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Post by kaima on Oct 4, 2009 17:03:56 GMT -7
Well, with that title I don't have pictures of the old dredges landlocked in their old lake beds, but I do have a few photos of modern gold dredges as they were active a few weeks ago off shore from Nome. The dredges are dots on the water, however. Jaga did inspire me to upload some of the photos I did take of the area, as it has a beauty some of you may appreciate. Kai Bear paw print on the beach. They had a a bad salmon season, so the bears are coming into town for food. One was been shot breaking into houses 7 miles outside of town, and someone else reported finding bear scat with aluminum cans crushed and mixed in - they ate the whole thing! Then a front and hind bear paw prints on the hunting trail ... the bears were using the same trail. this next one shows how a big game guide and local natives ferried an ARGO (all terrain vehicle) across the inlet from Brevig Mission to Teller, Alaska. They had to wait for a calm day to bring them across safely. Then here are some Musk Oxen on the horizon And a male and a female musk ox to the right, others on the left side We spent the first week at Pilgrim Hot Springs where the Catholic Church had an orphanage and school (with a farm) from about 1917 to 1941. They were set up just in time to accept some of the many orphans from the 1918 flu epidemic, which killed many, many native people. Here is a photo of the old orphanage building . . . and a tricycle from the old days One of 3 or 4 big puddles on the road to Pilgrim Hot springs, a result of melting permafrost under the tundra. Happily the gravel road surface under water was solid! Before we left there was snow coming down the mountains ... the road closes Oct 1 Then we made the drive to Teller, and this is a view of the village ... This is the Train to Nowhere, about 20 miles east of Nome. It was built to serve the Council, AK mines, ran short of money after 50 of the planned 70 miles were built, and eventually went bankrupt. The engines were imported from New York City where they served on the elevated RR until replaced with diesel or electric engines. Eventually a great storm came up the Bering Strait and washed them inland, where you can see them today. Finally, if you want to take a tour across the tundra or swamp, a tracked version on a four wheeler is recommended Yes, that is Airport Pizza in the background, one of the very good restaurants in town, offering much more than pizza, the young help was invariably quick, efficient and quite cheerful! It was a pleasure to dine there.
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Post by Jaga on Oct 4, 2009 18:32:34 GMT -7
Kai,
great pictures. They give some idea about your life in Alaska. It is harsh sometimes. Great description!
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Post by dbkaczor on Oct 5, 2009 6:07:57 GMT -7
nice pictures kaima, thanks for sharing.
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Post by tuftabis on Oct 6, 2009 0:23:30 GMT -7
Kai, I very much enjoyed watching the photos. And your short explanations. The nature prsented is so powerful. I also very much liked the pictures of the 'frozen time', like the tricycle or the train to nowhere, the orphanage building that is still there. Please, do consider posting more pics of the thing you see. Thanks!
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Post by justjohn on Oct 6, 2009 4:02:11 GMT -7
Kai, I have seen the tracked version of the 4 wheelers locally but never driven one yet. Are the tracks more stable on spongy, wet trrain than tires? They appear more complicated and therefore more prone to break down.
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Post by kaima on Oct 6, 2009 8:50:04 GMT -7
Tufta,
You mention the nature is overpowering. I think of the physical aspect of it being overpowering. On this trip our host the manager mentioned that he wanted to locate the survey monuments and the property corners, so I also set out to locate the official survey monument just half a kilometer away. Being an engineer I figured I could do it easier than most others... and I walked pretty much a straight dog-leg to it. It took me 50 minutes to get there, 20 minutes to do my work, and looking for the easy way back, it still took 50 minutes to go the half km (3/8 of a mile) back!
I have a great respect for the early pioneers. They were tough as nails. My friend was born in Kotzebue, just a bit north of Nome, and his parents taught in Kiana, a beautiful village on the Kobuk Rover (I worked on the airport for 5 months around 1980). There is a gold mine at Klery Creek perhaps 20 miles up the Squirrel River, and one time his parents walked up to visit the miners - 20 miles, perhaps 30km - with riverbed and the roughest of trails to walk. He tells how his mom was sweated up & they tossed a blanket over a line to give her privacy, and she stripped off her wet clothes & stepped into a dry set of long johns (long underwear) loaned by the friend-miner. They spent the night & then walked back the next day!
Otherwise I am quite spoiled by the magnificence and the beauty of the land up here. When the chance came to spend two weeks here I jumped at it. Hunting was the excuse. Being there was the reason, and I came back perfectly happy without having shot anything!
Well, having some meat to share would have been great, but this way I got to have all the fun of hunting and avoid all the work after the shooting. It is much easier and cheaper to walk into the food store.
Kai
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Post by kaima on Oct 6, 2009 9:02:23 GMT -7
JJ,
I have only used four wheelers a few times & saw one of the tracked ones parked on a hunting trail, evidently broken down, at the Hot Springs. Yes, I suspect they are also much slower and much more prone to break down than the wheeled four wheelers.
The conventional four wheeler also goes through a fair amount of swamp and soft stuff, and the lugs on the rubber tires tear up the vegetation, so following four wheelers have to go to the side of the first one, and it ends up making a horrible mess on the swamp and soft tundra. They are starting to use a plastic geo-grid, like an open mat or an open egg carton plastic mat, that spreads the load and essentially paves the trail across soft areas. It is expensive, but near villages it is necessary. Otherwise motorhead sporters put larger lugs on their tires so they can get a grip where others with smaller lugs lose traction ... it works until the large lugs tear up the tundra worse!
We loved the story of the visiting Secretary of Education visiting from Washington, DC. The dirt airports were soft and a mess in the villages where they planned on showing him the challenges of teaching in the bush, so they gave him knee high rubber boots & helecoptered him to the villages where they set down on the tundra & helped him slog across the 'solid' tundra to the village board walk, which essentially floated on the surface of the tundra. Then they visited the school ...
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Post by Nictoshek on Oct 7, 2009 0:59:31 GMT -7
I'd like to visit Alaska one day. Perhaps even settle down just like Dick Proenneke:
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Post by tuftabis on Oct 7, 2009 1:16:36 GMT -7
Tufta, You mention the nature is overpowering. I think of the physical aspect of it being overpowering. yes, I didn't think about that important aspect! ;D Although in fact I do try occasionally, or rather used to try, the tough and relatively simple life confronted with the nature. But this only for short periods, which, I know, is different. Kai, your Alaskan stories are very enjoyed and not just by me as you see. Do continue whenever you can and want to!
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Post by kaima on Oct 7, 2009 14:56:58 GMT -7
I'd like to visit Alaska one day. Perhaps even settle down just like Dick Proenneke: That is the DIck Proenneke video, if I remember it correctly. I saw it again a year or two ago and this time I recognized not just the beautiful work he did in the Lake Clark area, but also a mistake. Why is it that we enjoy seeing a mistake by the capable, the rich or the famous? In this case he did not leave any space above the door and windows for the logs to settle as they dried and shrunk. Most cabin builders I have talked to or helped have left 4" (10cm) or 6" space above the windows so the logs could shrink and not shatter the windows or bind the door. In the same vein, I had to read Alaska by Mitchner. The beginning was fascinating, but then he got into history I knew, but I had to read on until I found a mistake. Finally, when some whalers were stranded in the ice above the arctic circle, 'spring came and the sun rose in the east'. No, it doesn't! That first day above the horizon it rises and sets in the south. Eventually it rises further and further north until the summer reaches 'the land of the midnight sun', where it sets not at all. (that is what defines the Arctic Circle, and in fact it moves every year, because of the wobble of the earth's axis!) As far as going off in the wilderness absolutely alone, 3 days is the longest I have managed. I do like to have people around me, even if not for visiting or conversation. I am used to society. Kai PS I tried to post a video to Youtubes of some bear tracks I found on the beach, but Google/Youtubes does NOT like my Hotmail email address! I will have to work on a solution.
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Post by Nictoshek on Oct 7, 2009 19:17:20 GMT -7
Now here's the kind of wilderness cabin I'd like to build. Notice the upper level solar panels. This is off-grid living at its best.
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Post by gideon on Oct 7, 2009 20:18:43 GMT -7
Great pics Kai! I have managed 3 days as well, kind of a vision-quest if you will. As much as I enjoy people, I really treasure my time in the wild. It's very centering. Most wouldn't consider standing 16 feet up in a tree being stone-still for a few hours very enjoyable, but it has its benefits. Nothing quite like a bird twittering on the cam of my bow, and waking me up!
-Tim
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Post by kaima on Oct 8, 2009 19:35:15 GMT -7
One story I forgot to pass on came from my old friend as he was flying out of Fairbanks to Nome. This was on Frontier Air in a Beech 1900, a 19 passenger truboprop aircraft seating perhaps 3 people across. He was sitting diagonally behind an Eskimo woman perhaps 50 or 60 years old listening to her iPod and doing an Eskimo dance in her seat. As opposed to the currently popular version of Irish dancing where they dance everything with their legs and hold their arms rigidly at their sides, many Eskimo dances have a rythmic, in place footwork and dancing with the upper body and arms to tell a story. So it is the arms and hands and the upper body and the head that tell the story, and this was very well demonstrated by the lady as my friend could recognize the dance stroy: the hunter out on the ice, looking for dinner; the stalking of the seal, and the strike with the harpoon, all told in a very lively and dramatic fashion.
In conversation with her it turned out she was listening to a recording she made at a village gathering a few years before and thus could enjoy it again and again, as the spirit moved her.
If I remember my archeology correctly, our European ancestors were using harpoons for hunting red deer during the ice ages. It is only later that the harpoon was adapted for sea hunting.
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