I spent two nights at the Sevenfathom Bay Forest Service cabin with the Nuttings. I rode down with Randy and Amy in Randy's boat Friday evening after they got off of work. The weather in Sitka consisted of low clouds with intermittent mist or drizzle, but off to the south, it looked like it was clearing up somewhat. By the time we got out of the harbor, we could see blue sky towards the south. It turned out to be sunny when we arrived at Sevenfathom Bay.

That evening after we had eaten dinner, Randy, Rod, and I took the whaler (which Rod and Faye had arrived in earlier that day) for a ride into President's Bay which is the next one south of Sevenfathom Bay. We didn't see anything particularly intersting. When we were sitting around the fire later that evening we heard a loon. I don't think I have ever heard one of them other than on tv. They definitely have a strange call.

Early Saturday morning it was clear, but by the time I actually got out of bed (4 hours later at 8am) it had become cloudy. Before too long it started to drizzle. The tide was going out until about noon, but we neglected to pay very much attention to it. At some point during the morning Rod noticed that the whaler seemed to be no longer floating. Upon closer inspection, it turned out that the whaler was beached. It was not really in any danger of getting damaged at this point so we didn't worry about it. It just meant that we wouldn't be able to get out on the boat until the tide came back in later.

I was interested in hiking to Lake Ekaterina which is a short hike from the head of Shamrock Bay (not too far south of Sevenfathom Bay) but unfortunately I had neglected to bring my topographical maps and didn't remember where exactly it was. However, Randy's nautical charts showed a fair sized lake which looked like it was very close to the shore near Cedar Pass in West Crawfish Inlet. Randy, Rod, and I decided to take the whaler there and hike up to the lake. On the way we saw a couple of porpoise, one of which jumped out of the water probably 10-15 feet away from boat.

We got off on a rocky shore and I noticed that it seemed that larger rocks had been moved aside to make a narrow area that was mostly just gravel. My dad had told me that natives did this in the past to make places where it was easier to land their canoes and I am wondering if this is such a place. As we anchored the whaler at least 7 seals could be seen swimming near by watching us.

We started hiking up into the woods on what we expected would be a fairly short hike. It turned out that it was not too long, but it was much longer than the chart indicated it would be. It was a thinly wooded area with a good deal of muskeg. There were many flowers in bloom including bog-laurel, figwort, and tall-mountain shooting stars (which are somewhat different than the shooting stars which were growing along the beaches near the cabin. I think those were Jeffrey's shooting stars). When we finally did reach the lake, we found it to be much different from what the chart indicated, both in size (it was much smaller) and shape.

On the way back we hiked back along the other side of the stream which flowed out of the lake. Along the way I took a couple of pictures of Rod and Randy and they took one of me. It turned out that this way was much steeper, but more direct than the way we had come up. On the way back to to Sevenfathom Bay, we saw a couple of sea otter in Windy Passage and I took a picture of Mt. Edgecumbe from a different angle than I am used to seeing it.

When I got back to town, I took a look at the topographical map of the area where we hiked, and it corresponded well to what we saw while hiking. This was nothing like what was indicated on the nautical chart. I guess that I learned at least one lesson out of all of this. Don't use nautical charts to figure out where to hike.

It had been sunny basically the whole time we were out in the boat and hiking, but it was not too long after we arrived back at the cabin that the clouds rolled in and then it was only a matter of time before the rain started to fall. Amy and I played pinochle for a while Faye knitted. Faye was startled from her knitting by the sight of mouse skittering about the floor. She in turn startled Amy and I with her yelp of surprise. Amy and I chased the mouse around for a while and it finally scurried out one of the small holes in the cabin. Randy said he saw it later outside and that it was pretty fat. This probably shouldn't be too surprising since I imagine that it gets plenty of crumbs from campers.

On this evening we had much better fire management which resulted in a more comfortable temperature throughout the night. At least this was the case in the downstairs area of the cabin. Apparently in the loft it was much hotter than it had been the night before. However, all was not ideal. Even though I had done better with the fire, I chose to sleep on the bench of the table in the cabin. The bench was not quite long enough, so I augmented it with a chair that was in the cabin. The unfortunate part of this was that as I shifted during the night, the chair would scrape loudly across the floor making sleep somewhat more difficult for some.


Home | Summer 1999
goff@nawwal.org