Sunday, August 12, 2012

Hiking in Kodiak







This weekend Molly and I joined our friends John and Katelyn for some Kodiak backpacking.  We had originally planed on exploring Ugak Bay in John's skiff but the weather didn't look favorable.  We opted instead to hike from Sequel Point (out past Cape Chiniak) to Narrow Cape. We camped one night in a place named Sacramento valley.   Molly did this hike in one day with her family when she was 13 so we were confident that an overnight trip would be casual.  There is no hiking trail along this coast line but four wheeler trails and game trails made the traveling fairly easy on the first day. The second day was mostly beach walking.   

It did rain on and off both days but it was never too heavy and it certainly wasn't cold for Kodiak.  We saw plenty of wildlife along the way including two curious mountain goats that wandered down to the beach.  At Narrow Cape there is a rancher that has buffalo.  The buffalo have wandered down the beach to Sacramento Valley and beyond.  Late in the evening I went over to the river to take a photo of the Buffalo grazing in an open meadow.  I was holding the camera up when I noticed something about a hundred yards up the river.  I stood there and looked at the dark figure and thought "that doesn't look like a buffalo." It stood up on its hind legs and looked about 10ft tall.  "Oh SH*!, that's definitely not a buffalo" I thought to myself.  Luckily the Kodiak brown bear then decided to high tail it up the river and I quickly returned to our camp fire to report the news.

The rest of the evening around a campfire was uneventful and we didn't see any more wildlife besides some foxes, seals, and sea otters.  The next morning we walked to the ranch in Narrow Cape where Betty picked us up.

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