Monthly Archives: March 2018

Solitary Goat

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Aki and I walk the shore of Mendenhall Lake to Nugget Falls. We seem to have the place to ourselves. Two days ago, when it was all blue skies and sunshine, half of Juneau might have been here, skiing or hiking on the trail or on the lake. Even on a normal weekday, we would be sharing this popular trail with other dog walkers. But today is the first cloudy day we’ve had after a long string of blue-sky one. People must be recovering from sun stimulus syndrome.

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Nugget Falls roars its way down to the lake under a bumpy coating of ultramarine colored ice. The places where concentrated current is keeping the falls ice free are fringed with leaf-shaped formations of ice crystals. All this bores my little dog. She follows close at my heals, trying to make eye contact. While I enjoy the solitude of empty spaces, the little dog prefers a crowd.

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She is happy when we start back to the car. I don’t know why I turn around but I do. There, on s snow-covered section of glaciated rock, stands a large mountain goat. He looks directly at Aki and me for a minute, then slowing turns away his head. A minute later, he moves slowly away.

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Herbert Glacier

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Good thing Aki isn’t here. She would have given up a half a mile back when we started post holing our way across a braided section of the Herbert River. She is in her doctor’s office, getting her teeth cleaned. Ahead the Herbert Glacier hangs above a scree field. My friend and I left our skis where the trail became too icy.

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Not too many years ago we could have reached the glacier itself in conditions like this. That was before it retreated up the hill above the river.

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We push on across the snowing plain, stepping in the footprints left an hour earlier by a group of co-eds from an Iowa College. We met the ladies at Four Kilometer Pond while they rested on their way back to their van. They were spending their spring break in Juneau doing volunteer work. After we left them at the lake, I wished that we had pointed out the moose tracks on the pond.

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The co-ed’s tracks end at a small stream of open water that blocks access to the scree field. While we eat lunch I try to work out a route to the glacier’s toe. Even if we could cross the stream and manage to cross the scree field without breaking an ankle, there would still be a third class climb to reach the ice. Somehow that doesn’t matter on this clear, sunny day.

Making Tracks

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It’s been a few days since it snowed on Gastineau Meadow—long enough for the wind to sculpt sharp-edged scallops at the top of drifts and for animals, wild and domestic, to dimple it with their tracks. Aki isn’t interested in adding her little raccoon-sized paw prints to the mix. To do that would require her to leave the packed trail and plunging into the soft, deep stuff that covers the meadow.

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You can almost always tell dog tracks from those left by their wild cousins. The no nonsense wolves and coyotes seem to always walk in a straight line. If their tracks are any indication, dogs are goofballs. They might charge off the trail into deep snow, circle a tree and charge back, leaving a “U” shaped design on the meadow. They might leap and roll and zigzag around. They never pound out a straight track that crosses a human trail and disappears into the woods. Aki and I stop to contemplate such a trail. The little poodle-mix cautiously sniffs a yellow spot on the wolf trail but does not cover it with her own pee.

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A few meters away from the wolf trail, we spot the tiny tracks of a mouse or vole that had walked across the south facing side of a snowdrift. Maybe because the sun is throwing cast shadows inside each of the tiny tracks, I find the pocked drift as beautiful as the snow covered Mount Juneau rising like a wall above the meadow.

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Snowed In Beaver Country

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I am knee deep in snow having been drawn off the packed trail by frost glistening on a grove of burned out spruce. Aki watches from the trail. She won’t move unless I do something really stupid like post hole until I am out of her sight. Even then she might just curl up on a sunny spot and wait for me to come to my senses.

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We are crossing the glacial moraine. I wanted to sneak off the trail and into the Troll Woods but that path is snowed in. We keep to a narrow trail that resembles a foot deep trench in the snow cover. I think Aki appreciates the way the narrow trail has discouraged other dogs from wandering off to urinate, which simplifies her task of checking the pee mail.

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This is beaver country. We pass a hole kept open in creek ice by one of them. In some places groves of spruce and alders, killed when water backed up behind beaver dams flooded around their trunks, lean against each other like drunks after closing time. They will have the place all to themselves after the next strong Pacific storm brings inches of melting rain.

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Disconcerting 200 Meters

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I am nervous. Aki just charged ahead and out of sight. Usually she stays close on our walks. I wouldn’t worry if we were not using a snow machine trail to reach the Dan Mollar bowl. One could smash the little dog flat without the driver ever seeing her.

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I almost wish I had a snow machine today. The sun is shinning, the temperature is moderate, and deep, firm snow covers all the bumps. The same conditions favor Aki, which is why she keeps charging away from me down the trail.

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Aki’s exuberance doesn’t last. She throws on the brakes where the Dan Mollar trail splits off from the Treadwell Ditch trail. Knowing that she won’t hold out after she can no longer see me, I push on up the trail. One hundred meters later I reach a meadow spotted with shore pines. Aki is behind, frozen in place at the top of a rise just at the edge of my view shed. She gives me her “are you crazy” look.

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The meadow opens up after I start back up the trail and I can see Mounts Juneau and Roberts rising above the shore pines. A hundred meters later, Aki slips by me and takes up her usual station several meters ahead of foot hardy human.

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On the return trip, Aki hesitates at the beginning of the 200-meter stretch where she exhibited so much caution on our way up the trail. She hangs right by my side until we drop down onto the ditch trail. Then it is back to normal. Since it is too early for the bears to awake, I think she might have smelled the Douglas Island wolf pack. Sometimes I wonder if she sees ghosts.

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Sheltering from the Wind

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Last night a north wind blew down Lynn Canal, exceeding 70 knots an hour over Portland Island. It is still blowing. Aki and I are trying to dodge the wind in an old growth forest just five miles from the island. The wind hammers the forest canopy, breaking off small branches and spruce cones scattered on the icy trail.

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It’s just past high tide when we leave the forest for the beach. Wind driven waves slam onto the beach, tearing into the barrier band of beach grass. I have to take care not to step on broken root wads of grass. Sand and shredded strands of seaweed discolor the snow covered trail, thrown there by the waves that hit the beach at high tide.

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I’ve never seen waves this big on this beach. In the 20 years I have visited it, the beach has never suffered the kind of damage done to by these waves. I worry that the sound of pounding waves will scare Aki but she acts like she would on a calm, summer day.

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A cloud of gulls forms just offshore after the birds burst off the water. I think I can see an eagle flying in and out of the cloud. In minutes they settle back on the back, riding the swells with ease.

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The East Wind

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Aki isn’t bothered by the east wind that chills my skin but I am. We have just left the wooded Treadwell Ruins where over a foot of wet snow covers the ground. The trail was sloppy and partially flooded. But it was almost Spring-warm. A junco sang what sounded like a love song.

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We couldn’t leave the woods for the beach because the tide was flooding over all the portions not covered by deep snow. Perhaps for this reason, the golden eye ducks we saw swam close to the shore.

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It was cloudy when we entered the woods but the sun burned through to light up the south sides of the ruins’ alders. As the sun melted the remaining clouds, the east wind rose. In the rain forest, like in Mary Poppins’ London, the east wind precedes changes in the weather. This one is suppose to bring low temperatures and high winds. Aki doesn’t know that so she can ignore the rising wind.

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