Day 12 -- Fishing in Valdez

June 30, 2014

We managed to be on the banks of the bay at nine thirty in the morning.  We were tired, but we had, at long last, found the correct spot to reel in the salmon. Jason reeled in a fish with his very first cast.  He had caught four within an hour.  The day was cloudy, foggy, and overcast.  Our fellow fishermen were dressed in rubbers and raincoats to keep dry in the mist, while our cotton soon became damp, clinging to our skin.     

Catrina would have bites and snags, but wasn’t having any success getting them on the bank.  Finally, she pulled one in, and it fell off the hook as soon as she got the fish onto the rocks.  She scrambled to grab the fish, shrieking for help from Jason.   

When Jason reached around to help, he slammed his hand down on the filet knife, sticking through the sheath attached to his belt.  His hand started gushing blood from the wound in the meaty part of his palm.

Catrina grabbed the fish, ripped his gills out, and put the fish on the stringer.  Then, she surveyed Jason's wound.  She started to make the trek to the car in hopes of finding something to bandage Jason’s hand.  Jason was woozy, leaning against a concrete barrier.  The first aid kit had been left back at camp, but Catrina limped over the slippery rocks with the hope that she might find something in the car.

A roll of paper towels, a package of wet wipes, and a bottle of water was all that she could locate in the backseat.  She had hoped to find a roll of black electrical tape, but had no such luck.  She looked around the parking lot and noticed a group of people.  Catrina approached them, asking for some medical tape, a bandage, or anything helpful.  A fisherman and his significant other, the one that had caught a lure in his leg the day before, supplied us with a roll of duct tape. 

Halfway out to Jason, Catrina met a fellow fishermen carrying our fish.  He told Catrina that he would set them by our car.  She thanked him.  She could look across the rocks and see Jason sitting on the ground, and an older woman speaking to him.  Jason managed to stumble to his feet before Catrina scrambled her way to him.   She washed his hand and make-shift bandaged him with the paper towel and the duct tape.  She sent him to the shore, as she gathered their fishing equipment. 

He sat on the bench, overlooking the fish weir, waiting on Catrina to finish the trek.  She loaded the equipment into the trunk, and the fish into the cooler.  

Then, Jason drove us back into Valdez.

Jason dropped Catrina off at the harbor with the cooler filled with fish.  He went back to camp to bandage his hand, while she cleaned the fish. 

  

She gutted them and removed the heads and fins.  She scraped off the scales.  A local Alaskan appeared, round and friendly, so Catrina asked for pointers to filet the fish.  He pulled out his own equipment, a mat and his own sharp knives.  Within just a few minutes, all five gutted fish were filleted, and he was on his way.  While Catrina waited on Jason to return, she tossed fish guts to the gulls.  The harbor was quiet except for the shrill cries of the gulls as they swooped down on the slide, as water slid the fish waste down toward the bay.      

Then, it was back to the camper to begin the strenuous process of canning the salmon.  The fish from the night before had not be fileted, and Catrina still had to slice them.  The canning process should make mush out of the flexible bone structure of the salmon anyway.    

As she started slicing, Jason went to the Safeway to buy jars.  We had planned on canning the fish in the jars of canned meat we brought with us, after we ate the meat, but we hadn’t touched the canned meat.  We were still eating on the meat we had brought frozen in the cooler and the camper refrigerator.  We would be returning to Texas with a lot of extra food at the rate we had been consuming the food we had brought. 

The jars would need to be washed.  The fish needed sliced.  The jars needed boiled, and then they needed packed with sliced salmon. The lids would need to be washed and boiled, too.  Then, they’d need to go in the pressure cooker at 10 pounds of pressure for one hundred minutes.  These things required attention and precision to properly preserve fish.

Our pressure cooker holds seven jars at a time, and it was the only pan brought large enough to boil jars in.  This was a time-consuming process, a tedious process, not ordinarily too strenuous but having little rest, it left Catrina exhausted.  And she processed as much as she could, as quickly as she could, as the evening low tide would occur again soon and there would be another batch of fish to clean, to filet, to process, and to preserve.  The misty rain continued outside, but we cozily processed fish on the inside, listening to television episodes playing in the background.

Dan’s friend from the night before knocked on the door at the end of his shift at the pelt-selling gas station.  He invited us to his home, giving directions to just a few blocks over.  After all, Valdez is just a small town situated on the bay, and by all accounts, the residents were extremely friendly and courteous.  Later, during a break from the canning, we drove to visit them.  We were welcomed hospitably, and met children and grandchildren.  We chatted about Aurora Borealis, living among bears, and the changes between life in the contiguous US versus Alaska.  The guys took a trip to the grocery store for milk, so we could sip on some homemade cappuccino.  We appreciated the break and the good company.  We reluctantly left to return to our canning before low tide that evening. 

     

When low tide came, we were back on the shores of the bay, fishing the waters below the hatchery.   Casting and reeling, casting and reeling, Jason catching his limit, while Catrina was ate by the insects.  The mist had cleared, but the moisture in the air made the bugs particularly vicious.  Catrina’s arms grew weary of casting the reel, as the midnight hour approached.  Catrina’s measly catch was supplemented by some generous fishermen beside us that weren’t keeping their catch.  Catrina was grateful for the arrival of the bear to once again send us scurrying to the shore, grasping at our equipment and our fish, while the bear fished for her dinner. 

Then, it was back to the harbor to clean the fish.  We chatted under the yellow harbor lights to our fisherman friend from the morning, the duct tape provider, as we started cleaning our catch.  Then, a local kept us company providing harbor stories as we fileted our catch.  Then, it was back to camp for a night of processing and canning fish.  We ate a dinner of baked salmon filets, seasoned with a little lemon pepper, as the pressure cooker valve rattled around.  A good rest was had by Jason, while Catrina spent a night filled with alarm clocks to get the fish properly preserved, as the pressure cooker, with the valve jiggling, all night long. We were too tired to even realize that we hadn't taken any pictures all day long.  

Day 11 -- Arrival in Valdez

June 29, 2014

By 4:30, bright and early, we were shivering underneath our blankets and ready to get back on the road.  Despite the cold, the mosquitos were swarming and biting. 

At 5:00, we passed Willow Lake, mirroring the Wrangell Mountains to the east. 

Fifteen minutes later, Jason spied a moose mother and her calf.

We began to spy the pipeline to the east.  Constructed between March of 1975 and 1977, the pipeline was the largest and most expensive privately funded construction project ever undertaken.  At the peak of construction, the pipeline employed over 30,000 employees.  Today, the pipeline is owned and operated by Alyeska Pipeline Service Company, a group of oil companies including BP, ConocoPhillips, Exxon Mobil, Uonocal, and Koch Alaska. 

We pulled off the road beside an old cabin and a picnic area covered in tall vegetation to view Mount Billy Mitchell, and take a much needed restroom break, but the views weren't that impressive, and the area had been heavily vandalized.  

Mount Billy Mitchell (above) was named after William “Billy” Mitchell a brigadier general in the United State Air Service often referred to as the father of the United States Air Force.

The mountains were covered in gorgeous waterfalls of glacial melt. 

We passed Worthington Glacier,a National Natural Landmark.  Glacial melt began to gush seemingly every few feet down the mountainsides. 

At 6:30, we went over Thompson Pass, a 2,678 foot high, gap in the Chugach Mountains, named by Captain Abercrombie in 1899. This is considered the snowiest place in Alaska, averaging over 551 inches of snow per year.   On December 29, 1955, sixty two inches fell in one day making the record books for the most snow fallen in one single day.

 

We paused to take a view of the Chugach Mountains at Blueberry Lake, and again at Thompson Lake.

We went down the mountains to enter Keystone Canyon, a narrow canyon on both sides of the roads, as we passed over the Lowe River Bridges No. 2, two bridges constructed in 1980 to replace the long tunnel still visible on one side of the road.  The canyon was too named by Captain William Ralph Abercrombie, presumably for the Keystone State of Pennsylvania.  In 1884, Abercrombie led an unsuccessful expedition up the Copper River to the Yukon River.  He did successfully survey the Copper River Delta and a route to Port Valdez.

Ice still covered the Lowe River (above) as large nasty dirty piece of snowy ice. The clear glacier melt roared under the road and alongside us as we entered the canyon. 

We pulled over to peer inside the Old Railroad Tunnel.  (above) The sign read, “This tunnel was hand cut into the solid rock of Keystone Canyon and is all that is left of the railroad era when 9 companies fought to take advantage of the short route from the coast to the copper country.  However, a feud interrupted progress.  A gun battle was fought and the tunnel was never finished. The Iron Trail by Rex Beach describes these event and this area.”

At 6:57, we reached Bridal 

Falls, roaring over the side of the canyon.  

\On the other side of the road, a few feet down, Horsetail Falls riveted across the side of the canyon reminiscent to a horsetail being flicked across the cliffs.

Before we drove into Valdez, we drove down the road beside the bay to Allison Point. We gazed across the bay at low tide.  Bald eagles and sea hawks fished the low tides, as we passed.  The treetops on the left side of the road were filled with the large birds, either digesting or waiting for their turn to fish.  The mountains continued almost to the edge of both sides of the bay. 

   

We drove past the hatchery and observed the campground and turned around.  It was a place we could camp, but we preferred to find something a little less rugged. We parked and attempted to walk the banks at low tide, in search of lures, but the slippery rocks sent us scurrying quickly back to our vehicle.





On our way back out, we caught sight of a fisherman with the six limit on a stringer.  We hadn’t purchased our fishing licenses yet, and Jason’s research had led us to believe that high tide was when the best catch was had.  Yet, we were excited, if the limit was easy to catch at low tide then it would be a breeze at high tide.

We drove around the bay into the town of Valdez, driving by the harbor.  We parked, but before we could go into the harbor shop to purchase our licenses, Jason had misplaced his wallet.  We searched high and low, backseat and the front seat, without any luck.  We checked the glove box and under the seats.  And finally, the wallet was located on top of the dash where Jason had used it to stop a rattle in the air conditioner vent.  We all breathed a sigh of relief. 

Inside, we purchased a seven day license.  They provided instructions and advice for fishing and fileting the catch. They recommended Bayside RV Park as one of the better commercial campsites in the area.

We refilled at the local gas station in Valdez for 4.58/gallon.  Jason couldn’t recall a gas station before that sold animal pelts. 

We drove back to the Allison point, observing the fishermen on the banks of the bay.  We drove past the hatchery (pictured above), turned around, and parked behind a line of vehicles all trying their luck at catching their limits. We retrieved our fishing poles and lures out of the camper. 

The rocks (pictured below) were large, slippery, and hazardous as we practically crawled to the bottom.  Catrina’s ankle was throbbing as she tried to stay vertical. Jason wasn't as successful at remaining vertical.  As we were fishing, a man came down and threw his lure in a couple times.  He shook his head, complaining that they would never bite at low tide.  He gave up rather quickly.

While we attempted to cast and reel, another man joined the two of us as the bottom of the rocks.  He caught two while we stared at him as he released the catch we so desired.

Catrina’s new reel was filled with twisted line, and she was having difficulty cranking the line.  It didn’t take long for us to decide to make camp and come back at high tide.  We went to Bayside RV Park, and settled into camp. 

We showered and took a much needed nap in anticipation of high tide in a couple of hours.  Catrina noticed dozens of red spots up and down her arms, reminiscent of the chicken pox, but likely unfelt bug bites.

After our nap, we took Catrina’s reel apart, in hopes, of making it crank easier. And when the reel was put back together, we loaded our things into the trunk of the car.

We returned the bay at high tide.  A wind had blown up and the bay was filled with white-capped swells.  We chatted with the man who had caught the two fish previously.  He lived in North Pole, AK but this was his first visit to Valdez for salmon fishing.  The cool wind was too much for him, and he was giving up.  Since we had left, he hadn’t caught anything more.

We put in our lines, and slowly reeled in, tolerating the sea spray in our face.  As we were fishing, Catrina noticed a log floating in the water, until the log turned to look at her.  It was a sea otter, observing the few fishermen on the bank.

The otters of the bay seemed to be mocking us, as they ate their salmon catches left to right like corn on the cob.  They would swim near the bank, almost posing for their pictures.  They ducked the waves, disappeared under water, to return with the fish we couldn’t seem to catch.  Catrina stopped frustrated fishing and snapped a few pictures.  This continued for a little while the mosquitos and no-see-ums ate our blood for dinner. 

We stopped for a restroom break and a reapplication of bug spray.  When we returned, Jason spoke to some more experienced fishermen, who recommended low tide, as everyone had seemed to have better luck then. 

So we headed back to the other side of the bay for a nap until evening tide.

When we returned, we tried again at our previous spot.  We perilously crawled down the large slick rocks to the edge of the waters.  Men, twice our ages, and one with no leg, seemed to make the hike with little effort, as we both struggled to stay upright and unhurt.  Again, no luck.  We cast, and we reeled in, with no luck at all.

As we were about to give up for the evening, before sundown, a fellow fisherman told us that they were having a great deal of luck just below the fish ladder.

A man was standing on the rocks with a fishing lure halfway in his leg, blood pouring out his leg.  He had a long walk back to his vehicle. 

We cast, and within just a few minutes, we had actual strikes on our lures.  We began regularly hooking fish, reeling halfway, and walking the fish up onto the banks.  Then, we would field dress the salmon, by ripping a gill out.  This would allow the fish to bleed out and prevent the bruising of the meat.  A dog came up to sniff our catch, while his owner shooed him away. 

Jason caught his six before an hour had passed.  Catrina had pulled in four, before they stopped striking.  Yet, she continued to cast and reel in hopes of snagging the present fish, as the tide began to roll in.  We began to make conversation with the local fisherman and dog owner, named Dan, beside us.  Catrina would snag the occasional fish, but had no luck getting the fish to the banks.  Dan allowed a young barefooted Indian boy to reel in his catch, as his sister watched, and his father took photos.  Afterward, Dan tried to snag another so the sister could reel one in too.

The sounds of a dog barking made us all look up from our tasks at hand.  Across the bank, near the hatchery, a large grizzly had joined us in our fishing quests.

The father snatched up his two kids, headed to shore as quickly as one could with no shoes, while the rest of us continued to fish.  The bear waded, into the bay, downstream from us and from the fish ladder, standing on her hind legs, attempting to pounce on the salmon in the water.  We still cast our lines, reeling them in slowly, all the while keeping one eye on the location of the bear.

Eventually, as tides rolled in, the bear grew tired of working for her catch.  She crossed the section of water in between ours, sneaking behind rocks, curious about our fish.  We began to gather our equipment and head toward shore.  We had no intention of sharing our catch with a lousy bear. The dog, Ollie, had no tolerance for such sneaky behavior out of bears, and charged at top speed at the bear.  We watched in amazement, as we slid our way across the rocks to shore, as we thought we were watching the final minutes of the dog’s life.  Some Italian photographers began to take pictures, as the bear took off running at top speed away from the insane canine. 

After we made it to shore, we realized our newly made friends and Ol’ Ollie didn’t have a vehicle in the lot.  We waited around for their ride to show up, standing in a parking lot chatting about life.  A group of teenagers gathered, watching the bear catch salmon in the fish ladder down the bank from us.  Ollie stiffened and growled as the bear neared the banks on occasion.  The bear, however, had little actual interest in us and only really cared about fishing.

Eventually, as dawn approached, we returned to town.  We stopped at the harbor, to clean our catch and the donated catch of our new friends before we headed to our bed to sleep too little for yet another night.