Monthly Archives: December 2020

Looking Forward

I guess the year 2020 will end much like the way it began: disappointing and maybe even scary. For the first summer in many years, no cruiseships docked along the Juneau waterfront. Very few tourists took planes to any Alaskan towns. I normally would have enjoyed being able to walk along empty docks on sunny evenings. But, like every other Alaskan, I chose remote hiking trails where we would be unlikely to run into someone carrying Covid.

There were many Alaskans who chose to believe that the Covid pandemic was fake. If I ran into someone not wearing a mask in a store, I’d ask them to give me at least six feet of space. In Safeway, rather than give me the space, a tough looking and mask-less dude got in my face. Others would glare at me in a lumber yard when I passed through wearing a mask.

Last week local health care work received the first of two vaccines. Hopefully before next summer, most, if not all rain forest dwellers will have been vaccinated. I think it will still be hard to convince Alaskans that it is safe to ride in a crowded elevator to shake a stranger’s hand.

Late Season Cranberry

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The parking lot for every trailhead is full this morning. It makes me wonder if most of hikers in Juneau are linked via their phones to a fancy app. A flat, gray sky hangs over the oceans, and cuts off views of the mountain sides. Today’s high tide chokes off the trailside beaches. We do pass a small gang of sea lions but no one is stopping to watch them.

We drive to the end of the North Douglas Highway and are happily surprised to find the parking lot for the Peterson Creek trail empty. Knowing what to expect, I slipped grippers onto the souls of my hiker boots. They made it possible to walk down a narrow, ice covered plank trail without slipping.

Sunshine broke through the clouds just before we reached a small beach. It lacked the power to clear the skies. But enough holes in the sky appears to deliver drama. On the way back to the car, I found a single, red-ripe cranberry still clinging to its evergreen mom. Since nobody was around to talk me out if it, I picked the little berry and swallowed it. My last Christmas present?

Late Christmas Present

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It’s the morning after Christmas, when you might expect to see neighbors on the street, quietly showing off hats, gloves or parkas they freed up from fancy wrappers yesterday. But we are the only ones on the street when we start this little hike up Gold Creek. I want to make some time but Aki slows down the progress of her two humans towards the Perseverance Trail. She needs to read the pee mail.

No clouds hide our views of Mt. Juneau or the other ridges that line Gastineau Channel. But only the bright paint covering the old mining houses on Basin Road sparkle color. After living so long in this rainforest town, I can adjust well to these flat light winter mornings. There are a lot of good things provided by this one. There is neither rain or snow falling, no wind whipping the naked cottonwoods or spruce trees. It is quiet except when grouchy ravens fly overhead. We cross Gold Creek and then slip and slide onto the Flume Trail.

The covered flume carries creek water to a small electrical plant near Foodland grocery store. Until repaired this summer, the flume leaked enough water to form long, heavy icicles in winter that clung to the flume frame until the next spring thaw. As we started onto to the flume today, I didn’t have time to mourn the absence of icicles. I was too busy avoiding falls on slick ice covering the trail. Then the sun lit up the trail. It delivered just enough heat to the trail to melt the ice, and give us a late Christmas gift that lasted until the sun set behind the Douglas Island Ridge.

Slim Slice of Icy Beauty

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The little dog and I were driving to a quite little lake hike trailhead, hoping that the skies would open, as promised by the weather service, for at least an hour or two. Fog and low clouds hugged Gastineau Channel as we headed out the road. Ten miles north, the morning sun was powering through clouds and fog and striking the glacier. When we identified this magnificent December gift, we drove there..

On times like this, I always wonder if the 14-year-old poodle mix can see as far as the glacier flowing out of sharp-peaked mountains. She keeps her nose glued to a trail that will eventually lead her to a handful of dog food dropped during a recent rain storm. That’s her idea of a perfect poodle holiday gift. Sun reflecting on tiny sections of flat-calm water makes her squint.

We cross two small streams and continue down a snow-covered beach. Aki gets frustrated about how many times I stop to take pictures of the lake, the glacier, and the surrounding mountains. Then I stop to take another photograph of Mt. McGinnis and find it hidden in fog. So are the other mountains and the glacier. Maybe, if the lake ice was strong enough to support the little dog and I, we could walk through the growing wall of fog and see all that sunny beauty again. But I have proof in camera of the gift of almost too-rich beauty we already received this Christmas Eve.

Over Confidence

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“Crap.” I should have taken the little path around the flooded part of the wooden trail. But my feet were protected by rubber boots. Only a few inches of dark water covered the plank trail. Piece of cake. Then things were very wrong.

Passage over the first part of the walk filled me with too much courage. While Aki had had to be carried over flooded sections of the forest trail, my rubber boots kept me dry. Then we had to cross an icy meadow trail to the beach. But we managed work arounds so man and dog made it safely to the ocean. I could relax and think about the dozen sea lions we watched feed as we drove to the trailhead. We were circling back through the forest to the car when things got very wet.

Once, Aki and I could have easily walked over a now-flooded wood trail. When she reached it, the little poodle-mix took the rough work-around path that requires us to squeeze through drenched blue berry brush. Aki had already finished the side path by the time I had reached the sunken part of the wooden trail. To show off, I continued down the trail, trusting my boots to stay on the submerged trail planks. Less than a foot from the finish, my right foot slipped off the trail and dropped into a deep, mucky pool. Water filled the boot and soaked my jean leg. After watching the drama, Aki turned and trotted toward the car.

A Last Little Present

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Valuable Slices of Sun

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This morning, while I was finishing up my morning cup of coffee, a stray streak of sunlight lit up the middle of Gastineau Channel. Before it died, the sunlight hit a few of the spruce trees growing on the side of Mt. Juneau. I managed to take a few pictures of the sun struck spruce before they all faded back to subtle green. Twenty minutes of unexpected sun is always enough to get a rainforest guy through a stormy day.

In an hour or so, Aki and I started to enter the Treadwell Woods. Recent rain and above-freezing weather has cleared most of the trails. But a slick slip of ice covered the trail. The little dog and I slipped our way down to Sandy Beach. I expected eagles but saw only ducks, all hunting in shallow water near to the beach edge.

Irish Tea

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Before sifting through today’s photographs, I put the kettle on to boil and drop a bag of Barry’s Irish Breakfast Tea into a mug. Then I start the music from the Chieftains first album playing on the stereo. Aki follows me around the kitchen after the water boils. Something about the smell of Irish tea raises her expectations for treats.

Most Americans wait until St. Pat’s day in March to connect with their Irish roots. They drink more whiskey or beer then, rather than good cups of the Irish tea. This time of year, they prefer coffee drinks laced with peppermint or eggnog. But the Daughters of Mary and Joseph who ruled my grammar sky in Los Angeles, missed their Irish families most in December. They shared their dreams about the joys of Christmas in Cork. Maybe that is why I asked the little poodle mix to walk with me around the little Sheep Creek delta on this late December day.

Small rafts of Mallard ducks were hammering the shallows when we arrive at the delta. At first I took them for scattered rocks. They must be capturing the baby salmon that try to leave fresh for salt water each fall. Even more birds fish in the creek or along the shallow edge of the beach. They don’t care about Aki or I, just about each other. A few gulls even make low surveillance flights over our heads. Suddenly shafts of strong and clear white fill the sky over Gatineau Channel, looking like bright light escaping the room where a good mother just gave birth to a must-loved Christmas child.

Surprising Splashes of Light

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The temperature has stayed above freezing for several days and nights. Such a winter let down often occurs when a cold weather snow storm hammers the east coast of the United States. That’s what happened this week. In Juneau, if you drive more than 20 miles north of town, you can often ski there. We did that yesterday even though we had a good chance of being hammered by rain. This morning, the sky was temporality dry. But our weather app was predicting the return of snow. We grabbed Aki and our ski gear and headed out to the Mendenhall Campground.

Heaps of soft snow covered the campground. But thanks to work done by the groomers, the ski trail was solid. In fact, it was still icy. Aki’s other owner and I had spent more than 10 years skis cross country skiing down wind-pounded paths in Bush Alaska so today’s Mendenhall path should be a piece of frozen cake.

I didn’t expect any decent views of the glacier or its surrounding mountains. But the lower clouds lifted and pulled apart to allow shafts of morning sunshine to light up parts of the ski trail. Clouds would soon bury the sunshine with blankets of grey. For half-an-hour, we could suck up the sunshine.

Beating Back the Rain

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Aki’s other human and I planned a cross country ski adventure for today. But heavy rain was hammering our windows when we woke up. I thought there might be enough snow on a Mendenhall Lake trail for us to sneak in a trip before the rain melted it away. But that trail is reserved for cross country ski racers.

Unless we want to pay a high fee to use the commercial ski trail, we will have to drive north to Eagle Beach. After breakfast, we dropped Aki into the car and then loaded in the skis. Even the little dog was wet from the rain that hammered us while loading the car. In a half-an-hour, we humans parked next to the Eagle River and slapped on skis.

Rather than being washed away by last night’s rain, a layer of still thick snow covered the trail. Our skis slide easily down the trail over snow we would have punched through if just traveling in boots. We enjoyed traveling through the still snowy woods, not bothered by the layer of low clouds that hid most of the mountain peaks and all the blue sky.