20060829 Amalik Bay/Geographic Harbor Trip Part 5 Hygiene and Sanitation

20060825 Amalik Bay/Geographic Harbor Trip Part 5 Hygiene and Sanitation

I admit I have bought into the American norm of cleanliness, five days a week. For years I have showered and shaved every workday. Heaven forbid that I should stink professionally. My days off are another matter.

Camping and backpacking are another matter as well. Over the years I have made little attempt at personal hygiene while living primitively among friends. What did it matter if I stank when all of us stank?” We adopted a different standard for a different circumstance. This was the rationalization anyway.

Roughing it at the Amalik Bay cabin was different. Each day Niki and I appeared before the public in the NPS uniform as official representatives of the United States Government. Our public, in this case bear viewers at Geographic Harbor, had the previous night slept in a motel room with a hot shower, Dial, Pert, and Arrid XX. We were living primitively while our public still used the cleanliness standard for the civilized world. What to do?

Shaving certainly was not an issue for me, as I have not shaved most of my face for over four months. Failing to shave my neck for a few days hardly mattered.

Staying clean otherwise was a problem. Most times cool temperatures and dreary if not rainy skies discouraged outside sponge baths and indoors a person found no privacy. Niki took the opportunity to grab my camera and document my one attempt to bathe at the kitchen sink.

Jason took the plunge into the bay once and was chilled for some time after the experience. After our boat training swim in 33 degree Naknek Lake back in May, I was in no hurry to join him. Each day, though, I did wash my face and brush my teeth at the bay.

Monday evening Niki and I had the unexpected pleasure of showering aboard a 120-passenger cruise ship, in the captain’s cabin no less. We awoke Monday morning to find the “SS Spirit of Oceanus” anchored in Amalik Bay not far from our cabin. As the skiff carried us to another day of watching bears and distributing surveys at Geographic Harbor, Al explained that the cruise ships usually request for a naturalist to come on board to address the passengers.

Light rain fell for the entire time Niki and I “worked.” I’m sure we looked a soggy mess when Al and Jason retrieved us for the journey back to the cabin on Amalik Bay. Rain continued falling as we passed the cruise ship, still at anchor, on our way home. At the beach below the cabin, Al mentioned in his understated way that the captain of the SS Spirit of Oceanus has indeed requested naturalists. Would we be interested?

You might as well ask a child if she wants candy. Of course we were interested! But wouldn’t these people be more interested in hearing about Jason and Al’s adventures as law enforcement type rangers than hearing about the origin of the park from a couple of Katmai rookies? Perhaps so, but neither Jason nor Al had interest in sharing. Let’s turn this boat around!

At the ship’s fantail, a low platform at the stern for loading and unloading, Captain Ivan himself met us and directed the boson to take our things. We opted to carry them ourselves, not wanting to impose. Captain Ivan most graciously escorted Niki and I to the bridge, with all of its fancy navigational gadgetry, for a look around. Was there anything he could do for us? Well, yes there was. We have been in the rain and mud all day. Would we be able to clean up a bit before appearing before your passengers?

Whereupon we were whisked to his cabin and directed to the hot shower, complete with Dial, Pert, and Arrid XX. Wow! The VIP treatment! If he only knew how tenuously Niki and I clung to the bottom rungs of the National Park Service ladder. Of course neither of us planned to tell him.

From the captain’s cabin we were led to the ship’s lounge, where the captain himself asked, “Can I get you a cappuccino?” Our table was laid with fresh-baked cookies and chocolate pie.

Both Captain Ivan and Jen, the activities director, were as curious about ranger life as Niki and I were curious about life aboard a cruise ship. Turns out the Spirit of Oceanus had already been to the Kamchatka Peninsula in Russia and several points further north in Alaska before reaching Amalik Bay.

The passengers too were interested in the park rangers. A couple joined us at our table while a number of others listened from nearby. At six pm we began the formal program.

It seems we were to be the cocktail hour entertainment. Ninety-eight passengers filed in to hear the rangers talk while they sipped their bourbon and drank their wine. A number of crewmembers joined the audience as well. What a treat after presenting Brooks Camp evening programs all summer to just a handful of people.

If we are working the lounge, we might as well use lounge material. I gave a 15-minute presentation on the significance of Katmai National Park, Niki spoke for a few minutes about her life and times commercial fishing, then we opened it up to questions. We inserted as much ranger schtick as possible the entire 45 minutes of our show and the audience loved it. You’d have thought we were in the Catskills. At times like this I curse the ranger ethic that will not allow us to accept tips.

A couple of passengers asked if we would be joining them for dinner, whereupon Jen stepped in to explain that we had to be going. Well, that was almost true. They were the ones that had to be going, with an 8 pm sail time to head for Kodiak Island and dinner yet to be served. Instead of the captain’s table, Jen took us to the crew mess for a buffet meal.

Did we ever chow down in the few minutes we had to eat before it was anchors aweigh! As the regular fare mooed, oinked, and clucked a bit too much for my taste, the cook prepared a vegetable stir-fry over rice especially for me. Yum, yum!

But I digress from today’s topic, which was…oh yes, hygiene and sanitation. One aspect of hygiene and sanitation brought forth an ethical dilemma. As we toted all fresh water from a small waterfall ¼ mile away, we conserved every drop. Still, the byproduct of dishwashing and tooth brushing was gray water. What to do with it in this pristine wilderness?

Green extremists will tell you that gray water can be cooked and tea added for a beverage. Hmmm. Our 5-gallon pail sitting beneath the sink was ½ full of sludge every other day. That’s a lot of tea, no matter how tasty it might be.

An alternative to drinking the stuff is to fling it outside so as to spread the bits over a large area. Hmmm again. Of the four of us, three slept inside the cabin while only one slept outside in a tent in brown bear country without the protection of an electric fence. Let’s see, who might that one brave soul be? It was bad enough that, weather permitting, the others took their meals on the porch, sprinkling crumbs ten feet from my nylon abode. I certainly did not want a greasy concoction of food scraps and soap flung anywhere near the cabin.

Al’s solution, which on its face seems environmentally insensitive, worked best. He dumps the gray water into the deep waters and extreme tides of Amalik Bay, which also served as our urinal. I suppose if a permanent community of a thousand people practiced this method of waste water management the sea might feel the impact, but not from the waste created by at most four people for a few weeks a year. At least this is the rationalization. Needless to say, I was careful to execute my aforementioned daily bayside washing routine well away in distance and time from the wastewater disposal area.

As for solid waste, floatplanes fly out the garbage to the town of King Salmon where it ends up in a landfill. For human solid waste we enjoyed the freedom of a one-holer set behind the cabin. Plenty of fresh air and no flushing required. Comes complete with aerosol spray of the cayenne pepper scent and a breathtaking view of Amalik Bay thanks to a bear having ripped off the door. A piece of pressboard held up by a couple of 1x4s preserves modesty.

I guess I still have not addressed the body odor issue. Well, the cruise ship shower kept me from being malodorous for a couple of days. From then on I made do with a fresh t-shirt every day and arms kept pressed to my sides. I suppose I did stink by the end of the week, but this is Alaska where many American norms are ignored. At least this is the rationalization.

20060824 Amalik Bay/Geographic Harbor Trip Part 4 The Assignment

20060824 Amalik Bay/Geographic Harbor Trip Part 4: The Assignment

This place is downright huge—Katmai National Park I mean. From 1931 until 1980 this was the largest single piece of property managed by the National Park Service. The coastline alone measures almost 500 miles.

Yellowstone does not compare sizewise to Katmai but receives 50-100 times the visitorship. Like most national parks, visitors concentrate in just a few areas within Katmai. Brooks Camp would be destination numero uno.

Beginning in 1950 Ray Peterson provided a lodge at Brooks to serve anglers who flew in to fish for Brooks River rainbow trout almost bigger than their imaginations. At the time lodge management and the anglers considered the bears a nuisance or worse.

Somewhere along the line the National Park Service decided that, though likely people had been doing it for 4,500 years, we would no longer remove the bears from the river corridor by hazing or worse. Somewhere along that same line, those with a profit motive realized that people would pay royally just for the opportunity to watch fishing at Brooks—not for trout but for salmon and not by people in chest waders but by bears in full-body fur coats.

Over the years the number of bears using the 1.5-mile Brooks River corridor has grown, as has the number of people coming to watch them. This presents park management with a nearly unsolvable problem. How do you provide perhaps 200 people per day with a satisfying bear viewing experience while keeping them relatively safe, keeping the bears relatively safe, and allowing the bears to behave as naturally as possible?

The current attempt at a solution includes restrictions governing food possession, consumption, storage, and transport. Backpacks and other gear must be attended or stored in designated areas. Visitors may not remain closer to a bear than 50 yards but otherwise are free to move about as they please with a few exceptions.

During periods of heavy bear use the ground around Brooks Falls is closed to entry; visitors, no more than 40 at a time, must remain on the elevated viewing platform overlooking the falls. To allow shy bears a chance to access the falls, the falls platforms closes from 10 pm to 7 am. Visitors may use without restriction a viewing platform downstream from the falls near the river mouth. Rangers regularly staff the platforms to facilitate the movement of people and bears. While this system is not without problems, it works pretty well.

Bears congregate at several other places in the park at different times, usually for salmon. On the Katmai Coast, bears gather at Hallo Bay in June to eat tender young sedges, a grass-like plant. Further south along the coast, at Geographic Harbor, in August bears attend the pink salmon run on Geographic Creek. By boat and plane, commercial operators have been bringing guests to these two locations for at least 15 years.

For the coastal areas like Hallo Bay and Geographic Harbor, the park doesn’t seem to have a system to manage the people and the bears. At Geographic Harbor the commercial operators have developed the system, a markedly different one from that at Brooks River.

Some operators, like cruise ships that anchor nearby from time to time, keep their clients in small boats as they watch bears. By not coming ashore they remain out of the Park’s jurisdiction. Others, mostly arriving in float planes, bring their clients ashore, always with a guide, to an island in the shallow braided creek near its mouth. Rather than being free to move about as at Brooks, once on the island everyone sits and waits for the bears to move around them. If the bears choose to move in closer to people than 50 yards, which is inevitable in their quest for the salmon, so be it.

Park managers want to take a long hard look at the coastal operations with an eye toward making long-term management decisions. As part of the process they would like feedback from visitors using that area. This is where Niki and I come in. We distributed mail-in surveys to visitors we contacted in Amalik Bay/Geographic Harbor.

If you want to watch bears go where the bears are, like Geographic Harbor in August. If you want to contact people watching bears go where they are, like the island in Geographic Creek. That is exactly what Niki and I did for six days.

Al and Jason would ferry us twenty minutes by skiff from the ranger cabin to the creek, whereupon we joined a bear viewing group, usually 16 clients and a pilot/guide. We had been instructed not to interfere with the bear viewing experience so much of the 3½ hour bear viewing session we sat quietly watching bears fish and interact with one another. Occasionally we answered questions and made conversation. At a moment when no bears were present we would do our job of distributing surveys, one per traveling party, after providing the visitors with background information and collecting contact information from them.

As you can tell, the work was grueling. It’s always tough to be paid to enjoy a once-in-a-lifetime experience for which visitors pay hundreds of dollars. Such is the life of a park ranger. Seriously though, the information gathering is vital to the management of a part of the park destined to become busier, a part of the park where a laissez-faire approach may one day be inappropriate.

20060822 Amalik Bay/Geographic Harbor Trip Part 3 The Accommodations

Part 3: THE ACCOMMODATIONS

Somehow we can go through many years of life speaking every day and be unaware of an expression, a phrase, or a reference understood by many. We hear it for the first time and inquire as to the meaning. The speaker seems shocked that we had not heretofore been aware of what was understood to be common usage. I recall the first time I heard the word ‘bling’.

Me: Bling? What is bling?

Megan: You mean you have never heard of bling? Have you been living in a cave?

Me: Well, something like that.

Likewise products that seem essential to some have escaped our notice. While I had never heard of them before this my first months-long experience in a cold wet place like the Alaska Peninsula, everybody here seems well acquainted with the Helly-Hess brand of raingear, a line without an ounce of overrated Gore-Tex fabric. Most everyone’s closet contains a pair of Super-Tuffs, a respected brand of rubber boot. How is it that I have never heard of these? I guess this can be traced to cultural differences related to income, education, geography, climate, or some combination thereof.

Here in Alaska where a number of people live in remote places often without a source of sizeable trees and construction crews, prefab housing is popular. Panabode, makers of kits with everything you need to assemble your own cabin in the wild, seems to be the most popular brand. People here use that name as you might use Nike—you assume everyone else knows what you mean.

Most of the buildings in Brooks Camp come from Panabode, including the tiny cabin Travis and I share. A 15’x18’ efficiency, while warm and dry with a bathroom indoors, is not an ideal shared space for two. Shrink the size to 12’x15’, remove the bathroom, add two more people and you get the idea of our Amalik Bay living experience. It very quickly becomes an exercise in tolerance.
This place 40 yards above the high tide line is Big Al’s home, a home he is required to share. The same airplane that Saturday took away two weeklong uninvited guests brought in three more: Niki, Jason, and myself. When all four of us were inside, moving about was a bit like those tile games, the ones where you have 15 tongue-in-groove tiles in a 4x4 grid, leaving one empty space. The object is to rearrange the jumbled tiles to form an image, like the face of a tiger.

Niki: Al, would you like to move to the sink?

Al: Why, yes I would.

Niki: Then I’ll move from the sink area, but I must ask Jason to move from the stove area.

Jason: I’m happy to move. Since Tim is seated at the writing surface, I guess I’ll just step outside for a moment.

The writing surface, sink and countertop with cupboards above and below, propane stove, propane furnace, a few shelves, a couple of kitchen chairs, and bunkbeds furnished the place. Two dim 12-volt light fixtures, domelights from a Honda really, pretended to illuminate. The lights and a satellite phone charger were connected to a couple of deep-cycle RV batteries, which in turn were wired to a solar panel on the roof.

After giving us a tour of the cabin, Al broached the subject of sleeping arrangements. “Of course Niki will have a bunk, because that is just the way we are.” Al explained that he sleeps on pads on the floor, but if a second person sleeps on the floor all of the spaces in the tile game are filled and no one moves. That meant that either Jason or I would sleep in the second bunk, and the other…. Like me you may be new to Panabode but surely you know Kelty. Since I brought a nice two-person tent provided by the Park, I volunteered to sleep outside.

I volunteered to sleep seven nights outside in brown bear country, separated from the furry ones by a couple of sheets of ripstop nylon and an electric fence. Peter, my supervisor, had prepared me for the possibility of sleeping outside should the cabin be crowded or even if Al just preferred it that way. The tent would be pitched within a portable electric fence powered by a solar panel. Funny thing, though. The Park’s portable electric fence was in Hallo Bay, not Amalik Bay. I was not to have an electric fence.

Back in March, while still in the Everglades, people asked me about my upcoming stint in Alaska. Jokingly, I explained that my goal was not to be eaten. Now it seemed the achievement of that goal was in question. On the upside, I might get the chance to put to put the pepper spray training to use. Well, not really. We did not see a bear in the cabin vicinity the entire week we were there.

It turns out the tent was the place to be. Not only was it relatively spacious and watertight every minute of the several rainy days and nights, it gave me privacy unavailable to those with the coed arrangement inside. Lights out occurred at my discretion. I slept without hearing the snoring for which two of the cabin occupants were notorious, leading the third to wear earplugs. Most importantly, after a generous helping of Niki’s cabbage salad I could pass gas with impunity. Ah, life’s little pleasures—understood the world around.

20060821 Amalik Bay/Geographic Harbor Trip Part 2 The Personnel

Part 2: THE PERSONNEL

Anglers use Amalik Bay and Geographic Harbor for halibut fishing during August. Also at this time pink salmon run upstream in shallow narrow Geographic Creek, which empties into Geographic Harbor. Pinks are not the most prized of salmon for eating and the physical nature of the creek may not provide the best angling experience, so anglers generally do not fish here.

The brown bears do. They don’t seem to mind the pink salmon variety and gather along the creek. Sometimes a dozen or more will use the last quarter of a mile section of creek, which is much braided at this point. The concentration of food brings the bears and the concentration of bears brings the people to watch them.

Scientists also visit this area during the summer. Scheduled for summer 2006 were projects to find and replace a temperature gauge in Amalik Bay and to preserve an archeological site on one the bay’s islands.

Anglers, bear viewers, and scientists in the area justify the need for a backcountry ranger at Amalik Bay in August, and one with boating skills. Summer of 2006 in Katmai National Park, two backcountry rangers are assigned to patrol 497 miles of mostly rugged coastline. They do not stay in one place but move with the need to protect. They protect the coastal users—anglers, bear viewers, and scientists—and all of the resources of the coast whether they are scenic, geologic, biologic, or cultural.

Al, a longtime backcountry ranger with many seasons’ experience at Katmai, was stationed at Amalik during this working visit by three of us from Brooks Camp: Jason, Niki, and myself. Known as Big Al, he is big like an angelfish. From behind his 6’2” frame is built around shoulders so broad and flat the like have not been seen since Kevin McHale of the Boston Celtic’s glory days. (That was for you, Clay) Turn Big Al sideways and while he does not exactly disappear, he does not loom near so large. From the broad shoulders hang disproportionately long Alley-Oop arms.

The name Big Al may have come, not from his stature, but from the size of his heart. Smokey-voiced Al rolls his own and takes care of everyone else’s needs before satisfying his. To hear him say it, he is off duty most of the time. To watch him is to know that the opposite is true. Al leads by example and allows others to decide for themselves if they will follow. He has his own set of ‘shoulds’ but from others only asks for the ‘musts’, and that ever so gently.


People are people wherever you go, and sometimes those people bring their problems to National Parks. Thus the need for law enforcement rangers (LEs), though they do much more, including emergency medical services and search and rescue. At Brooks Camp, located on Naknek Lake and near to Lake Brooks, LEs need boating skills as well. Jason, a husky dark-haired ranger from Michigan, fits right in. He helps with bear traffic control, has dealt with folk who insist on moving closer than 50 yards to a bear, and skillfully operates the park boats as needed. Jason has come to Amalik Bay for a week to learn the waters from Al and possibly spell him for some future days off in King Salmon.


With budgets being what they are, the Interpretive Divisions of the various national parks are coming to rely more and more on the services of volunteers to staff visitor centers and offer interpretive programs. Katmai National Park is no different. Of the staff of thirteen non-supervisory interpreters at Brooks Camp this summer, six are volunteers.

Three of the six are students hired through the Student Conservation Association and receive a small stipend and travel expenses. The other three receive a stipend but pay their own way to King Salmon. Niki is one of the latter.

Niki comes from Washington State, a place where abundant rain makes the western portion of the state delightfully green. Niki could also be described the same way. She has been involved in environmental causes for years and has carried that activism to Brooks Camp. She started a recycling program, has questioned the practice of garbage incineration, and regularly pulls non-native plants that have a foothold in the developed area. While Niki may be not much taller than five feet, she can be a big person. Katmai sent Niki and I to Amalik Bay to distribute visitor surveys.

Me? You know me. I’m a bearded long-haired refugee from the real world, finding a new life in national parks.

20060821 Amalik Bay/Geographic Harbor Trip Part 1 Introduction and Setting

20060812-19 Amalik Bay/Geographic Harbor Trip

INTRODUCTION

Katmai National Park, at the base of the Alaska Peninsula, includes 497 miles of coastline facing the Pacific Ocean. The Park would like to supplement the little information it has about the users of that coastline with an eye toward long-term management decisions.

Most coastal users either fish, view bears, or both. The anglers can be nearly impossible for the National Park Service to contact since the waters are the jurisdiction of the State of Alaska and not the federal government. Contact with bear viewers who remain in vessels likewise can be politically sensitive. Should bear viewers come on shore above the mean high tide line, they are fair game. That is where the Park Service has uncontested management authority.

The Park has devised a lengthy survey to gather information from coastal users. Interpreters like myself spend a week at a time in known bear viewing locations distributing surveys. August 19, 2006 three colleagues and I returned from a most amazing week camping beside Amalik Bay and distributing surveys in Geographic Harbor, an arm of Amalik Bay where bears gather for an August pink salmon run.

Most of the next several blog entries will cover our experiences at Amalik/Geographic. Expect topics like personnel, accommodations, weather, tides, food, hygiene and the privy, bears and other wildlife, the survey, the daily routine, our experience aboard a cruise ship, flights into and out of Amalik Bay, and whatever else comes to mind. Today you will learn a bit about the setting of this adventure.

Part 1: THE SETTING

The Aleutian Range of mountains arcs from southern Alaska toward Asia much the same way as the islands of the Florida Keys arc toward the Gulf of Mexico from the southern tip of the Florida peninsula. The westward two-thirds to three-quarters of the Aleutian Range occur on an island chain of the same name. The eastward balance connects to the mainland and makes up much of the land known as the Alaska Peninsula. The head of the Alaska Peninsula is where you will find Katmai National Park and Preserve.

To the west of the very roughly triangular Park and just a few miles beyond the Park boundary, the Alaska Peninsula borders the Bering Sea at Bristol Bay. The Lake Iliamna watershed forms most of the northern Park limit, while the Pacific Ocean defines the southwest border of the Park, more specifically an oceanic feature called Shelikof Strait. Across Shelikof Strait about twenty miles sits Kodiak Island.

Most of the 497 miles of convoluted Katmai coastline face the Shelikof Strait. Amalik Bay and Geographic Harbor comprise a few of those miles. Really one bay, Amalik would be the outer bay and Geographic Harbor the inner, fingerlike bay. Numerous irregularly shaped islands punctuate the bay.

Just as the mountains generally rise sharply from the bay and harbor, the waters of the bay quickly become deep as you move from shore. No true trees can be seen on the mountains or their shoulders, though shrub thickets abound interspersed with grasses, sedges, and forbs. Above the shrub line and below the bare mountaintops lies an exposed band of what appears to be snow but is pumice. This volcanic product constantly reminds us of the great 1912 eruption of Novarupta, the largest on earth during the 20^th century, and of the presence of numerous active volcanoes less than twenty miles distant.

Shrunk to insignificance by the grandeur of the surrounding land- and seascapes, a tiny ranger cabin situates in a cove of the outer bay about forty yards above the high tide line. I was lucky enough to be among four rangers sharing this little bit of paradise the third week of August 2006.

20060808 A Program Is Born

This certainly has been no slam-dunk. I’ve been working on a bear slide presentation for a couple of weeks now. At least. Maybe longer. I’ve lost track of the hours and the days I have struggled with this thing. It’s not writer’s block exactly. I guess I’d call it writer’s constipation. A lot went into it but nothing was coming out. Nothing good anyway.

I had done the research for the program, including reading two books and taking detailed notes. I had copies of PowerPoint presentations the bear biologists had given at training and the audio to go along with them. But even with all the preparation handy, I just could not get the program to flow.

The program was due on August 1, and this is now the 8th. Due to some luck in scheduling, I had but one evening program in that eight-day period. The audience that night was not aware that “The Name’s the Thing”, a history program I developed in June, was not the program I should have been presenting. But I knew. And my supervisor Peter knew. Still, thanks to Peter’s forbearance the pressure has been entirely internal.

The original premise was to be ‘bear body language’ but without much image support for body language alone, I broadened the topic to bear communication. Even so, image availability has shaped the result somewhat. In some cases I strained to make fit images that did not exactly illustrate the point.

This afternoon as I arranged images in Keynote, the Apple version of PowerPoint, a different program organization plan occurred to me. An organization plan that is clearly much more solid and logical than the one to which I was committed. Alas, I haven’t the time to flush the old and start again. I pressed on.

Today the program is finished. Version 1 anyway. What a relief! I cannot exactly relax as I’ll need to rehearse it a few times before Thursday night, but at least I have it out of my system.

For the first time in weeks, after finishing the program I felt like getting out of the house for some exercise. Peter and I shot hoops for a couple of hours. The workout has made me feel so much better psychologically. I should have been exercising all along—it would have cleared my head.