Tag Archives: Kenai

Alaska, Commercial Salmon Fishing

Breakdowns, Wild Seas & Declining Catches

The title of this post says it all. While breakdowns and wild conditions at sea were something I expected, the steadily declining hauls we are taking in are not. That first week really set a high standard for the season, but each week since we’ve been pulling in less and less. What we caught that first week in an hour we have to grind for a whole day to catch now. There’s a lot of other salmon species getting into the mix as well, which is definitely not desirable. Reds fetch the most at 2.00 a pound, while dogs and humpies (chum and pink salmon) fetch much less. I think we only get only a quarter a pound for humpies, so seeing a bunch of those in the net isn’t great. We’ve been catching some nice silvers, I think they go for more but not as much as sockeye. It’s strange to be judging fish based on their monetary value. There’s so many fish we catch that I’d be overjoyed to catch on rod and reel, but in commercial fishing I have to look at the overall catch. I’ve got to see at least 100 fish come into the boat each trip to feel like it was a worthwhile day.

Probably the thing that gets me most excited is when we catch king salmon because they are so rare. Sportfisherman can’t keep them, but commercial fishermen can. We’ve only caught a couple in the net so far. One was on the small side, but the other was MASSIVE! I’m reeling the net up on the drum when this enormous thing rolls in over the transom. I thought it was a big log at first, but was shocked to see it was a huge king! It looked as big as the 40 lb. white sea bass I caught a few years back in the Monterey Bay. It was enormous compared to the usual size of salmon we usually catch. It was a beautiful fish, I have to say out of all the salmon the kings are the best looking. I really enjoy the shiny chrome on the silvers, but the kings are my favorite. When we got back to the dock the crew there were really excited about it. They weighed it for us. Turns out it was only 33 pounds, but it still was the biggest salmon I’ve ever seen in person. It was the biggest one Thor had caught in 5-6 years, so it’s not common at all. Catching that fish definitely made my week, that’s for sure!

I would have really liked to have gotten a fillet off this big ‘ol salmon!

The Cheryl Lynn has been having some issues lately. Everything seemed to work more or less fine at the beginning of the season, but starting with the overheating situation I talked about in the last post things have been going downhill. The engine keeps chewing up impellers, we’ve gone through 3 so far this season. The impeller is what failed initially and caused the engine to overheat, and for some reason it keeps happening. The last one Thor put in seems to be working the way it was supposed to, maybe it’ll last until the end of the season. We also had the hydraulics for the reel blow and get hydraulic fluid everywhere, and most seriously, we’ve had ongoing problems with the transmission. For whatever reason it’ll refuse to go into gear at times. One awful day we had all 3 things go wrong, that was fun.

The overheating and hydraulic issues seem to be fixed, but the transmission issue still is plaguing us. There’s something that Thor does to repressurize the lines that gets it to work, but it takes a few minutes. Out at sea in reasonable conditions this isn’t a problem, but it’s gone out on us twice now while waiting to get unloaded at the dock. The boat was at the mercy of the river’s current and we drifted helplessly into people’s boats. Both times Thor was screaming at me to get a line around any cleat on any passing boat I could, while the boat’s owners are screaming at me because we slammed into their boat. Not a good time at all. It’d be very easy for me to get crushed between boats or get knocked into the river when these kind of things happen. I’ve managed to keep the boat safe so far, but it really takes a lot out of me to do it. Now I approach dock landings with dread, as that’s when the shit usually hits the fan. There’s nothing like being exhausted after 12+ hours at sea and looking forward to having the day done, when you’re suddenly thrust into a dangerous scenario that you’ve got to be quick and precise to get out of. You can never let your guard down out here, especially not in port it seems!

It was nice to see a rainbow over the cannery the other day.

To top off everything else, the weather has been giving us issues. Thor says we’ve gotten more wind than usual this season. The wind can kick up any time of day and can whip the inlet into a froth. There’s been times where it was just too much to go out in, so the fleet stayed at port. We had one day where things really got intense. Thor and I had been letting a net soak for 2-3 hours and we knew it was going to be a nice set from all the fish splashing we had seen. The waves at the time were only around 2-4 feet, no big deal. We did know that there would be a small craft advisory later on in the afternoon, but we figured we’d get our fish and get back before the swells and wind kicked in. We started hauling in the net well before the winds were to start blowing, and sure enough, it was loaded. As we got to the end of the first shackle, suddenly the wind started blowing strong out of nowhere. The swells tripled in height, and it was all we could do to stay on our feet. When you’re picking fish you don’t have anything to hold on to, so we were getting tossed around all over the place. It soon became a dangerous situation, it was the salmon version of Deadliest Catch. It just kept getting worse and worse and we didn’t bother picking the last 20 feet of net. We just left it on the deck with the fish still in it and scrambled for the cabin. I said to Thor “get us out of here Scotty,” and we made a beeline for the dock.

When the waves struck, we were in the middle of the inlet. Thor said that it should get better the closer we got to land, but it stayed the same all the way back to the river! It was an intense, white-knuckled trip back. A couple of times I got the sick feeling that the boat was about to roll, but the Cheryl Lynn is a beast and handled everything the sea threw at her. Thor designed her well. He claimed that he’d been in worse and it hadn’t rolled then. Fortunately everything worked when we needed it to, but if we would have broken down out in that slop, things might have gotten pretty dire. When we made it back to the river it was as wild as I’ve ever seen it before. It was a nerve-wracking affair getting docked, off-loaded and back to our anchor buoy. I was so high on adrenaline by the time it was all over and done with, it took all evening to mellow back out. Thor was as shell-shocked as I was, and to celebrate a good day’s catch in such rough conditions we went and had dinner at a really nice restaurant in town. All we could do is talk about what we had just made it through. One minute we were in a tempest at sea and the next we were in a nice comfortable restaurant surrounded by people who had no idea what was going on out there on the inlet. It was two different worlds existing right next to one another.

It was the most intense conditions I’ve ever been in out at sea by far. Thor said he thought we were in 12 foot seas. We caught a few waves that broke over the bridge, and I was looking out at waves higher than the windows a lot of the time. It wasn’t that much fun to be in the middle of something like that, but it was an exhilarating experience to survive nonetheless. The fact that we caught 300 fish despite the poor conditions made getting out of that situation even sweeter. Thor really complimented me on my deckhanding skills that day. It was a real trial-by-fire I guess, and I passed the test with flying colors. Here’s a video I took on our way back, sorry for the vertical filming! I wasn’t really thinking straight at the time.

The wind blew strong for the next day, keeping the fleet from going out. That night the wind died down and we were able to return to fishing the next day. It was as still as a lake out there with calm conditions. It was such a huge change, it was hard to believe that 48 hours before it had been a real washing machine out there!

What a difference a day makes!

It’s not common to see Mt. Redoubt lit up like this in the morning, usually there are clouds obscuring both the sun and mountain. It’s a pretty sight to see on the way to the office!

So as of today (August 2nd) the season is looking like it’s pretty much over. The past few days we’ve just been out there struggling for fish. We’ll leave out the net 3 hours at a time for 20-30 fish. The season is technically open to the 15th, but I don’t see it going on for much longer. Supposedly, the Department of Fish and Game announced that they had counts of 150 fish on their indexes when they were out testing a couple days ago, but for some reason the fleet can’t seem to tap into that biomass. People are already starting to make appointments to get their boats out of the water. There definitely is a vibe in the air that the season is pretty much a done deal. If you can’t catch enough to make it worth your while, then it’s not worth going out.

I’m pretty stressed because I have made far less than I had anticipated this season. At this point I fear I’ve barely broke even on this whole thing. Of course, I didn’t expect to make what I did last year at the lodge, but not this much less! I definitely have made some good connections and gotten a lot of experience in the process however, that was my main goal for this season. It’s definitely been an adventure! Still, I can’t help but to think that this fishery is on its last legs. All the young guys are fishing over in Bristol Bay making big money. I heard they had a record breaking season over there. The run there this year was 69.7 million sockeye! It is the Super Bowl of sockeye fishing. Hopefully with the experience I have from this season I can get a spot on a boat there next year. It’s a tough fishery though, I’ve heard conditions can get pretty nasty over there during the season. I also hear about a lot of horror stories about bad things happening to fishermen over there. Thor’s son had a 47 year old deckhand on his boat suffer a heart attack this year and had to be medevaced out. I also heard a story about a boat that had its reel break off and squash a deckhand against the transom. I heard he lived, but he broke several bones (including his back) and ruptured some internal organs. I’ve never looked at a reel the same way after hearing that story!

Since I was counting on having a lot more money at the end of the season, I’m not quite sure what I’m going to do next. I’m totally overwhelmed with debt, don’t have a place to live, no job lined up yet, and my truck is thousands of miles away. I’ve got some ideas on what to do next but none of them are good options. I’m waiting to see how things turn out and talk to some people before I make a solid plan to proceed. I’m not really looking forward to what lies ahead of me, I feel like I’m in between a rock and a hard place for sure. The best thing is that I’m somewhere where I want to be, now I’ve just got to figure out a plan to stay up here. With winter right around the corner I don’t have much time to get things squared away one way or another. I’m hoping things work out for the best. I’m doing all I can at the moment to make that as likely as possible. Well, I’ll be seeing what the future has in store for me very soon I suppose.

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Alaska, Commercial Salmon Fishing

The Big Show Begins

Well, much has happened since the last time I’ve posted. I got to witness what I call the ‘Great Dandelion Detonation’ in Anchorage. Of course, anywhere there are dandelions growing there’s always that time of year when you’ve got some fluff in the air. In Anchorage however, the fluff is like a snowstorm! You actually have drifts of fluff in people’s yards and alongside the roads. I’ve never seen anything like it.

The fuzzy was all over the place!

On a day when the fluff was thickest, I was walking to the Carr’s (Alaskan Safeway) from the house I was staying at in Anchorage. The streets leading to the grocery store wound though a bunch of suburban neighborhoods in the middle of town, so running into wildlife was the last thing I was expecting. I was walking down the sidewalk through the fluff drifts, as I was fiddling around with my phone. When I looked up from my screen, out of a side street to my left came a moose the size of a horse that was jogging in my direction! It was about only about a hundred feet away from me, it was the closest I’ve been to a moose that can actually get at me. I did an immediate 180 degree turn and started walking away from it. After I walked a short distance, I turned around to see what the moose was up to.

Fortunately, it was heading in the other direction down the street. It all happened so fast that I didn’t get a picture, although I tried. Since the way I had to go was the direction the moose had ran, I cautiously continued my walk. I think the moose ducked out in a creek bed that intersected the street a ways down, as I never saw it again. I figure it was a young male moose out wandering around looking for ladies or something. The moose you really have to look out for are the mamas with babies, although any moose could mess you up if you got on its bad/crazy side. This goes to show that you never know what you’ll run into outdoors in Alaska! The moment you step outside you could encounter any kind of critter, even in the middle of a densely populated area.

I went with Bethan and her mom to go check out the local botanical garden on one of my last Anchorage visits. I used to work at one when I lived in Hot Springs, so I was interested in checking out what they had here in Anchorage. It was small, but what it lacked in size, it gained in just the sheer variety of plant species. There were so many different kinds of native ground mosses, flowers and berries on display. Over the course of the summer different kinds of flowers bloom at different times. At the time we visited most of the early season varieties had already bloomed, and the late summer flowers had yet to produce, so the garden was in a bit of a lull. There were still plenty of flowers blooming however, so there was still much to see.

This was a pretty interesting display. I didn’t see any mushrooms on this shroomy bus, but it seems like a work in progress.

Some pictures from around the garden.

The fleet at rest. Notice the boat in the background towards the left side of the frame. He didn’t pay attention to the tides and got stuck there trying to get back in the river mouth.

The major thing going on lately is that ‘The Big Show’ is well underway around here. That’s the general term for the fleet kicking off the salmon season. It’s kind of like Burning Man for the fisher folk. Over time, more and more people started showing up around the cannery. Around the end of June is when it really got hopping. Fortunately, Thor and I had the boat ready to go long before most of our fellow fishermen did, so we got to sit back and watch everyone else go crazy getting their boats in the water.

It’s now a couple of weeks into the season, and I have a few thoughts on the experience so far. The first thing is that commercial fishing in Alaska is a whole different beast than fishing for fun anywhere else. There’s only special days when we can go fishing, and sometimes they run consecutively. This means that you have to go fishing whenever you are allowed to, or you’re leaving money on the table. No matter if you’re injured, or sleep deprived, you’ve got to go. Injuries are really bad, because if you hurt yourself in a small way it never has a chance to heal properly. Then it keeps getting worse and worse, and you’ve got to figure ways to treat it (or keep it from getting worse at least.) This job is hell on the hands, fingers and wrists. I’m constantly popping Advil, icing and bandaging wounds. I’m used to getting injured fishing, it comes with the territory. Getting wounded and working through it is something I’m having to get used to. Fortunately it’s made me a lot more safety-minded and I’m learning how to not get injured in the first place. Still, some things just come out of nowhere and there’s nothing you can do about it. I just try and cultivate situational awareness as much as I can.

It’s rare to see the sun in the morning, and the seas are hardly ever this calm. Moments like these you savor.

Another thing that has been a challenge is learning how to properly tie up our big boat when the river current is flowing strongly. Depending on the tide, the Kenai River can really get rolling. This really becomes an issue when tying up. There’s only so much force I can haul on a line in those kind of currents with that big of a boat. We had issues the other night when I tied off the Cheryl Lynn to the dock for our off-load. Right after I tied up, I noticed that the dock cleat I had just looped the line around started to lean over to the side facing our boat. The heavy current was putting enormous strain on the cleat, while Thor had the boat in gear to try and counteract the force of the water. Obviously, the cleat was rotten and couldn’t take the strain. There were people around besides me, we all ran for cover because when that thing eventually blasted off the dock it was going to go with lethal force. I couldn’t untie the boat because of the dangerous situation, so Thor gunned the boat and ripped the whole thing out. It came out like a bullet and slammed into the hull like a slingshot. That would have crushed a body part for sure.

Right after this happened, we tied up to another cleat and while I was unloading the fish, our engine started to overheat. We managed to make it back to our anchor buoy before a little bit of steam turned into huge clouds, filling the cabin. One of the skiff drivers came over to us, he thought we were on fire! Luckily, Thor managed to fix the problem the next day without calling in a mechanic, so we’re all good now. It was such a stressful off-load after a 20 hour day, things tend to go to shit when you’re least prepared to deal with them out here. As ya’ll can see, the whole docking aspect of this job can be really challenging. There’s just so much that can go wrong when you’ve got big boats crashing up into docks.

The ocean is wildly unpredictible around here. The tides rule everything, since they have a huge range. It’ll swing over 20 feet in 6 hours, and the access to the river is only possible when the water is high enough. We’ve had to wait out at sea for enough water to fill in the river mouth before we could enter. As for being out at sea, it’s generally pretty rough and choppy. Four to six foot swells are normal to work in. Occasionally it is nice and flat, but those times are few and far between. You have to really be careful on deck when things get rough, as it’d be so easy to get thrown overboard by wave action. Today as I write this (July 18) the entire fleet had to turn around due to really nasty conditions. It’s a shame because it’s such a nice sunny day, too bad it was unfishable out there. Swells were rolling 8-10 feet, it was rough. We all headed out to sea in a pack, and one by one boats peeled off to return to port. Thor went out a good ways to see if the waves would lay down some, but it was just too much to safely be on deck. It was a wild ride from inside the cabin though!

As far as the fishing itself is concerned, we’ve been doing pretty well. We’ve caught between 1000 to 3500 lbs of sockeye every time we’ve gone out. Salmon is going for 2 dollars a pound at the cannery, so we get a few thousand a trip. Captain Thor has been impressed by my deckhanding skills and has told me he’s going to give me 20% of the total, which is the experienced deckhand wage. This means I can make a pretty good amount of money for a good day’s fishing. For instance, if we catch 3000 lbs that’s 6,000 dollars. My 20% of that would be 1200 bucks, pretty nice! You can see why everyone is pushing as hard as they can to fish. Our fishing periods are Monday and Thursday, and we can fish from 7 AM to 7 PM. The Department of Fish & Game can add days depending on their daily sampling of the total fish population. This week every day but Tuesday was a fishing day.

I must say that while it is impressive catching so many fish, I really miss having that connection with the fish you get while regular sport fishing. When sport fishing, I feel that every fish has a story attached to it. Some fight while others come up without struggle. Others are smart enough to spit the hook or do something to get themselves unhooked. You’ve got to find the proper bait selection, depth, location and things like that. When you have a good fight with a fish and win, it’s just the best feeling in the world. With gillnetting, you put out your net, reel it in after a certain interval, remove the fish, and chuck them into the hold. No fish has a story, it’s like assembly line work. Sometimes when I catch a big fish I like to comment on the size of it, or how nice its colors are. In a way I feel it gives a little bit of dignity to the fish. There’s no thrill to it like the way it is when I’m fishing kings with my boys back in the Monterey Bay. It is what it is though. I’m glad to have the opportunity to do this work, but I can’t wait until I can get a rod and reel in hand to fish the proper way again.

Our best haul yet, around 600 sockeye. The haul was somewhere around 3500 lbs of fish. It’s a lot of work getting them in and out of the boat, but each one is money in my pocket!

Our fishing days run really long. Typically I’ll wake up at 3:30 and leave the dock at 4. It’s usually 1-3 hours to get to the fishing grounds out in the inlet, and that same amount of time to get back. Then with the off-load taking 1-3 hours, you’ve got quite a long day. Most of our days average 18-20 hours. It takes me a full day to recuperate if I’m lucky enough to have a day off. If the fishing is open the next day, you get a couple hours sleep and you’re back at it. You’ve just got to get by with cat naps here and there. There is a lot of down time letting the net soak, but when it is time to pull it in and get the fish out it’s a lot of work. When the boat is pitching around it gets wild!

I’ve come a long way in the two weeks we’ve been going out. I think I’ve got the fish picking part down, that was the hardest thing to learn how to do. The gillnet is about 13 feet deep, and when you bring it up on the boat it’s compressed into about a 3 foot swath of net. The salmon are all tangled up in there and it takes a lot of practice getting them out. We use these little metal picks to get the netting off of the fish, they are like tiny gaffs. They are also good at hooking the fish in the head in order to get a better grip on them. Sometimes the fish are small enough to just pull through once you get the head clear, but most are snarled up in there. It took me a few trips to really get the hang of it, and now I can get all but the most tangled up fish out of the net. Thor says that I picked it up faster than most people he’s seen, so I take that as a great compliment.

Thor’s girlfriend Ingrid got this pic of me mid-toss. There’s a chute on either side of the reel that leads down to the hold.

There’s a neat little community of fishermen down here at the cannery. Everyone knows each other from years of fishing together. People are divided into what is known as groups. Groups all fish together and share information with each other at sea. Our group has a code system so if one guy finds the fish, he can announce it to everyone over the radio in code so non-group members won’t get in on it. We’ve got a good group full of some interesting characters. Occasionally some of the crew will cook up a whole bunch of food and we’ll all get together and socialize. A lot of these guys are from Washington and Oregon, they fish down there and up here commercially. I just love sitting around with these salty dogs and hearing their stories. It’s a real good scene here of mostly older people. Everybody helps everyone out with whatever they need, as we’re all in this together.

Our very first voyage was 4 days at sea to start off the season. The plan was to head out on the 4th of July and make our way down to Snug Harbor on the other side of the inlet. It’s 52 miles away from Kenai and takes about 3 hours to get down there. Historically, all the fishermen went down there to party on the holiday, I heard it was a quite a scene down there on that day. We were going to fish the area down by Chisik Island (where Snug Harbor is located) and overnight in the calm waters of Snug. I’ve been hearing about this place for a while from different people, and seen it in some of Thor’s artwork. Thor’s girlfriend Ingrid had taken off work for the week and she was going to join us on our trip. Thor was excited to show us the place that meant so much to him, and I was definitely stoked to experience the wilderness on the other side of the strait.

We made our way down there and fished all day. There was a tender (boat that collects fish) from our cannery at the anchorage in Snug, so in the evening we brought our first haul in and off-loaded it there. I was blown away by how beautiful this place was. I’d say that it is probably the most scenic spot I’ve seen in Alaska so far. The waters were turquoise in color, rather than the grey cloudy glacial water that is seen coming out of the rivers of the Kenai penninsula. It was surrounded by lush green mountains and in the background many snowy white peaks of the Lake Clark National Park and Preserve loomed. It is home to an old cannery that is still in operation as a bed and breakfast. A handful of houses dot the shorelines, but other than that it’s undeveloped. We dropped anchor across from the cannery and went to bed around 10 o’clock. Around midnight when the sky started to get dark, some people at the cannery launched a round of fireworks from the beach. It freaked me out at first, but I soon realized what was happening. It didn’t even bother me that they woke me up, I’m glad I got to see some 4th of July fireworks!

Snug Harbor, looking back towards Lake Clark National Park in the interior.

The next day was a day not scheduled for fishing, so we just spent the day going over to other fishermen’s boats to see what they were up to. We’d tie up alongside and just sit around to shoot the breeze. The big party I was told would happen never materialized, I was all ready for some barbecue, bonfires and beers. Oh well, at least I had a lot of beautiful scenery to feast my eyes on. It was a bluebird kind of day, nothing but sun and clear blue skies. Every direction looked like something you could see on a postcard. We lounged around all day, and in the afternoon we got the news that the following day was a fishing day. So we went out and fished that day and the next, returning to Snug at night at the end of each day.

It was nice to visit there, but I got really poor sleep on the day bed in the cabin. All I could think about it my nice bed in my camper back at the cannery. When we got back I crashed for a couple of days, it was wonderful. That trip was the longest I’ve ever been out at sea. While I really liked the adventure of it all, it’s not something I want to do again for a while. Maybe if the boat was bigger and I had a more comfortable place to sleep it would be different, but my back and hips got really screwed up from sleeping on plywood with a thin layer of foam on top. Being middle-aged sucks, I miss the days when I didn’t have to contend with constant daily pains throughout my body. I try to do what I can to avoid it in the first place, that’s my only defense.

Looking out at the entrance to Snug Harbor. It looked like something you’d see in a painting.

A collection of photos of yours truly and of Snug Harbor.

There is so much activity going on right now here in Kenai related to fishing. It’s as if the whole population has turned out to fish for reds on the river. You’ve got us in the gillnet fleet, dipnetters on the beach, and above us on the river are the set net folks. Dipnetters camp out on the beach, and spend all day in the water in their waders. They have giant hoop nets out in the current, occasionally a red will swim into them. They do pretty well from what I hear. Whole families turn out and fish together, heads of households can keep 25 and each family member can keep 20. A good day of fishing will stock up the family freezer for a whole winter, but the fishery is only open to Alaska residents. Then you have the set netters, who anchor their nets and go out in their skiffs occasionally to retrieve the fish. I don’t know much about set net operations, I tried to look up their limits but can’t find anything online. Like us, they can only fish on certain days of the week.

Dipnetters out in force!

So that’s pretty much what’s happening around here. There’s so many things going on daily, this fishing life is pretty dynamic. If I were to try and tell ya’ll about everything that has gone down I’d be writing this post forever. Suffice to say that Alaska is a pretty extreme place. This makes the highs really high and the lows pretty low. Things turn on a dime, you never know what is coming at you. I like that uncertainty, it’s so much more my speed than the boring and predictable lower 48. Anyways, I’ll try and update the blog more often. It’s hard to find time to write though. Either I’m fishing, getting ready to fish, or recuperating from fishing. I still can’t believe I’m getting paid to fish! It’s been a life-long dream for me. Ok, see ya’ll next time!

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Alaska, Commercial Salmon Fishing

Kickin’ it in Kenai

I’ve finally had to get back to business this past week. I had a nice 3 week idyll in Anchorage hanging out doing nothing, but it was time to get to work down in Kenai. Thor and I have moved into our trailers on the grounds of Pacific Star Seafoods, a cannery right on the Kenai River. We’re only about a mile away from the river mouth, so the commute will be pretty reasonable once the season starts! This week’s featured image was taken from the banks of the Kenai River around Old Town, looking back at our cannery’s docks from a couple of miles away. The cannery itself is only about half a mile from town, and I get good internet speeds there with my AT&T data plan. These two things have made my work experience completely different this year compared to working at Yes Bay, it’s a game-changer. I also have my own trailer, it is fantastic to have my own space! Over in Thor’s trailer is a fridge and microwave, so we’ve got the food preparation aspect of our camp covered.

Home sweet trailers. My little trailer is not in the best of shape, but it is luxurious compared to my room at the lodge last year.

The only negative thing I have to say about my accomodations is our finicky power situation. There’s too much load on the outlet that we are having to use to power both of our trailers. It’s fine as long as we keep our heaters off, but with them on (along with the fridge and whatever else Thor and I have powered on at the time) we trip the breaker. Unfortunately Kenai is very cold at night. It’s a lot colder here than in Anchorage, there’s always a chilly wind blowing. My trailer is super drafty, so without a heater going it gets pretty frigid. I’ve got to wear a couple layers of clothes and a knit hat under a couple of blankets to stay warm. It’s kinda crazy that it’s the beginning of June and I’ve got to bundle up like it was the middle of winter down south! That’s Alaska for you!

This little guy has been hanging around our trailers. So these rabbits are commonly known as the Alaskan Rabbit, but they were originally bred in Germany and it’s an introduced species. You can tell they were domesticated at some point as they aren’t as skittish as your typical wild rabbit.

Work has been going well so far. These past few days have been spent patching, stripping and hanging nets on Thor’s boat, named the Cheryl Lynn. The way nets work on a drift boat is there are sections of the net (called shackles) that are around 100 yards long. Three or four of these shackles are wound around a huge roller that looks just like a conventional fishing reel. Our first project of the season was to take off all the nets and inspect them. Depending on the severity of holes in the net, our options were to mend the damage or just scrap the whole thing and tie on a new one. The first shackle wasn’t too bad. Thor showed me how to patch a basic hole, which took a surprising amount of effort for me to get right. I’m pretty good with tying knots, but it takes a bit of practice to translate that skill into repairing nets. After a day or so, I was pretty competent at doing basic square holes. I worked on the small ones while Thor took care of the really big rips.

The Cheryl Lynn in drydock. She’s a solid boat, can’t wait until she is in the water and we’re catching fish!

It takes a while to patch so much net.

We got the first one done, and wound it back up on the reel. The other three shackles were too damaged to attempt repairing, so Thor showed me how to go about cutting out the old net from the ropes that hold it together. There’s a top rope with floats called the cork line and a bottom rope with a lead core called the lead line. Stripping a shackle requires taking a permanent marker and marking where the knots holding the net are located on the cork and lead lines, then slicing off the knots. Reattaching the net requires a simple stitch that is endlessly repeated. Stripping and hanging is very monotonous, but I actually really enjoyed it. It was a lot like trimming weed, I just popped in my earbuds and listened to my favorite podcast while I stitched away.

To hang a net, you need a big ol’ knitting needle.

Other than starting to get our boat & gear seaworthy the past week or so, Thor has been busy getting ready for his art show at the Kenai Art Center. He and his father are big names in the Kenai art scene, actually Thor’s mom and dad were founding members of the center. Unfortunately, they both passed last year, but Thor is keeping his family’s art alive. Along with his art, Thor included a few of his dad’s pieces he thought people would like to see. I helped him move a lot of his canvases from Anchorage down here for the show, but there were a few at his family’s homestead outside of Kenai he wanted to bring as well. I’ve heard about the old family homestead a lot, so I was stoked to go check it out when Thor asked me if I wanted to go over there with him.

The old Evenson homestead.

Thor and his family first came up to Kenai back in the late 50’s. Back then, it was at the height of people coming up to Alaska to stake their claim on property. You were entitled to 160 acres if you lived on the land, built a residence, and farmed at least 10% of it within 5 years of your initial claim. Thor’s dad brought his family up from Iowa and they came up to Alaska looking for a fresh start (like pretty much all of us then and now). He found this piece of land that was out on a isthmus between a couple of lakes and figured that was the best place to set up shop. It is a pretty place indeed. I’ve included pictures of the house and the views from either side of the driveway. These days, Thor’s son has taken operational control of the house and offers it up on Airb&b for rent. The day Thor and I went up there to get the art, a Hawaiian family was there getting their party on. They were good island folk, and didn’t mind Thor and I invading their privacy to get some canvases off the walls. The property still has about 90 percent of the initial land claim given to it. Thor’s parents broke off about 20 acres to the town for a senior center to be built, which actually they wound up spending the last days of their lives in. The Evensons were (and are) such pillars of the Kenai community, it’s nice learning about their history in this town.

A couple of days ago the art show went down, and it was a great success for Thor! He sold some pieces and the opening day went really well for him. He’s done interviews for the local paper and radio station, so word got out and quite a few people showed up. Everyone I met at the gallery has a lot of respect for him and his family, and it was really cool to be on the inside of such a cool local artistic shindig.

I got Thor to take a picture with my favorite painting. It’s also the most expensive one in the gallery, listed at 7000 dollars.

A selection of my favorite pieces. Thor had quite the variety of art to show, there was something for everyone.

I attended the opening for a bit, then I broke away and wandered around town to take some pics. I just love the vibe down in Kenai, there’s just so much history around old town. Next door there was a bunch of old cabins that were all restored, and there was a nice lady posted up there that took me on a tour to tell me all about their history. It was a great open-air exhibit, there were historical cabins outfitted as close as possible to how they were in the past. There were cabins staged as a school, grocery, residence, and shacks for fishing and trapping. Alaska is such a relatively new place that history doesn’t have to be that old to be noteworthy, as a hundred years is about as far back as it goes. With the harsh winters here, you really have to try to preserve history around here if you want to keep it around. Kenai is doing a pretty good job of it as far as I can see.

I really liked this bad ass ol’ truck. It hauled a lot of cargo back and forth on the Al-Can highway back in the day.

This must be one of the very first gas powered lawnmowers ever built. There were some cool antiques there at the Kenai Cabin Museum.

I wasn’t far away from where the old Russian Orthodox church was, so I walked on over there. I’ve been meaning to get some shots of the church, as well as some other old cabins located nearby.

I really like how the blue of the steeple matches the sky. I’m no fan of organized religion, but I know a beautiful building when I see it.

My favorite historical cabin in Kenai.

I think this is the oldest building in all of the Kenai Penninsula. Thor told me when he was little, he and all his friends thought there were a bunch of priests buried in the floor of this cabin. It was officially a rectory of the church which is right next door.
A raven posing with Mt. Redoubt in the background.

This past weekend I decided to change up my living situation. Thor and I have been headed back to Anchorage on the weekends, and I’ve been staying with him at his place up to this point. Bethan’s aunt is down in the lower 48 for an extended period of time, so I was given the opportunity to stay at her vacant house when I’m in town. It’s a super nice 2 story house in the suburbs of south Anchorage, it feels like I’m staying at an Airb&b. All Bethan and her mom ask of me is to water all the plants in and outside the house whenever I stay there. It’s a great deal for me and them, it was nice to have so much room and a really comfortable firm bed to sleep on. Staying there will really help me recharge during my weekend downtime this season. It’s walking distance to a couple grocery stores and right across the street from some great hiking trails, so it’s got everything I need right close by.

Enjoying the sunset at 11:30 at night from the back deck of Bethan’s aunt’s house.

At last, today (Monday the 6th) we got the final net hung and on the boat. It was very satisfying rolling the last length on the net drum, I feel like I just loaded a spool of fresh line on my favorite reel! It took a couple of weeks, but Thor says we’re still ahead of schedule. The fishermen are starting to stream into the cannery boatyard to work on their boats and get their nets ready for the season. I’ve already met some interesting characters, fishing always attracts a motley crew! Thor’s been fishing with most of these guys for decades, he’s constantly telling me stories about his fellow fishermen and their boats. I talked to this one younger guy today, he just came up from Seward where he put 70,000 lbs of reds (sockeye) on his boat in the past week and a half or so. He seems to think such a large haul bodes well for our season over here in Kenai. I sure hope so! Thor says he thinks this will be his last season, so it’d be good for him to cap off a 60 year fishing career with one big last hurrah. Of course it would be good for my finances as well! Now that we got the nets done, it’s time to get working on the boat itself. Hopefully (knock on wood) we won’t have any major mechanical issues with the Cheryl Lynn and it’s smooth sailing to opening day here in a couple of weeks. I’m ready to get out on the water and get my fish on!

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Alaska, Hiking

Spring Doesn’t Last Long in Alaska

Down in the lower 48, spring lasts a good 3 months or so in most places. Here, one week it’s winter, the next week the snow is melted and it’s t-shirt weather! When I got here back at the beginning of the month, there was still a lot of snow on the ground. I usually would wear 2-3 layers in my strolls around town. Within a week’s time however, all the snow piles were gone and trees everywhere all simultaneously burst out in green. The past couple of days I’ve been walking around in short sleeves and have been completely comfortable. It’s in the upper 60’s and the breeze is refreshing walking around in the warm sunshine.

I’ve pretty much hiked every trail within a 5 mile radius of Thor’s apartment, and everywhere else in the town I can easily walk to. According to my Google Timeline Insights, I have walked a total of 65 miles this month! I usually hike 3-5 miles a day, it’s becoming an addiction! I had major phone issues the second week I was here (I had to switch from T-Mobile to AT&T, what a nightmare that was!) and ventured down to the midtown area for the first time to try and remedy my communication problems. It’s kind of scuzzy down there with all the bums, but I discovered a great Hawaiian restaurant in the process.

There’s quite a few homeless here in Anchorage, but there are great mobs of them congregating everywhere the closer you get to midtown. I was hiking a trail down there the other day and the whole forest along a major multi-use trail was populated by homeless camps. One twacked-out fellow came up to me asking if I had seen some big dude on a bike, probably his dealer or something. Other than that I’ve had no issues, but some places around town give me a sketchy vibe. Not hard to avoid those spots though. 

Ship Creek runs through north Anchorage and is the site of the only urban salmon run in the country. This place is also the site of the original tent city of Anchorage.

Scenes from around town.

A couple of weekends ago, Bethan suggested that we get out of Anchorage and go down south about 40 miles to visit the Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center. Bethan and her mom packed a picnic lunch and we all headed down there to check it out. Bethan wanted to stop at this little nursery along the way and buy some flowers, so we made a detour and checked it out. It was at someone’s private residence, which was pretty cool. There was a lady selling her art out front and the place was happening! It was Mother’s Day and it seemed like that was the place to be. It was a beautiful garden, well maintained and stocked with any plant you could desire.

Forget-Me-Not Nursery.

After Bethan adopted a few new plant friends, we made our way down to the center. It’s a pretty big place, they’ve got lots of space for their animals. It’s a conservation center, so the animals that are there can’t survive in the wild for whatever reason. They’ve got all kinds of animals, like wood bison, wolves, musk ox, moose, reindeer, and black and brown bears. The black bears put on a show, but we never saw the grizzlies. They have the largest enclosure full of hiding spots, so it is probably not surprising we didn’t see any. The Conservation Center is in a really beautiful valley outside the turnoff to Portage, and is a nice place to spend an hour or two.

I’m sure the animals appreciate the view!

A few of the critters we saw at the center.

After we got our fill of walking around the Conservation Center, we got back in the car and make the short drive over to Portage Lake. Bethan and I came up here last year in early June, and the lake was almost ice-free then. There was more snow on the mountains than last year around this time, and there were still sheets of ice floating around on the surface. When the wind blew, the sheets started grinding against each other, piling up big ridges of ice crystals everywhere. It made a rather pleasing sound as the sheets crashed into each other, like glass shattering into shards. We got out our picnic spread and enjoyed the view while we ate our snacks. The wind coming off of the mountains was a bit chilly, so after we got done we didn’t linger for very long. While it was pretty warm down in town, winter was still lingering around the lake!

A fine spot for a picnic.

Last weekend, Thor told me that his friend Amy had some yard work she could use some help with. I leapt at the chance, as I definitely needed some positive cash flow. Amy is a cool lady, she works for the park service up at Denali National Park. I guess she helps pick fish on Thor’s boat when he needs the help, so we’ll probably be working together at some point during the summer. In the course of my workday I had to go pick up some supplies from the Home Depot. She let me take her Toyota Tacoma to run the errand. When I got back I told her how much I liked driving it. It was a stick shift, and I really miss driving a vehicle with a manual transmission. She then told me I could borrow it and go road tripping if I wished!

Her suggestion was that I should take it up to Talkeetna (where she is from) and check out the town. There’s great views of Denali to see from there as well. While I was up there, she also said I should stop by and visit her brother at their family’s old homestead. After a call to see if it was ok to stop by, I was informed that her bro could use some help moving some things around on the property. Just like that, I had a working vacation set up! I thanked her for her kindness, and promised her I’d take care of her baby as if it were my own.

The next day, I got up early and hit the road. After a couple weeks of only having my feet to get around on, it was awesome having some wheels. I headed up Highway 3 into Mat-Su Valley. The road went through Sarah Palin’s hometown of Wasilla, which is probably the most boring and bland Alaskan town I’ve yet been to. They have a Sonic and Raising Cane’s there though, so that took my appreciation of the town up a notch. After Wasilla there’s not much in the way of civilization. There’s a few houses sprinkled along the highway and a gas station or two, but other than that it’s just empty land for the most part.

After almost 3 hours on the road I pulled into the village of Talkeetna. Now this was the small town Alaska experience I was looking for! The place had quite a bit of character. There were throngs of tourists everywhere, I guess this is a popular place to visit on the road to Denali. I was pretty hungry, so I stopped at Shirley’s Burger Barn for a caribou green chilie cheeseburger. It was pretty tasty, it was like eating a burger made from lean hamburger meat.

After I ate, I walked down the main drag to a park that was located at the end of the street. There was a lot of snow on the ground still up here, and it was a bit colder than down south. The Susitna River was still full of ice, breakup was in full swing. Denali stood in full view to the north, and for the first time I got to see this monster of a mountain. You can actually just barely make it out on the horizon in Anchorage about 225 miles away, in Talkeetna it dominates the skyline and it’s still 150 miles away. It’s the biggest mountain I’ve ever seen by far! It was incredible to be so close to the roof of North America.

The thriving metropolis of Talkeetna.
A lot of the older people I meet call it by its old name, Mt. McKinley. It will always be Denali to me! At 20,310 feet in height, it seems like you could almost reach out and touch it from 150 miles away.

I took in the sights of town for a while, and when I had my fill I rolled on over to Amy’s family homestead. Amy’s brother Chris was in the middle of trying to get a snowplow off the front of his truck and not having much success. As we both tried to figure out how to remove it, we got to talking. He’s an interesting fellow who works for the railroad. He’s coming off a 6 month medical leave of absence, and wasn’t able to get around that well. This being the case, I offered to help him with whatever I could while I was there. He took me up on that, so after we got the plow off of the truck we got his boat out of storage and pulled it out into the yard with his tractor. Chris is a commercial salmon guy like Thor, although Chris fishes king salmon out of anchored nets. His season is kind of crazy, they only get one day a week from 7 AM to 1 PM to catch as many fish as possible. I guess it has to be regulated like that to keep the fishery going.

Chris and Amy’s family homestead is on a pretty piece of property right next to the Susitna River.
I really liked Chris’s salmon boat. Plenty of space on board to load up on kings!
Like most Alaskans, Chris loves his toys. I was amazed to see he had Honda Big Red 3-wheelers from the 80’s. My grandparents used them for hunting back in the day. It was a trip down memory lane driving them around.

Chris’s dog Winchester is a good ‘ol Alaska hound dog. I gave him a good ear scratch and he kept hounding me for more.

Chris wanted to move his broken-down snow machine into his shed, but since it weighed close to 500 lbs he wanted to wait until a friend of his got there to help move the thing. While we waited, he broke out a bottle of vodka and we got to drinkin’. He had some moose meat to cook, so I decided to make a moose sauce piquant and show him how to cook Cajun food. Eventually Chris’s girlfriend and his friend made it home (bringing more vodka) and we got our party on. While the sauce piquant was cooking, we went and manhandled the snow machine. I pulled something in my back in the process, but we got it indoors. Those things are so heavy, I don’t know how they avoid sinking in the snow! Allegedly they can even ride on water short distances when you’re going fast.

After the work was taken care of, it was time for dinner. I was stoked to try out my Alaska-Louisiana fusion creation, unfortunately the moose was so tough it was inedible. It tasted good, but it was like chewing on leather! I figure some time in a pressure cooker would take care of that problem. The sauce piquant part came out good however, we had some rice to eat with it so the dinner wasn’t a total loss. We kicked back after dinner and got pretty hammered. It was my first time hanging out in an Alaska house party situation, and it was just like hanging out with Louisiana people. Obviously it’s different, but it felt like the same down-home vibe I grew up with. Country people are the same everywhere, no matter if they live in the Deep South or the Far North. I definitely felt at home hanging out with those cats, I really enjoyed being there.

As it got dark around midnight, I felt like I needed to lay down. I vaguely remember staggering to my bed in the guest house. I slept really well, and I didn’t wake up until late morning. I needed to hit the road, so I went to the main house to tell everyone goodbye. Chris really wanted me to stay a few more days and work on some projects with him. Thor and I had plans to go down to Kenai the next day however, so I had to turn him down. He gave me some cash for helping him out the day before, and I thanked him for his hospitality. I then made the uneventful trip back to Anchorage. All in all, I highly recommend Talkeetna! The town has character, great views of Denali, and really friendly locals. I hope to spend more time there in the future.

View of the Kenai River mouth. I’ll be seeing this place a lot this summer. Mt. Redoubt (an active volcano, tallest in the Aleutian range at 10,197 ft) looms in the background.

Thor and I returned to Kenai the next day to handle some business, and to see what was going on at the cannery. We were anxious to move into our trailers and start getting the boat set up. When we got to the cannery, the foreman told us they were wrapping up the electrical work. It still would be a few more days though. We really needed to start on mending our nets, so Thor said we would come up and stay on the boat while we worked on it. I wasn’t too keen to stay on a boat in dry-dock with no power, but it was what it was. I was glad to be moving forward, regardless of accomodations.

We ran a few more errands, and then Thor took me to old town Kenai to show me where he grew up. They still have gravel roads there in that part of town on the bank of the Kenai River. It’s a very unique place, I really like it. At the center is a big Russian Orthodox Church (which I forgot to take a picture of) surrounded by old cabins built by the Russians (also forgot photos). This is the first time I’ve seen remnants of Russian Alaska, so that was cool. Thor took me to this cool little cafe called Veronica’s Cafe and Coffee House for lunch. It was also in a historic building, really cool little spot.

It’s not every day you can get pickled cabbage as a side for your sandwich! I assume this has to do with the Russian influence on the town. I love pickled anything, and this cabbage was some good stuff.

Well, that pretty much catches me up on everything I’ve done these past 3 weeks. I didn’t expect to have this amount of time to explore and get into things, but it worked out great. There’s nothing I love more than seeing new places, as well as meeting cool people and doing interesting things in said places. I’ve gotten a perspective on life here from the local point of view, which is how I like to roll. Once we start working, I won’t have the time to explore around, so I’m glad I was able to ease into the season this way. It’s been fun, but I’m ready to start fishing! It won’t be long now!

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