Bear hunt south of Juneau

Went hunting with Luke from his boat yesterday. Met at Auke Bay at 4am, and were on the water by 4:30. The forecast was pretty rough for southern Lynn Canal (north of Juneau, Plan A), so we headed south.

It was the last day of black bear seaon....Get out your google earth... after leaving Auke Bay, went around the back side of Douglas Island, across the very bumpy mouth of Taku Inlet, and south into Port Snettisham, to here: Lat 58.046878° Long -133.805504° Then I got dropped off on the beach and hiked about 1.5 miles up valley, to that pond/wetland on the edge of where the alders close in super thick and where brown bears no doubt lay in wait to ambush me. I was solo on that drop off (Luke stayed with the boat; then I dropped him off in another spot after I got back), so I didn't feel too excited about walking in to the thick stuff alone.

Spectacular. Tons of bear sign that looked more like ATV tracks running through waist-high grass. No bears seen. But I got just a wee bit nervous when I was hiking along, through belly-high grass, and bumped into a massive bed and a brown bear scat that was 3" diameter and twice as big as my head. So, when i realized that I could literally walk into a brownie's bed before I would know it, I backed off the edge of the trees a bit, and stuck closer to relatively shorter grass closer to the stream. Lots of black bear tracks and scat that had been laid down in the last day or two... not yet flushed out by the rain or the tide.

About a 110-120 mile round trip on the boat. The boat is fairly flat-bottomed and the seas were uh, choppy, so my discs are freakin sore today. Actually, my abs (my one big ab?) are more sore... from sitting hunched over so my gut, not my spine, took the brunt of the 3-hour pounding down and 2-hour pounding back up. Awesome day.

Singing Happy Birthday to Finn

June 28, 2009

Finn's Half Birthday

We celebrated Finn's half-birthday on Sunday, as requested, with a Superhero Rescuer party. October outdid herself again with homemade rescuer capes and superhero masks for each of the eight kids at the party.

Finn's, of course, was a bit special, with the sparkly red fabric and his SuperFinn logo. He and buddy Alex were instantly in character and stayed that way all evening.

It was a great party, and it's really nice to give Finn his own special day in the summer, separate from all the business of this real birthday on Christmas...

The Big News...

October tells Maille and Finn... The third baby Moynahan is due early February 2010

A few photos of Maille's dance recital a few weeks ago. This was her second ballet class... can't get much cuter. And one of SuperFinn making the rounds in his cape before the lights went down...

 

 

 

Finally... first kings of the year...

Went fishing this morning with a buddy - had no action for about 4 hours, other than seeing a couple other boats catch fish, and getting a great look a humpback cow/calf pair. She was working schools of herring all around the boat, lunging through the surface as herring came flying out of the water in a last ditch effort to escape. She did this 15 or more times, and I luckily snapped this photo of her with the Mendenhall Glacier in the background...





Shortly afterward, we decided to head back in to Auke Bay and call it a day. But we couldn't resist "just one more" drag in the inner harbor, near the mouth of Auke Creek. Landed the larger of these two within a few minutes, the the next (which turned out to be a white king... the relatively rare, pale flesh variety) a few minutes later. Had one more strike and brief hook-up, but that one shook the hook quickly. The skunk streak is broken for the year!

Tight turns over Johns Hopkins Inlet

Taken from the dash of the floatplane (DeHavilland Beaver) while riding along on an aerial harbor seal survey in Summer 2007. I held the camera level with the dash to show the hard banking and tight turns.

Short video clip of a heavy chop in Glacier Bay in October 2008. I was on the 29' landing craft Capelin for an oceanographic sampling cruise, and the wind came up quickly. Went from a 1' chop to 6' over 5 minutes. We had motor trouble right after I took this clip, so we limped into Queen Inlet and spend the night at anchor in front of a glacial stream, about 40 miles up-bay from Park HQ, and I listened to small icebergs scraping along the hull all night. The Park sent up a marine mechanic the next morning, and he had us going within an hour or so. We didn't even have to eat the weakest of us...

Maille with a huge spot prawn from the west side of Admiralty Island...

Short video clip of the orcas from this past Friday... listen for Finn's interest in sharing his granola bar with them...

First voyage of 2009

A handful of photos from last week... Most from the first family boat trip on Friday. Sunny, 75, and glassy seas. Took the "October Sea" up to Benjamin Island, about 45 minutes north of Juneau - no halibut yet, but a few cod. Trolled for king salmon for about an hour, but that gets boring to the yunguns pretty quick, so we cut over to Aaron Island, anchored the boat, and took the zodiac ashore. We poked around for an hour or two on the island and found some great campsites and a fun tree swing. We could hear the sea lions bellowing all around the island.

On the way back home, we came across a couple groups of killer whales, and October snapped that really nice photo.

One photo in there too from earlier in the week... we were panning for gold in Montana Creek - didn't turn any up, but we did find many (very small) stones that we took to be garnets... the photo shows the largest of the haul. I'm not retiring quite yet to become a full-time miner....