It is a
month since my last blog update, and I am now settled back into my summer home
at the Iceberg Lodge. Since leaving New
Zealand, I spent five days in West Virginia visiting family, and a hectic week
doing pre-season training all over the Kenai Peninsula and the Mat-Su Valley, getting
my sea kayak and wilderness first responder certifications renewed before my guiding
job started. My first week back in the
US, I was in seven different airports and four different time zones; it was a
little exhausting.
(The flight
attendant on the flight up to Anchorage asked us to kindly turn off and stow
our personable electronic devices in preparation for landing. Does that mean that if my electronic device
is introverted and unfriendly, I can keep it turned on for longer?)
Once I got
down to the Kenai Peninsula, I was able
to see for myself the epic, record-breaking amounts of snow that have been
blanketing the state of Alaska over the winter. On May 5, my Subaru was still buried in snow
up to the level of the hood. It took three
hours, four people, and a plow truck to extricate my car, (including the time
it took to dig out the plow truck when it
got stuck trying to clear a path to my car).
There are a bunch of new scratches on the hood from the snow shovel, and
the roof is now dented from the weight of the snow, but it’s running fine. In other words, it’s all ready to sit in the
Seward seafood truck lot for another four months until the end of my guiding
contract.
The first
part of my Alaska training week was three days of kayak training on Kenai Lake,
getting dumped out of kayaks and practicing how to get back in them, and how to
get other people back into them. It
went OK, but I am always a little worried that when we practice this stuff, we
are practicing on other kayak guides, who are sort of ideal victims –
reasonably athletic and coordinated, who know how to balance on the boats when
we’re clambering around them trying to get people back in their seats. Also, they do as they’re told – something
that actual, panicked, cold guests may not do. It was very cold, even though we were wearing
drysuits, and it was sort of a constant battle to stay warm, and to stay
focused on what we were doing, and try to ignore the fact that I couldn’t feel
my toes. At the end of the day, my
hands looked like they had been beaten with meat tenderizers – all red and
swollen. The day after the boat
training finished, I woke up at 4AM to drive up to Palmer for my medical
recertification. It was snowing on both
of the high passes, and it was cold enough that the snow was sticking to the
road – I was passing snowplows on Turnagin Pass, which was a little surreal for
May.
Fortunately,
there was no snow in Palmer itself, which was good since I was camping
out. Unfortunately, the campsite was
very exposed to the wind, and I went to sleep every night to the sound of my
rainfly flapping against the tent wall like some sort of deranged bird. It felt like the tent was going to carry me
to Oz.
After the
kayak training, the medical recertification actually felt like a break, since
although we were outside quite a bit, we were dry the whole time, so I was
pretty happy.
Two days
later I left for the Iceberg Lodge.
Like the rest of Alaska, the Lodge got slammed with snow this
winter. I had always wanted to see the
Lodge in winter, as I have never been out to Aialik Bay any later than
September, or any earlier than April.
Now having seen the Lodge covered in eight feet of snow, I feel that my
winter bay-visiting ambitions been satisfied. A lot of the first week was spent digging
out things – water tanks, cabins, boardwalks, and access to maintenance
buildings. It’s amazing how long it
takes to set up our essential systems (power, water, septic, kitchens) when
everything you want to work on has to first be dug out of eight feet of
snow. The weight of the snow actually
crumpled a few of our boardwalks, and messed up the siding on a couple of
window frames, but, fortunately, there was no structural damage to any of the
buildings themselves. Also, part of
our septic system froze. It was a
challenge to figure ut where some of the stuff we needed to dig up eve
was. When we first arrived at the lodge
site, we hadn’t finished plowing the road out to the beach, so we loaded up our
gear and groceries into sleds and snowshoed in, dragging the sleds behind us,
kind of like those pictures of ill-fated Antarctic expeditions back in the
1900s. Our maintenance team was snowblowing
the road with a Bobcat from about 4am until 2am, working in shifts. Thank goodness for lots of Alaskan summer
daylight…
 |
| Snowblowing the boardwalks in front of the lodge |
Currently, we can drive
vehicles out to the boat directly – no snowshoeing involved – although we are
detouring onto the beach for the last half-mile, which we normally don’t
do. Depending on where the tide is,
there isn’t always a lot of room to turn the ATVs around on the beach – and one
of the ATVs doesn’t go in reverse anymore, so once you start turning, you are kind
of committed. Turning them always involves an unsettling moment
where I am driving downhill directly towards the ocean, but so far, no one’s
drowned any equipment. We have been
breaking equipment left and right (mostly snowblowers), but our maintenance
guys have so far been able to resuscitate them in a day or two. Also, the snowpack has been melting out –
the little snag tree in front of the lodge is slowly being uncovered, and
judging by how much is visible now compared to last week, I estimate we’ve lost
about two feet of height since we got here.
When we were first plowing the road, the snow canyon was so high that
you couldn’t see over it – there were concerns that an ATV could inadvertently
run into a pedestrian – or worse, a bear – because you couldn’t see around any
of the bends. It’s also nice to be able
to see out the windows, instead of facing an imposing wall of snow.
Now that
we’ve cleared the road and the boardwalks, the bears, recognizing a good thing
when they see it, are back to wandering through camp. There’s not a lot of food out there for them
right now. We’ve had one bear on a
nearby beach, who seems to be methodically shearing off every single sprouting
plant on the entire shore, probably for lack of anything else he can get
to. Also, the half-tame porcupine who
lives under our generator shed apparently moved into the vehicle garage over
the winter, and chewed up the upholstery on our ATV seats. D, one of the maintenance guys, has declared
that the porcupine’s days are numbered; the rest of the staff have been trying
to keep the porcupine away from D, as the critter is probably the closest thing
we have to a pet out here. One staff
member successfully kept the porcupine hidden under a workbench for about half
an hour before D left and the porcupine could be safely shooed off.
The company
president was out here for over a week.
He flew by helicopter, and brought with him a replacement hose for a
busted hydraulic on our ASV, which is possibly the fastest broken part
turnaround in the history of the Iceberg Lodge. He stayed out for a week, running the snow
blower, and assessing the damage.
A few days
later, a group of our company’s tour escorts arrived for their pre-season
orientation trip. We put them to work
shoveling out some of the site – they had to shovel paths to the cabins they
were staying in – and also did some training with them on how to steer our
canoes. We still have over a week
before the first guests arrive, and I think we are actually on track to be
ready for that deadline. When we first
got out here, it didn’t seem like we would
be able to open on time. It helps that
for my particular department, all of the staff are returning, so we don’t have
to spend time training anyone from scratch.
Now that the road to the beach is open, more or less, we’ve even been
able to snowblow paths in the staff area, so that we can get around our half of camp without having to use
snowshoes. I even get a day off
tomorrow; life is looking good.
