Owl Country Alert

Smart phones are more than just an intrusive nuisance that degrades the quality of an outdoor adventure.  According to England’s Royal Society for the Protection of Birds some high-tech bird watchers have crossed the line in the sand from observing our feathered friends at a respectful distance to interfering with their mating and nesting habits with the irresponsible use of smart phone apps. 

While the father of modern day bird-watching John James Audubon got up every morning at 3 o’clock to bird watch his way through an impenetrable wilderness of swamps and jungles, today’s birdwatcher encounters no such difficulties.  Modern bird watching is just a matter of selecting the species you wish to observe then determining their latest computer generated GPS coordinates.  Then select the appropriate bird song app and power-blast this call out into the hinterland for the enjoyment of others.  With luck, patience and a good battery you can observe and photograph rare and colorful birds to your heart’s content.

The Royal Society encourages people to use their phones to identify bird calls not to attract birds.  Wildlife officials in England have expressed concern that the practice of playing bird calls is disturbing and distracting to birds that need to concentrate on feeding, breeding and nesting. When a bird hears another bird of the same species call in its territory the bird must investigate the intrusion to see if the other bird is a potential rival, mate or both.  This can make the bird and its nest vulnerable to predation.  Impersonating an endangered species is Illegal in England. The Wildlife and Countryside Act makes it against the law to disturb certain birds. It is a crime punishable by a five thousand pound fine and six months in prison.

While rare and endangered birds are safe from harassing calls in England this same practice has become a government career in the United States. Maybe you have heard of the spotted owl.  Millions of acres of forest have been put off limits to logging and thousands of people have been put out of work to preserve this iconic species.  Despite these preservation efforts the population of the spotted owl continues to decline to this day, even in the pristine wilderness of Olympic National Park that does not allow logging.

For the past 25 years while the loggers were shut down for disturbing the owl, teams of owl surveyors have been out every spring  calling the owls to determine their numbers. These surveys typically occur during the breeding season when many sensitive wilderness creatures are the most vulnerable.  A Spotted owl responding to a phony spotted owl surveyor’s call exposes them to their most feared predator, the Great Horned owl.

I picked up this bit of information when I was an out of work logger attending the Spotted Owl Survey School in Olympia. It’s kind of like a boot camp for bird watchers.  During “Hell Week” I asked the instructor if surveying Spotted owls didn’t endanger them. When I came to, I had washed out of the program. Owl biologists are nobody to mess with.  There is a plan, which has not yet been approved by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to remove (shoot) barred owls for crowding out the spotted owls. So if you go out in the woods today be careful with your smart phone apps. You may want to avoid broad casting the barred owl call. A Federal biologist could be just over the next ridge with a load of buckshot that’s got your name on it.    

Places On The Olympic Peninsula to Send People You Don't Like Very Much.

 

Daylight on the Hoh River

 

From the rugged acidified ocean seashore to the majestic shrinking glaciers, the recreational wonderland we call the Olympic Peninsula has more diverse and delicate eco-systems than you can shake a stick at. While it is a privilege to share these jewels of creation with tourists there are those whose bucket-list demands, yuppie anxiety disorders and been-there-done-that attitude make them a pleasure to be without.

So pack a lunch, grab a camera, cell phone, pepper spray, antacids, highway flares, rubber suit and barn boots and don't forget your State Park, National Park, National Forest, Federal Wildlife Refuge and Tribal permits and hit the road.

It has been said that the secret to knowing where to go is in knowing where not to go. Once you figure out where not to go you’re half way there. Here are some places you probably don't want to go but you can recommend to someone you don't like very much.

Just getting on to the Olympic Peninsula can be a challenge for the tourists. With long ferry line ups and the frequent surprise closings of the Hood Canal Bridge for the Trident Submarines.

It’s been said that if just one of these warships shot off all their ordnance it would equal all of the bombs dropped in World War Two. The pressures of skippering a Doomsday Device must be enormous. The Captain probably doesn’t care about stopping traffic to open the bridge, trapping a long line of sweaty, desperate tourists in dire need of restroom facilities. The tourists had better toughen up. If they ever get across the Hood Canal Bridge they will find the restroom facilities of the Olympic Peninsula can be an experience that tests the endurance of the human spirit.
What do we care? They’re just tourists. That’s why we put a season on them.   

Of course the tourist can always avoid the Hood Canal Bridge by taking the Ferry from Whidbey Island to Port Townsend.  It is a scenic cruise where The Strait of Juan de Fuca, The Georgia Strait, Hood Canal, Admiralty Inlet and Puget Sound converge in a tide- ripping cauldron we call the Graveyard of the Pacific. Curiously, the ferry has permanent list that officials assure us is normal in ships built by the highest bidder. Riding the Port Townsend Ferry is like being on the Titanic, with cell phones. If you should arrive in Port Townsend safely, use caution. You may be asked to sign a petition.

You can avoid the Hood Canal Bridge and the Port Townsend Ferry with that other death wish, a drive around Hood Canal.  Prepare to be stuck in an endless line of crawling traffic on a road so crooked that it seems to be going in circles.  The urge to pass is one of Man’s most powerful instincts. Even if passing one car will only put them behind another car that is behind 25 more, they will pass.

All you can do is maintain course and speed and pray a deer doesn’t jump out. Deer are sensitive woodland creatures with a finely-tuned sense of revenge. They wait until every year at about this time to jump in traffic, causing accidents just to get even for hunting season.  

 

          
                    Deer waiting for the right moment to get revenge

With any luck at all you'll make it to Sequim. That’s the good news. The bad news is Sequim has an elk herd that blocks the highway whenever they feel like it. Once a quiet little dairy farming town, Sequim has turned into a retirement center we call “God’s Waiting Room”, Today’s Sequim has so many big box stores they block my view of Wal-Mart. 

Sequim is not an Indian word for traffic jam but it might as well be. People in Sequim drive around with little dogs in their laps causing the rest of us to ask,

“Please, let the dog drive.”

Leaving Sequim the tourist heads west. Port Angeles is only 17 miles away but there are so many worse places to see on the way.

Deer Park is at the end of a single lane dirt road that will make you kiss the ground if you ever see pavement again. Also known as Deer Fly Park for the tremendous thirst of the insect population this scenic area provides a majestic viewpoint to many more miles of bug infested forest. There's a picnic area and a small campground. As I drove through I thought the friendly campers were waving at me but they weren't. They were swatting at bugs. Activities at Deer Park include slapping each other as an excuse for swatting insects and trying to eat while keeping the bugs off your food. Remember to dress in many layers since the bugs are liable to eat their way through the first couple of them. Next time instead of going to Deer Park I might just make a donation to the local blood bank. I wouldn’t send my worst enemy to Deer Park but a tourist? Heck yeah.

 

 

Port Angeles Harbor

 

Inevitably the tourist reaches Port Angeles. Also known as The Gateway City, The Second National City, New Cherbourg, Old Dungeness, False Dungeness, Winsor’s Harbor and Puerto de Nuestra Senora de Los Angeles. No matter what you call it; Port Angeles is a town with an identity crisis that’s 17 miles from everywhere.

17 miles to the North across the treacherous Strait of Juan de Fuca there is Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. They speak Canadian eh? There is no Canadian word for “Sewage Treatment Plant.” The Victoria City Mascot is a little brown figure they call, “Floatie”. Victoria’s City Motto is: “Flush twice, it has to make it to Port Angeles.”

                                                      

                                                    The Coho    

If you have a criminal record the Canadian authorities will find out about it in the time it takes to ride the Coho Ferry from Port Angeles to Victoria, where you may be sent back on the next boat. Those without a criminal record can expect to have their belongings searched and privates sniffed by dogs looking for whatever, drugs perhaps. Although smuggling drugs to Victoria with its’ booming B.C. Bud industry would be like smuggling beer into a brewery, eh. The only thing worse than Canadian Customs is getting through United States Customs when you try to re-enter your own country. If you have baggage it will probably be searched. If you don’t have baggage they’ll want to know why.  I’ve sent a lot of people I don’t like very much to Victoria. The weird thing is they seemed to like it.

It is also 17 miles south of Port Angeles to scenic Hurricane Ridge within Olympic National Park. 

Visitors are asked to travel lightly. Drive across the traffic counter, get an informative brochure printed on recycled paper and get out. That would be too easy.  

 

Trail to Badger Valley

 

For that special someone you really don’t like I would suggest a side trip to the nearby Badger Valley. Named for some imaginary badgers a pioneer thought he saw, Badger Valley is a lot like Deer Park except you have to hike into a hole to get there.  Then instead of driving away to escape the bugs you have to crawl back up out of a steep valley. Keep an eye on the weather. In the worst hiking tragedy to ever occur in Olympic National Park, people died in a blizzard trying to get out of Badger Valley. Always keep in mind while you’re hiking to Badger Valley, the marmots are trashing your car.

17 miles to the West of Port Angeles you will find Lake Crescent but there are so many worse places to see on the way. The Elwha River Restoration project is a great experiment for scientists from all over the world to study, or a bad joke where the majestic Elwha River has been transformed into a slurry too thick to drink and too thin to plow.

 

 

 

Lake Aldwell Lake Bed

The dried up former Lake Aldwell Lake Bed looks like a clear-cut of massive stumps with a muddy ditch flowing through the middle of it. Leaving this scenic mud-hole we continue up the Elwha River to a larger, deeper mud hole.

The Lake Mills was once one of the best trout fishing lakes in Washington State. The Dam site is closed off to public entry for good reason. The Dam Removal is a work in progress with eroding mud-banks and sheer cliffs for skilled professionals hooked to a crane only. The bed of Lake Mills is a depressing wasteland that will take decades to heal. It is a devastating reminder of the destructive power of man. The only thing worse is the destructive power of nature which has carved this river for millennia.

The unfortunate tourist continues up Whiskey Bend Road which was not built according to legend, by following the sheriff who was chasing a moonshiner through the woods, but it might as well have been. Inevitably the tourist comes to a trail head. Leaving their vehicle at the mercy of gangs of bandits who patrol our National Parks stealing from the unsuspecting who leave valuables in their cars, our tourist begins walking to one of the more disappointing destinations in the Olympics: Goblin Gates.

Goblin Gates

 

Named by members of the 1890 Press Expedition who may have been suffering the effects of the Whiskey Bend Syndrome, Goblin Gates makes you wish our explorers would have kept the Indian name, whatever that may have been. I have stared for at Goblin Gates for years and never seen one.  W. C. Fields yes, but no goblins.

Bitter and disillusioned, I continued to the next practical tourist joke: Geyser Valley, named by that same impressionable Press Expedition for an imaginary auditory phenomenon that may have been the drumming of a ruffed grouse.  Years of searching by this wilderness reporter have revealed no trace of geysers in this once pristine wilderness valley. 

 

 

 

 

Geyser Valley

Have some fun. Don't tell the tourists there are no geysers in  Geyser valley or that a hike through the present day Geyser Valley is about as scenic as walking through a gravel pit. The old growth forest of Geyser Valley with its ancient trees and fluffy moss was recently flushed down the river by a massive landslide -flood event leaving hundreds of acres of desolate wasteland that will take decades to heal. Even worse, since Geyser Valley is deep within the boundaries of The People's Democratic Republic of Olympic National Park, a World Heritage Site and crown jewel of the National Park System, there are currently no loggers to blame. No charges have been filed.

 

Continuing up the Elwha trail our tourist encounters the effects of the decayed infrastructure in our National Parks.  Frequent signs along the trial commonly post blatantly inaccurate mileage readings when I know for a geologic fact what with plate tectonics and all, the trails have gotten longer since I was hiking them as a kid.

Humes Ranch

 

Inevitably our tourist reaches Humes Ranch. This once legendary fleshpot of the upper Elwha sits decayed and abandoned to remind the tourist they missed the party by a hundred years or so. The Humes Ranch Cabin was built around 1900 by the Humes brothers who were on their way to the Klondike Gold Rush at the time but they decided to settle in the Elwha Valley instead.

The Humes brothers were varmint hunters who killed wolves, cougar and bear for the bounties that were paid at the time. They also guided parties of mountaineers and hunters deep into the interior of the Olympics. Grant Humes was a writer who in his later years said that there was more to hunting than killing animals. He established a game refuge on the ranch.

With the passing of the Humes brothers the cabin was abandoned until 1940 when Herb Crisler moved in with his new bride Lois. The Crislers spent years filming what would become the Disney movie, “Olympic Elk” using a Humes Ranch as a base of operations.

The social scene at Humes Ranch is described in excruciating detail in the 1989 tell-all book “An Olympic Mountain Enchantment” by Ruby El Hult. Ruby was a young journalist in 1949 when she came to Port Angeles to write about the Olympic Peninsula in a book that would eventually be called “The Untamed Olympics.” Ruby describes Humes Ranch as a busy place where as many as 50 people stopped for a visit one Memorial Day weekend.  The Crislers were accommodating hosts who supplied their overnight guests with fresh vegetables and hot rocks that were to be put in the sleeping bag to keep warm at night. Which inevitably lead to the immortal line from a lonely male hiker,

“You mean with all of these pretty girls around I have to sleep with a rock?”

Then came the fateful morning when Lois went off to town but couldn’t get the truck started. She came back to the ranch early and caught Herb and Ruby on the lawn swing. Lois was nobody to mess with.

In her book “Arctic Wild” Lois writes about filming in the Arctic. She describes being left alone in grizzly country with no rifle. Lois figures she’d just hit the grizzly in the head with her hatchet if it came to that. The Crislers brought 5 wolf cubs back to their ranch in Colorado. The wolves were kept in a series of pens that would give them some freedom. It is a seven year experiment that did not work. Lois wrote,

“We would strain every nerve… and it would all be as nothing to the wolves but would keep us poor.” With a disturbing prescience Lois continues,

“We should learn Buchenwald, for its making is in our hearts, in the terrible “sweet” and “nice” ones too.”  I don’t want to ruin the rest of the story for you so let’s just say Ruby was lucky to escape with her life. She didn’t see Herb again for another fifteen years. By that time Herb and Lois had divorced. Humes Ranch was abandoned as it is to this day.

 

The good news is that The Park Service restored this historic cabin. The bad news is that they took away the welcome mat. No camping is allowed. The unlucky tourist is advised to move along where they soon encounter even more environmental degradation.

Convolution Canyon

Elwha River 

Convolution Canyon was also named by the 1890 Press Expedition. With all the landmarks in the county named after bears, burns or whiskey the Press boys finally got one right. They speculated this spectacular canyon may have been formed by massive landslides.  They even supposed that it could have been the site of the legendary “Last Pow Wow”.

That was a rumor spread by then territorial Governor Eugene Semple about the local warring tribes meeting in a secret valley. The tribes declared a truce and engaged in athletic contests until they were buried under a land slide by the evil Giant Seatco. He or she must have had a busy schedule. Seatco was accused of the same of land slide-massacre events at Lake Crescent, the South Fork of the Quinault and on the Wynoochie River.  Only one thing is for sure. Convolution Canyon has been falling into the Elwha River since the last ice age.

 Back then the Elwha River was dammed by a three thousand foot thick wall of ice that was clogging up the Strait of Juan de Fuca. This created a huge lake that must have lasted for thousands of years. When the ice melted it released a flow of sediment that would have made the current mud holes behind the old dams seem like mud puddles by comparison.

These prehistoric mega-mud flows did not stop the salmon from running up the Elwha. By July of 1790 Captain Quimper was buying hundred pounder's at the mouth of the river. Huge runs of salmon and steelhead continued running up the Elwha even after the dams were in.

In 1945 story in the Port Angeles Evening News by Jack Henson describes hundreds of King salmon spawning in the Elwha below the lower Lake Aldwell Dam. I observed similar runs of salmon in the Elwha in the 1970’s How these runs could survive so long after the dam was built in 1911 and wait to crash in the 1980’s is one of the great mysteries that modern science has failed to address.

Meanwhile Seatco kept pushing landslides into the river. In November 1934 river mud was polluting the Port Angeles Industrial Water Supply line. In the 1960's another landslide from the west side of Convolution Canyon fell into the Elwha forming a lake. This lake washed out.  In the 1970's there was another slide and another lake. It was the hottest fishing hole in the Olympics.  All you had to do was stop at Humes Ranch for some grasshoppers then hike up to Lake Elwha for giant rainbows and Dolly Varden. It was good, too good to last. One day the stupid secret lake washed out again with a flood that killed a whole forest clear down to Long Creek. The river would never be the same.  

The Elwha River Dam removal is an experiment asks a question: will dam removal restore the runs of salmon to their former numbers?   We’re not sure how many salmon were in the Elwha before the coming of the white man but it doesn’t matter.  Modern fisheries management, like many organized religions is based on a consensus of what we believe to be true. Experts agree there may have been several hundred thousand salmon in the Elwha and that’s good enough for me. Who wouldn’t want to see a historic run of salmon return to the Elwha. The economic benefits alone would be worth millions.  If the Elwha River Dam removal is a real experiment in salmon restoration then we might want to look at a river that was not dammed to compare how the fish are doing in a pristine environment.

 

                                                                Hoh River

 

The Hoh River flows out of the opposite side of Mount Olympus from the Elwha. While the 1911 Elwha Dam blocked off all but five miles of the 38 miles of spawning habitat in the Elwha River. The Hoh River has never been dammed. It should be good fishing right?  No. The Hoh River is another good place to send people you don’t like very much.

On the way to the Hoh the tourists can experience the death defying drive around Lake Crescent.  It’s located in a haunted valley cursed by evil spirits since that fateful day in the dim past when the Quileute and the Clallam were having a battle. The evil Giant Seatco stood upon Mt. Storm King and buried the combatants under a rock-slide that separated Lake Crescent from Lake Sutherland. Ever since then there's been something weird about Lake Crescent.

                                                                  Mt. Storm King
                                                                   Lake Crescent

The Natives avoided Lake Crescent and so do I. You don't need a fishing license to fish in Lake Crescent since it's in a National Park but you will need an attorney to figure out the rules that all pretty much boil down to the same word, no.

The road around Lake Crescent follows an old elk trail. It’s greasy and treacherous after a rain and it rains all the time. Just across the lake you will find an even worse route, The Spruce Railroad Trail is the perfect place to send someone you don’t like very much. It’s the only place I have gotten a tick. Others have gotten them as well.  Fortunately there have been no cases of Lyme disease but I ain't going to be the first one. There are even rumors of poison oak along this trail. Yuk!

 

Lake Crescent

West of Lake Crescent you are in logging country. You may see a road sign that says  “Danger falling trees.”  Do not to be alarmed. Maintain course and speed. Many loggers can hit a stake with a falling tree but darned few of them can hit a moving target. Where there are loggers there are log trucks. Tourists frequently complain that log trucks act like they own the road. Do the math. A fully loaded log trucks weighs around 90,000 lbs. You don't. Log trucks act like they own the road because they do.

With any luck our tourist will make it to Forks. Described as a “Festering wound of a town” Forks got an Honorable Mention in the book, “Absolutely Worst Places to Live in America.”  In the Sunday New York Times a Seattle writer called Forks a “big-eating, hard drinking town that Seattleites find “forlorn”, “Godforsaken’ and “ugly.”

These meandering screeds all had one thing in common — they hated loggers. They blamed the loggers for cutting down trees, endangering salmon and even changing the climate in books and newspapers that are printed on paper that comes from wood that is cut by loggers.

Forks was once the self-proclaimed logging capitol of the world. Then the loggers were blamed for endangering the spotted owl. The survival of the loggers was threatened. They joined the Spotted Owl as fellow endangered species whose population continues to decline. Then something odd and wonderful happened. Groups of tourists began taking each other's pictures at the "Welcome to Forks" sign.

The Twilight books by Stephanie Meyer made Forks a worldwide tourist destination for vampire groupies and those who study them.

While there is a disturbing trend in modern journalism for writers to use fleeting celebrity references as an excuse for responsible reporting, it was never that way with Stephanie Meyer and me. Her books about Forks have sold millions of copies worldwide. I have also written about Forks. My books have sold under a million copies. Luckily, the economic vagaries of the publishing industry are irrelevant in the pursuit of an art form. As writers, Stephanie Meyer and I share a kinship that is beyond words. We both have a warm spot in our hearts for Forks. It is the friendliest town on the Olympic Peninsula. I would never recommend Forks to anyone I don’t like very much.

Have them continue south of Forks over roads that seem about to collapse over the side of the mountain, because they are. If you drive too far you will reach the Pacific Ocean.

 

 

Pacific Ocean

 

 People should stay away from the ocean no matter how much you don’t like them. Our ocean beaches are a treacherous mix of deadly rip tides and surf logs that kill. Turn around and go back to the Hoh River

 

Roaring Hell Rapids Hoh River

 

If you really don’t like these people, have them stop at The Hoh Oxbow Campground. After driving around in circles for hours someone in that carload of tourists is going to need to go to the bathroom. Finding adequate restroom facilities in the wilderness could be one of the most important survival skills you can have.  Our tourist visitors to the Olympic Peninsula are generally from somewhere else. They could be from back east like Idaho or down south like Oregon.  These foreigners are unaccustomed to the local diet that relies heavily on the three basic food groups:  grease, sugar and alcohol.  Add the effects of sleep deprivation and mixed medications to  the stress of a vacation grudge match with a vengeful significant other and the surely brood of teenage demon-spawn and it can add up to an emergency situation for the gastrically-distressed.



                                                           Outhouse of the Doomed
 

Remember you never liked them very much anyway. Send them to the outhouse of the doomed at the Hoh Oxbow campground.  Most folks won’t be able to stay inside longer than two seconds.  Anyone who stays in longer than 30 seconds is presumed disabled from the fumes.  A rescue attempt would be futile.  The only first aid I know is, ‘check for wallet.’

 

 

Hoh River Oxbow

Not all wilderness adventurers however, are cut from the same cloth. There are some who are able to endure the rigors of the pit toilet for periods of a minute or more and emerge from the ordeal with no ill effects.  Like the camper who was laying in his tent one night and heard a rustling sound that upon investigation, seemed to be coming from beneath the floor.  We have a saying in the deep dark woods that, ‘a man’s best friend is a good sharp ax’ but it wasn’t true in this case.  As our camper grabbed an ax and chopped his tent floor to pieces to reveal the true identity of the night time visitor, the civet cat or spotted skunk. 

It is an eternal wilderness truth that you can never find a flashlight when you need one.  The tent zipper will stick when you least expect it. No matter, our screaming camper tore his way out of the tent to emerge gasping in a refreshing Hoh Rainforest sprinkle.

 Unfortunately the skunk was fatally injured.  The soggy camper crawled back into the leaky tent in a vain effort to find his keys, so he could start his truck and turn on the heater.  Big drops of rain splattered like buckshot forming a bloody, skunky pool in the middle of the tent.  Dawn’s early light found our camper swathed in a leaky down sleeping bag that had been chopped up in the mayhem. Unable to find the keys to his truck he left a trail of feathers to the outhouse on his way to setting a record for staying in the longest.  There I discovered the secret to enduring the outhouse of the doomed. Get sprayed by a skunk first and a trip to the outhouse will seem like a day at the spa.

Hoh River Spring Chinook

 

 

 

 

Fishing with a hook and line on portions of the Hoh River that are inside Olympic National Park was already limited to catch and release of all native fish.  You could only keep a hatchery fish with a clipped adipose fin.

 

 The Hoh River flows out of a nearly million acre National Park down a valley that’s  been preserved by The U.S. Forest Service, The Hoh River Trust, The Western Rivers Conservancy, The Wild Salmon Center and $12 million dollars in federal funding under the Endangered Species Act. This protection extends down to the mouth of the Hoh where the river enters the ocean inside another pristine wilderness, the  Olympic National Park Coast Strip,  which is co- managed by NOAA as the Olympic Coast National Marine Sanctuary.

The entire length of the Hoh River is being studied, restored and administered by the greatest minds of science. The Hoh River studies are legion. Floating the Hoh River one observes plastic ribbons left in the trees and tied to rocks by scientific researchers as evidence of yet another study. Restoration efforts include buying property from willing sellers, building log jams and eliminating the practice of planting hatchery fish. Fishing in the Hoh River has been administered by a complicated system that divides the river into seven different zones, each with an array of seasons, gear restrictions, and bag limits that will make your head spin.

 

This year Olympic National Park closed their 2 sections, the mouth and the upper Hoh River to hook and line fishing even for hatchery, fish until Sept 1.

Hoh Summer Steelhead Clipped Adipose Fin

 

Hatchery Spring Chinook With Clipped Adipose Fin Hoh River

 

Summer Coho with clipped Adipose Fin Hoh River

 

Some hatcheries don't bother to clip their fish for a variety of reasons. Other fish hatcheries clip other fins. The ventral, pectoral and dorsal are hacked off at random for reasons my research has failed to discover

 

 

Winter steelhead with clipped ventral fin, Hoh River

 

 

Winter steelhead with clipped dorsal fin Hoh River

 

 

 

Winter steelhead with clipped dorsal and ventral fin Hoh River.

This can make for an interesting series of fishing regulations. I have spent years studying the fishing laws in an attempt to translate them into English. The most difficult part of cracking this code was the little known “credit card” edict. Also known as “The Game Warden Employment Security Act”,  that requires you to release any fish whose dorsal fin is wider than the width of a credit card, whether it is clipped or not.

Hatchery Fish?

 

The clipped fin rules were designed to allow a selective harvest of hatchery fish because they are presumed to be different if not inferior to the wild ones. What is the difference between a 20 pound wild or hatchery steelhead? Scientists are still studying the question. You wonder how the hatchery fish, the summer Coho, steelhead and spring Chinook got inside the National Park in the first place, since no one would admit planting them there. 
Scientists have told us for years that salmon and steelhead return to the river where they were born.  Unfortunately in the real world, fish are constantly getting lost. It’s a genetic trait that allowed salmon to colonize the extent of their range. 

I thought catching hatchery fish in a National Park was a good thing for the environment since it would eliminate the hatchery fish they hate and fill up my smoke house.  I was wrong. 

So if the Hoh River which has never had a dam must be closed to fishing for conservation, when can we expect to fish the Elwha once the dams are removed? Those who ignore history are doomed to watch television

 

 

 

 

  

The Curse of the Kushta-Ka

 

                                                                 Sitka Alasa
                                               
                                                    The Curse of the Kushta-Ka

 

I think it was the obscure French philosopher “What's-his-name” who said,

“Revenge is a dish best eaten cold.”  A fine example of this quaint expression was encountered on a recent canoe journey near Sitka, Alaska. It was part of a canoe grudge that began sometime in the last century with an epic run down the Dungeness River in high water, with the Lost Alaskan in the bow. White water canoeing is a team sport. Communication is the key. At one point the river took a sharp right. We went straight.

Crashing a canoe is not unlike wrecking a lot of things like, friendships.  With the hindsight of years I had hoped the petty grudges and thoughts of revenge would erode into a fond memory of a wilderness adventure. I should have known The Lost Alaskan was going to get even if it was the last thing he did.

 

The free fishing trip to Sitka was what got me. Once called “The Paris of the Pacific” for its hospitable people and lively social scene, Sitka has a connection to the Olympic Peninsula that goes back before the invention of history. 

The Ice Ace age locked up so much of the planet's water that the ocean was 150 feet lower than the sea level we enjoy today.  A thousand mile wide land bridge called Beringia appeared between Siberia and Alaska which allowed the migration of animals, plants and people between the two continents. The exact timing of the appearance of the land bridge and the coastal migration route of the earliest people is anyone's guess since its mostly underwater now.

They figure Beringia disappeared for good about 10,000 years ago. It was too late by then. 13,800 years ago someone stuck a bone spear point in a rib bone of mastodon at the Manis Mastodon Site near Sequim. It may be a coincidence that the Pleistocene Mega-Fauna disappeared in the New World shortly after the arrival of early man but the same thing happened in Indonesia and Australia.

The Sequim mastodon hunters probably started fishing once the mastodons went extinct about 10,000 years ago. While there are legends of Chinese Explorers and stories of Japanese shipwreck survivors washing ashore, the stone-age cultures of the Pacific coast lived in relative isolation until the European Age of Exploration.

We are not exactly sure when the first European visitor arrived. Around 1600 the Ozette Indian Village was buried under a mudslide. In the 1970's archaeologists uncovered brass tacks and a European bead among the artifacts at the site. They could have come from Sir Francis Drake who may have sailed here in 1579.  Called “El Draque”, (The Dragon) by the Spanish, Drake sailed across the Atlantic and around Cape Horn then up the west coast of South America pirating treasure from the Spanish who had stolen it from the Incas. Drake sailed north to a location that people have been arguing about ever since. King Phillip of Spain put out a 20,000 ducat, ($6.5 US million) reward for Drake's capture. Drake decided to set out across the Pacific to avoid the Spanish Armada that was after him. He needed a place to land and repair his ship; The Golden Hind. Drake buried an estimated 17 tons of treasure to lighten the ballast for the rest of the way around the world.  On his return to England all of Drakes’ charts were declared a “Queens Secret” by Elizabeth I and later burned in a castle fire.  All we know for sure is that Drake claimed the Pacific Coast for England calling it “New Albion” a name that stuck to the region for centuries.  

To counter English land claims the Viceroy of New Spain sent the Greek Navigator Apostostolos Valeridnos, AKA Juan de Fuca to find The Strait of Anian. This was the name of a mythical body of water located somewhere north of San Diego that may have come from one of Marco Polo’s maps. The Strait of Anain was said to run directly from Cathay to Europe. In 1592 Juan de Fuca claimed he found this mythical Strait at around 47 degrees north latitude.  He claimed there was a large island and a rock pinnacle or obelisk at the mouth of this strait.

The Russians had discovered Alaska in 1741. For supporting the missionary work of the Russian Orthodox Church the Czar Alexander I granted the Russian American Company exclusive rights to claim land and hunt for fur south to Baja California.  In 1775 the Spanish sent Captains Heceta and Quadra up to Sitka to support the missionary work of the Catholic Church, look for gold and enforce their own land claims as far north as Unalaska in the Aleutian Islands.

In 1778 Captain James Cook came to the Pacific Coast. The English government had offered a prize of 20,000 pounds to anyone who could discover the Northwest Passage.   Captain Cook didn't find a Northwest Passage or Strait of Juan de Fuca but then he missed the Columbia River and hundreds of miles of shoreline in the fog that typically hugs this coast. In one of the strangest navigational mysteries in history Cook named Cape Flattery at the mouth of the Strait of Juan de Fuca because it flattered him with hopes of finding a harbor.   Cook charted the Pacific Coast north from Cape Foulweather to the Aleutians in a voyage so tough he forced the crew to eat walrus meat.    

To make clothing for their northern journey the starving crew on Cook's ship had traded with the Yuquot on Nootka Sound for sea otter furs. Eventually Captain Cook was killed in Hawaii but the survivors reached China where the furs brought an astounding ten dollars apiece.

 In 1787 Charles Barkley discovered a wide body of water at 48 degrees north latitude. There was an island later named Tatoosh and a stone pinnacle or obelisk but it was on the southern not the northern shore as Juan de Fuca described it.  Barkley named his discovery the Strait of Juan de Fuca
 

                                                     The Strait of Juan de Fuca

In 1792 the American Captain Robert Gray discovered the Columbia River and traded some iron chisels and beads for sea otter and beaver pelts which he traded for tea in Canton. Gray continued around the Cape of Good Hope to Boston becoming the first American to circumnavigate the globe.

The discovery that a few scraps of metal, some glass beads or an article of disease infected clothing could be traded on the Northwest Coast for a sea otter pelt worth a fortune in China set off the treachery and slaughter of the fur trade. Alcohol, gunpowder and disease were introduced to the stone-age cultures with devastating results.  By 1800 the entire west coast of North America had been claimed by the Spanish, English, Americans and Russians who ignored each other's competing claims and the Native's right to the land.

                                                              

 
                                                         
Located near Sitka. Called L'ux by the Tlingit. Named Montana de San Jacinto (Mount Saint Hyacinth) in 1775 by Spanish Captain Bodega and Mount Edgecumbe by British Captain Cook in 1778. Photo taken from Pirate's Cove. It was the location of a band of Tlingit who raided fur traders on their way to the Russian Fort at Sitka

 

The Russians had built their first fort in Alaska in 1799 in Sitka. The Tlingits resented the Russians for taking their land, using their enemies the Aleuts to exterminate the sea otter and disrupt traditional trade patterns between the tribes. In 1802 the Tlingits burned the Russian fort.

In 1804 Russian-American Company Manager Alexander Baranov returned and burned the Tlingit Town, Noow Tlein and built a new fort, Novo Arkhangelsk or what we call Sitka today.

It was a great land for furs but too far north for agriculture. In 1808 Baranov sent the Russian ship Sv. Nikolai under Navigator Nikolai Bulygin from Sitka to claim land for an agricultural colony somewhere south of Vancouver Island.  Instead the ship was becalmed and wrecked on the Olympic Peninsula just north of the mouth of the Quileute River.  

                      Site of Nikolai Shipwreck at mouth of Quileute River

Just across the river lay the largest Quileute village, LaPush. The Russians knew the Natives south of Cape Flattery had a fierce reputation. On July 14, 1775 Captain Quadra had landed and erected a large cross as part of a possession ceremony near Pt. Grenville. Later that day he had sent seven men on a landing party to get water.  They were attacked and killed by an estimated 300 Quinault Indians who had apparently understood the meaning of the possession ceremony. Quadra named a nearby island, Isla de Delores.

In 1787 Captain Barkley of the British Ship Imperial Eagle lost another boat load of six men at the mouth of the Hoh River. Barkley called it the Destruction River a name that was later transferred to the island in memory of his crew.

 

 

 

                                                                   Destruction Island

In 1788 John Meares was at Friendly Cove at Nootka Sound when he was offered a dried human hand that was said to have belonged to one of Capt. Barkley's men. When Meares demanded an explanation Chief Maquinna said the hand had come from a distant tribe. This confirmed Meares suspicion that the Indians were cannibals a common though unproven accusation.  Both sides of the fur trade thought the others were cannibals. Captain Vancouver once offered some venison pie to an Indian aboard his ship who wouldn't eat it until the old navigator showed him the venison haunch the meat came from. 

In 1796 the trading ship Ruby under the English Captain Charles Bishop was anchored in the Columbia River.  The ship was visited by a canoe full of Indians from the village of Queenhythe located somewhere to the north. The Chief of these Indians said a longboat crew which included a Mr. Miller was invited to shore where they began to trade. The Indians killed them all. Their clothes and bodies were divided and sent to neighboring tribes. Captain Bishop arrested the Chief and planned take him back to England where he could be punished by Mr. Miller's father. Later Captain Bishop was forced to release the Chief, in order to trade with the Chinook Indians. 

Losing sailors on these around-the-world voyages was not uncommon.  The Russian explorer Alexsi Chirikov lost men when first meeting the Tlingit off Kruzof Island in 1741.  Fifteen well armed Russian sailors in a longboat went to shore and were never seen again. It was assumed they were killed by the Tlingit but the Russians had muskets, pistols, a small cannon and two signal rockets. There was no sound of any firing. The Tlingits claim the Russians who came ashore didn't want to return to the ship because of the cruelty and oppression on board. Many sailors of the European Navies were impressed prisoners who would not survive the disease and hard labor on their forced voyage on high seas. Running away from the ship to live with the natives was an attractive alternative to burial at sea.  To this day there are families on the Olympic Peninsula who can trace their lineage back to sailors who “Jumped Ship.”

 The Quileute of LaPush had every right to be war-like. They were constantly at war with their neighbors for plunder and captives who raided them in return.  After the arrival of the fur traders who routinely enslaved, poisoned and robbed the natives, the Quileute quickly learned to never trust a white man.

At first the relations between the Quileute and the Russian survivors of the shipwrecked Nikolai were cordial but things quickly deteriorated. The Russians headed south in a running battle, hoping to meet up with another Russian ship that was believed to be in Gray’s Harbor. The party included Anna Petrovna, wife of Captain Bulygin. She was captured during an attempted crossing of the Hoh River. 

The survivors hiked up the river and built a timber blockhouse similar to the one preserved in Sitka.

 

                                                                         

 

Russian Blockhouse, Sitka

 

During the winter Bulygin tried to ransom his wife with some of the crew’s remaining firearms. Anna Petrovna refused to join her husband’s camp in the wilderness saying she was being treated very well by her captors. She advised the others to surrender to the Indians who would ransom them back to the first passing European ship.

This drove the Captain mad. He tried to shoot Anna, the interpreter, the Chief of the Hoh and himself. Bulygin surrendered his command to Timofei Tarakanov, a Russian Promyshlennik that is a hunter/trapper/trader/mountain man whose skill in the wilderness and dealings with the Indians kept the shipwrecked survivors together and alive through the winter. The castaways survived mostly on dried salmon obtained by trade from the same Indians they were fighting.

Eventually all of the shipwreck survivors were captured, drowned or killed. Out of the 22 people who set out on the Nikolai, 13 survived to be ransomed by the American Captain Brown of the brig Lydia in May of 1810 at Neah Bay.

This ended the Russian attempt to claim the Olympic Peninsula. By 1867 with the expense of the Crimean War, the near extinction of the sea otter and the hostility of the Tlingit, Russia decided to sell Alaska to the United States.

The Tlingit had already made a name for themselves in Washington Territory. The northern tribes of Tlingit, Haida and Tshimshans had a long history of raiding south in war canoes that carried 60 or 70 warriors. People from these tribes would work in sawmills and farms in Victoria where they were entitled to the diplomatic rights of British subjects. As such they could not be extradited by American authorities. 

In November of 1856 a party of Northern Indians was threatening the sawmill at Port Gamble. The U.S. Steamship Massachusetts shelled a number of canoes which may have killed as many as 50 Indians including a Chief. That summer the Tlingits returned to Whidbey Island and murdered Col. Isaac Ebey for revenge.

In 1859 the Schooners Blue Wing and Ellen Marie were attacked with 17 people murdered and the ships burned and sunk on the west side of Vashon Island. American officials went to Victoria to demand the guilty Indians be turned over but were refused.

As a new possession of the United States, Alaska faced the constant threat of a general native uprising.

The Territory was administered in part by the U.S. Navy who in 1871 sent the Sloop of War U.S.S.  Jamestown commanded by Captain L.A. Beardslee to Alaska to stop the slave trade and free native prisoners of war. Captain Beardslee surveyed and named Glacier Bay and reopened an important trade route to the interior, the Chilkoot Trail.

In 1895 as Commander of The U.S. Navy Pacific Squadron, then Rear Admiral Beardslee brought the warships of the Fleet to Port Angeles harbor for the summer. Rear Admiral Beardslee was such an avid angler. He caught 350 trout on his first trip to Lake Crescent. The locals honored the Admiral by naming a trout after him, the Beardslee.

 

                                    

 

 

                                                               Lake Crescent

 

Port Angeles was just a little fishing town until the seasonal influx of up to 20,000 sailors livened up the social scene. Many fine establishments were built in Port Angeles during this period to service the entertainment needs of the U.S. Navy. The untiring efforts of the local moonshiners and easy access to Canada with its vast reserves of whiskey guaranteed our Navy would not go thirsty on summer maneuvers. At the time it was said the Port Angeles girls wore wool socks in the spring and silk stockings by summer.

You could get all the salmon you wanted in Port Angeles by rowing around inside of the harbor dragging a hand-line with a hammered brass spoon. By the 1900's the inventions of diesel power, refrigeration and the tin can lead to the industrial exploitation of the fisheries with predictable results. Port Angeles was home to a commercial fishing fleet and a salmon cannery whose “American Flag” salmon provided steady employment until the salmon ran out. 

In 1962 Port Angeles declared itself “A Sportsman's Paradise” as part of its Centennial Celebration. Port Angeles was home to a recreational fishing fleet of charter boats that took tourists from around the world out to catch salmon. There was a yearly salmon derby that as the biggest celebration in town. Catching a salmon was as easy as trolling a flasher and herring past the mouth of the Port Angeles harbor and out into the Strait of Juan de Fuca.

In 1974 The Boldt Decision gave the Treaty Tribes the right to fifty percent of the salmon harvest. This set off a fish war where each side tried to kill the last fish.

In the 1980's an Atlantic salmon fish farm was established inside Port Angeles harbor in a spot well-known to the locals as the best place to catch a salmon.  By 1994 catching a salmon became a complicated matter of quotas, seasons and gear restrictions.  Salmon fishing in Port Angeles Harbor was outlawed. The yearly salmon derby was discontinued.

Fisheries management became a cycle of abuse where Alaska intercepted fish bound for Canada who caught fish bound for Washington. People in Washington were forced to go to Alaska to catch a fish.

The invasion of Alaska by the Washington fishing fleet was greeted by the Alaskans with a degree of contempt Washingtonians had previously reserved for Californians. Alaska responded by using the sport fishing industry to bait in even more tourists. Today a trip to Sitka is like a journey back in time to 40 years ago when Washington was the Salmon Capitol of the World.

                                                    

                                                           Sitka Fishing Fleet

 I was excited to go fishing in Sitka until I learned it would begin by paddling across a lagoon in a canoe.  Someone once wrote I guess it was me, people have been drowning in canoes for years but they are still perfectly legal. Unfortunately there was no way I could back out of the canoe trip, unless I wanted to get stranded on a shin-tangle covered beach at low tide when the bears came out to go clamming.

In Alaska there are many theories about how to deal with the bears but it is generally agreed they only eat tourists. Some people carry firearms. Others insist that bear spray is the best method of stopping a charging brown bear at close quarters. Never use bear spray on a bear. It might make them mad. Spray the tourist. The bear will get the tourist and give everyone else a chance to get away.  

I got in the canoe. As fate would have it, I was in the bow. The lost Alaskan said this particular lagoon was only dangerous in a rare North wind and we had perfect calm.

                                                                     

                                                             
                                                     The bay was perfectly calm.
 

We paddled a mile or so without tipping over and entered the mouth of the secret creek. We began paddling upstream to the secret lake where the steelhead swarmed.

                                                                 

 

Steelhead

 

The creek was shallow across the tide flats.  I got out and walked on the beach. There were little holes dug all over the beach. I wondered what was wrong with these Alaskan clam diggers. Don't they know you're supposed to fill in your holes? Back in Washington we’d call in the SWAT team to cope with a situation like this. Expressing my outrage to the Lost Alaskan he agreed and said,

“Bears.”  I knew that.

 

Le Voyageur

 

 

After a while we ditched the canoe. We walked through a dense rain forest of spruce and hemlock where I was introduced to the sport of “post-holing”. That's where you walk through slush as deep as a post hole making every step like ice-skating in a pool of frozen cement.  Where the snow had melted the forest floor was carpeted with leftover fish bones from the fall salmon run. The leftover fish parts are a sign of a healthy eco-system. It's the bear's job to fertilize the trees and feed the many species of birds, bugs and animals that can't catch fish for themselves. Since the eradication of the salmon on the Olympic Peninsula our bears have been largely unemployed.

The Tlingit believed that animals are rational beings capable of understanding human speech.  Encountering a bear they might speak to it and say,

“Give me luck,” Which would not be the first thing that came into my head but whatever works. Bears were respected by the Tlingit but strangely enough, it was the otters that were feared more than anything. The Kushta-Ka or “River Otter Man” was a dangerous spirit who could drive you mad, change people into werewolves and enslave the souls of those drowned at sea or lost in the woods.

I was not about to let a silly native superstition deprive me of a story about how a healthy eco-system could survive a modern industrial fishery, no.

Walking upstream we came upon a fish weir. Except for being made of aluminum it was not unlike the weirs described by the first explorers on the Olympic Peninsula where the salmon were forced into a trap to be harvested. The salmon in this weir were to be counted and released as they swam upstream. If not enough fish make it upstream to spawn the fishing season was closed.

In Washington we manage our salmon with an entirely different system.  We dam the streams every spring to trap and count the baby salmon going out to sea in hopes of predicting how many salmon will return in the future. This is a lot like counting your chickens before they are hatched.

 

Smolt Trap on Ennis Creek in Washington. Otters, bears, birds and poachers kill the fish trapped in these devices. Here a poacher digs worms to use for bait in the smolt trap.

 

When the salmon fail to return we blame the loggers.  Washington efforts to restore the salmon include shutting down the fish hatcheries and making log jams. Counting your chickens before they are hatched is one thing but to use this analogy in Washington, we kill our chickens before they get a chance to lay the egg.

Depressed and disoriented I made my way to the secret lake where disappointment awaited. The secret lake was frozen over.

 

Stupid Frozen Lake

I almost didn't need to see the river otters, but I did. Were they the dreaded Kushta-Ka? All I know is a brisk North wind came up, stirring the tree tops. We were forced to beat our way through the whitecaps of the lagoon with the canoe on our return voyage.

I should never have tried to cheat fate and fish out in the ocean off Sitka either.  Once out to sea there was a mechanical problem. I wasn’t worried until some of the crew began blowing up the life raft. They were just abandoning ship but it was nothing to be concerned about. Apparently it’s something that happens all the time in Alaska.

 

Abandon Ship. This is not a drill.

 

The funny thing was I had not seen any otters yet. Those of us unlucky to be left on board the doomed ship were able to limp back to shore before the motor died. Then the weather turned into a fine penetrating mist pushed by a brisk Alaska wind. There was no more talk of fishing. I returned from Sitka fishless. It all made sense when I read my horoscope, “You'll love seeing parks, buildings, boutiques, galleries and the creative works of others”.

I wanted to write about my Alaska fishing adventure but my email got hacked and my website crashed. The curse of the Kushta-Ka lives.

 

 

I admire the creative work of others.