Sitka Nature

Wanting to take advantage of reasonable weather and the fact that Connor and Rowan’s grandma was here to watch them, Jonathan and I decided to hike the Harbor Mountain to Gavan Hill trail. We got a ride up Harbor Mountain Road and started up the trail head around 12:45.

The snow had mostly melted off the bowl, but along the ridge at the top of the bowl we had to walk along some patches of snow. This patchy snow continued on until the trail forked. The patches were kind of annoying, because I was never sure if I would punch through, and if I did punch through, how deep I might go. This situation was made worse by not having gaiters to keep the snow out of my shoes. Once we started along the south slopes of Harbor Mountain, the snow was basically gone from the trail for some distance. Along this snow free stretch of trail we saw many flowers blooming or near to blooming. (We had also noticed a few earlier, but not too many.)

When we got back a bit further to the talus fields, there were a few more large patches of snow that we had to cross. The snow distribution this year seems to be different than last year. My first hike on this trail last year was 3 May and although the third gate was still closed, I do not remember there being quite so much snow along this section of the trail. Despite this there was definitely more snow last year on that hike between the Shelter to Gavan Ridge than there was this year.

As we neared the saddle between Harbor Mountain and the knoll where the Shelter is, we could see someone coming up the trail from the other direction. We passed this hiker as we headed up the other side of the shelter. He was to be the only other hiker we saw. In the saddle I noticed a plant blooming that was new to me. It was a shrub that had small purplish wooly looking flowers.

We arrived at the shelter at 3:50pm and took a few minutes to look at the log book. It seemed that not many people had signed the book since the last time we made the hike on 8 November. We left the shelter right around 4pm and made our way up the next rise. There was still quite a bit of snow left, but fortunately it had consolidated enough that we did not find ourselves doing any postholing.

Throughout the day we had been hiking along the edge of a cloudbank hanging over the mountains. The ocean side it was clear, but over the mountains it was cloudy with scattered rainfall. We occasionally felt a few drops of rain, but for the most part it just cool overcast. As we started along Gavan Ridge, we came out of the clouds into bright sunlight. This was not so bad except for the blinding nature of the snow. Unfortunately, neither of us had sunglasses, so we did our best to hurry through the painfully bright patches of snow.

Once we came down the steel stairs, we were more or less out of the snow. There were still a couple of final patches as we went up the next little rise on the ridge, but from there on it was snow free. We reached the point where Gavan Hill trail reaches the ridge line at a little before 5pm. We stopped to take a short food and water break before we started down right at 5pm. By this time I was hoping to make it back by 6pm, so we picked up the pace a bit.

There are two places along Gavan Trail that I have long considered way points between the start to the ridge line. There is a sizeable stump at the top of a set of stairs that I considered one-third of the way, and the viewpoint before the ridge I considered two-thirds of the way. My brother asked me whether this was by distance or elevation, and I told him I was not sure. I do not remember if I consciously estimated these way points at some time in the past or just adopted them because they were easy to notice. In any case, we decided to time ourselves on the way down. It took 16 minutes to the viewpoint where we rested a couple of minutes. It took another 15 or 16 minutes to get down to the stump, and then 16 or 17 minutes from the stump to the trailhead. I am not sure if it would work out so well on the way up. We were at the trailhead by 5:50pm.

Jonathan and I headed up west fork of Indian River. We were going to look at a large tree some distance up and a shelter a few miles back in the valley, both of which he had found while on a camping trip a couple of weeks ago. We made quick progress to the first bridge on Indian River Trail, then followed the remnants of an old trail marked on the map. All that is left are a few small bridges in an advanced state of decay. I do not know what the history is of that spur of the trail.

Flowers that were in bloom included heart-leaved twayblade (near the second bridge), three-leaf goldthread, tall mountain shooting-star, bog rosemary, cloudberry (each in the middle Sister muskeg), salmonberries, and bittercress (each widespread). The fern-leaf goldthread were developing seedpods. The patch of forest between the middle Sister muskegs seemed to be very popular with the birds. We saw and heard many robins, a couple of hairy woodpeckers, a red-breasted sapsucker, ruby-crowned kinglets, a varied thrush, and others. In the woods well up the valley, we saw a raptor of some sort. It may have been a red-tailed hawk, but I am not sure. There were a number of spots that looked like they had been frequently used by deer bedding down. In a number of locations there were signs of heavy deer browse. It was interesting to note that some of these locations showed heavy browsing within about 4 feet of the trail but little or no browsing further away. An interesting thing about the ones we saw was that they were on the west side of the trees. In addition to the large tree we intended to check out, we found another one that was almost as big around. It may have been as tall or taller than the first big tree. The first big tree we measured to be 25-26 feet around at about 7 feet above the ground. We guessed that it was at least 80 feet tall and the spread was somewhere between 40-60 feet. It was difficult to say for sure, since we had not brought appropriate tools for accurate measurement and it was difficult to see the top of the tree. The second tree we measured to be about 24-25 feet around. Another interesting tree we found had a fairly large open area underneath. We agreed that it might make a pretty good location for an emergency shelter.

We found a new waterfall coming down from the north slope of Gavan Hill. While we were climbing around along the creek below it, a dipper showed up and seemed somewhat anxious. At first it seemed to be trying to get us to go back down the creek. When we started back down, it flew up to the falls, landed a number of times in different locations (sometimes even with water falling on it), and eventually disappeared over the top.

We did eventually make it to the shelter. It did not appear to Jonathan that anyone had been there since the last time he looked at it. Whoever was there left quite a bit of stuff, including buckets of dry goods in a fairly clever stash located on a tree platform.

Other things of note were large openings with many stink currants (I am more used to seeing salmonberry and devil’s club in such clearings). I was also intrigued by the fact that oak fern is the most common fern in most places, but occasionally there would be a patch of northern beech-fern with little or no oak fern growing amongst them. I wonder if there are some soil characteristics which favor one over the other. We discovered a trap with what I think was probably a marten still in it. Our best guess is that it was left over from a trap line this past winter. The animal was still basically intact, but clearly long dead. Many of the clearings with brush had moss on the ground that looked similar to what I saw around our house after the fox sparrows had been working for a while. Jonathan said that these types of locations were full of robins and varied thrushes the last time he was there. We only spooked up a couple. On at least three occasions we heard what we assumed was probably a deer running away from us. We never saw any deer (although it seemed clear that they were probably around). There was a fair amount of fresh bear sign, but other than a strange fishy smell next to the river on our way back, nothing seemed too indicative of a bear in the immediate vicinity.

Last night as I was getting ready to brush my teeth around midnight, I heard a strange noise through the bathroom window. I listened for a bit and heard it again. It sounded kind of like an owl. I have not previously heard owls around here, so it was a little surprising to me. I listened to my Birds of Alaska CDs today and was able to determine that what I had heard was a western screech owl.