for me and I hope it can work for others.

I am also using this as an opportunity to let anyone interested know that I will be starting a new blog that will solely be my thoughts and amateur philosophies.  On occasion I meet people who I have very fulfilling and intellectually or spiritually stimulating conversations with and  have had many people tell me that I made them think about subjects in ways they never had before so I'm going to toss some of them out there and see what happens.  I haven't started the new blog yet but will let people know when I have.  I think the title of the first post of this new blog will be The God Shaped Hole.

And finally, I will have another post about Kodiak, AK coming up here soon.  I recently spent 2 more weeks there working and had one stretch of beautiful sunny weather for 8 days!  I also got some answers to some questions about Kodiak that I had after my first trip there.

Kodiak, Alaska

I recently had the opportunity to work in and visit a part of Alaska that I have never been to and as the title of this post suggests, it was the small city and island named Kodiak.  The island of Kodiak lies just east of the base of the Alaska Peninsula which eventually fragments into the Aleutian Island chain and is the second largest island in the U.S.  The city of Kodiak, seen in the above photo, is on the east side of Kodiak Island and looks out into the open ocean of the Gulf of Alaska.  The city must be the fourth largest in Alaska with a population of 12,000 to 13,000 people making only Anchorage, Fairbanks, and Juneau larger.  Ketchikan is probably somewhere close to Kodiak in population but I think Kodiak is larger.  The largest U.S. Coast Guard base in the country is in Kodiak as well so seeing MH 60 Jayhawk helicopters and HC 130 Hercules planes with their distinctive Coast Guard colors are not uncommon to see in the surrounding airspace.  

Another view of the city from a mountain that lies right behind the runway at the airport that I hiked up one evening after work.  The first photo was from the jet as I was leaving to return to Anchorage.  If you look on the left side of this photo you will see a slightly snowy ridge with 6 windmills lining it.  I don't know the details of those windmills but it seems like a safe assumption that they generate some of Kodiak's electricity.  They also provide an interesting and cool characteristic to the town.  The bridge in the center of the photo links Kodiak Island with a much smaller island called Near Island where there is a floatplane base, some nice hiking trails, the city's boat yard and boat hoist, and a large harbor where many of the Bering Sea fishing boats seen in the show Deadliest Catch are moored.

My first morning in Kodiak as seen from the harbor just across the street from the hotel I stayed in.  My first two days there were beautiful sunny days which deteriorated immediately when I had 2 days off of course.  Good ol' springtime in Alaska, it can make you think it is a sentient time of year with a mean sense of humor giving you beautiful days when you are stuck at work and then immediately changing them to cold, wet days when you have free days.

The view from the Near Island bridge looking south toward the airport.  The airport is below and to the left of the snowy mountain in the center distance of the photo.  That mountain is Mt Barometer and is the one I hiked up after work on my last full day there.  More photos of it in a bit.

A couple more pictures from the same spot on the bridge on some days of differing weather.

The Kodiak airport and the pieced together crew I worked with with Mt Barometer in the background.  When I first saw that mountain I knew I would leave Kodiak a little disappointed if I didn't get to the top of it and the weather did its best to keep me from it giving me only 2 windows of opportunity.  The crew I worked with consisted of AK airlines people mostly from Anchorage but also a couple from Juneau and then me from Wrangell.  They were fun people to work with and get to know and I learned quite a bit from them while I was there.  I hope to have an opportunity to work with or at least run into them again in the future.  Some of these guys got to Kodiak the day before I did on the first flight into or out of Kodiak in 4 days.  They landed in a snowstorm and had to immediately get off the plane, try to familiarize themselves with the station and the equipment enough to work the flight and then de-ice the plane before it could leave!  This is an impressive feat and speaks to the experience and professionalism of this crew.  It was good to be a part of it.

One of the most interesting things about Kodiak that I was previously unaware of is that there is a rocket launching facility on the island!!  Whoda thunk?  It is called the Pacific Spaceport Complex and is a corporation started by the state of Alaska and operated on state owned land south of the city of Kodiak.  It was the first commercial spaceport in the country not on a federally owned range.  I won't spend much time talking about it here as you can just as easily go to www.akaerospace.com and learn as much about it as I know.  One thing I found interesting is that they have an office in Anchorage, AK and Huntsville, AL.  I enjoy finding Alabama and Alaska connections of which I am aware of quite a few.  Maybe I'll do a post about that in the future.  Some of the Alaska-Alabama connections start as far back as the Civil War when Confederate Navy ships hunted down Yankee whaling ships in the Northern Pacific to damage the Union economically.  

Back to the spaceport and the present.  We all had Saturday and Sunday off so a few of us used one of the company cars to do some sightseeing and drove the road leading south of Kodiak to the spaceport and one of the beaches where people surf, Fossil Beach.  Are there fossils on Fossil Beach?  I really don't know but I am assuming so.   I was told that there are old military bunkers on the cliffs near Fossil Beach though but did not have an opportunity to go explore them unfortunately.

In an oddly strong way, Kodiak Island reminded me a lot of the big island of Hawaii, albeit a much colder and less colorful Hawaii.  The surf, the rolling grassy hills going to the sea, the seemingly endless views along the beach cliffs, the many black sand beaches, the cows, and the ethnic diversity have some distinct parallels.  There were quite a few cows and ranches on the island and it was cool to see cows with their long shaggy winter coats.  The last picture above is of one of the two surfers we saw at Fossil Beach actually out on the water.  I suppose it is fun but the brief moments of actually surfing didn't seem worth the much longer moments of being cold and wet.  Maybe that is why there were more cars parked at the beach with surfboards on their roofs or leaning against them than there were surfers surfing.  

Let's go back to the town of Kodiak again.  These two Russian Orthodox churches were a couple blocks apart and remind us of the Russian history and heritage of Alaska.  I've always really liked this style of architecture and Russian Orthodox styling generally.  

A local cafe named Monk's Rock was one of the establishments that I visited several times while I was there for coffee in the morning and take out lunch at lunch.  The cafe sold a lot of religious iconography like these above and also many figurines, ceramics, and artwork in the colorful styles of Slavic cultures.  My people!  This cafe had very good, simple food including some of the best borscht, chicken noodle, and butternut squash soup I have ever had.  There is also a sushi restaurant in Kodiak called Kodiak Hana that had some of the best sushi I have ever had,  I got take out sushi there 3 times and would have been satisfied eating there everyday.  The manager of the AK airlines station there told me that this sushi restaurant was owned and run by members of the Moonies cult?  Religion?  She also said that Kodiak was the spiritual center for the Moonies or the Unification Church as they are officially known.  

An immature Bald Eagle on a perfect perch for some rising sunshine.

Now back to Mt Barometer.   This mountain is 2500' tall and the hike to the top and back is about 4 miles round trip.  Other than that, that's really about all I know about it.  Well, and also it was a pleasure to look at when the weather allowed for it to be visible.  There are a couple of aluminum crosses on the summit, one has a man's name and a mountaineering axe on it but I don't know the stories behind their presence on the mountain.

Some views on the way to the top.

Some of the views from the top 

And finally a couple of selfies to prove that I did get to the top.  I didn't linger long up there as it was very windy and a bit cold and I was also a little concerned about the hike down so wanted to have plenty of time to take my time without having to worry about it getting dark.  The descent was very steep with a few snowfields to recross and then one section of class 3 rock climbing that seemed like it would be a little sketchy to climb down when I was climbing up but it turned out that it wasn't a big deal.  Nevertheless, I'm glad I gave myself the time to have a relatively stress free descent but as always, I was prepared with some extra warm clothes, water, and a headlamp just to be safe.  It took me 1 hour and 15 minutes to go from the car to the summit with the round trip taking 2 hours and 52 minutes.  I had estimated it taking at least 3 hours so I was pretty spot on.  I will freely admit I was a bit worn out afterward and my legs were sore for a couple days after but for my first hard hike of 2020 and being almost 49, I was pretty happy.

A couple of photos on the descent.  Looking back up at the top and looking down at the airport below.  You can see the white speck of the company car I was using on the road in the lower right corner.  A Coast Guard HC 130 airplane was flying beneath me just  before I took this picture but I didn't have time to pull out my camera before it left the area, this was taken with my phone.  

A picture looking back up at Mt Barometer and one of it the next morning.  I'm very thankful that I got the opportunity to explore a small part of this very scenic mountain.

A final picture from my Kodiak experience looking out of the airplane window on the final approach in to Wrangell over the Stikine river delta and looking at Wrangell Mountain in the distance.

I look forward to the coming year and have at least a couple trips planned that may be worthwhile and interesting coronavirus be damned!!  I'm looking forward to seeing some of our local whales again, hoping to see some new ones to document and name, have at least one mountain I have to get to the top of before it makes me crazy, and just all of the other unexpected and unplanned encounters and experiences this amazing place brings.

Stay healthy and safe, turn off the corporate media occasionally (ideally permanently), keep a skeptical but open mind, prepare for the worst but hope for the best, and most importantly -Enjoy Life, don't let fear take that away.  Fear is the mind killer.

Love

It's Been Awhile

For the few of you who may enjoy and look forward to posts here on the blog, I promise that there will be new posts soon.  Spring is finally springing here after what felt like a much too long winter.  It's a very bizarre time at the moment to understate it significantly so I hope I can bring at least a few minutes of something else to you other than Covid 19 news.  Actually, let's all take a break from Covid 19 news as much as possible.

Being an employee of Alaska Airlines, I am considered an "essential" or "critical infrastructure" worker and recently spent one and a half weeks in the small city of Kodiak, AK as part of a pieced together team of AK airlines employees who travelled there to get the station up and functioning again after a Covid 19 related bankruptcy by the company that ran the station for AK airlines.  I'll talk more about that in a Kodiak specific post soon.

I will not stay indoors and am willing to risk arrest if necessary if my small town became that authoritarian so there will be new things to take pictures of and hopefully new interesting experiences to tell you all about.

Stay calm, use common sense, and don't believe everything the corporate media is telling us.  Freedom is still important.  Someone once said something like, "Sacrificing freedom for safety will get you neither", "Give me Liberty or give me Death", Live Free or Die and all that for me!

Talk to you soon