red alder ranch

What a year it’s been, and what a month December has been!

Notable events for December include the bankruptcy and closure of Skamokawa Center, where much of our kayaking work was based, and where I have worked managing the paddle center for five years. In fact, five years is the longest I’ve ever worked for the same organization. Columbia River Kayaking, the LLC that the guides formed in 2007, is now scrambling to find ways to replace that income and hopefully keep some of our programming going in some other form.

All that snow that we were playing in back on December 20th? Well, an awful lot of it is still here. In fact, it snowed almost continually through Christmas Day, which resulted in our back porch roof collapsing under the weight of about 20 inches of snow on Christmas morning. The light-duty, almost flat roof was never intended to hold up that kind of weight. On Christmas eve, it had started to thaw and rain a little, but during the night it switched back to heavy snow. I did manage to save the front porch roof by climbing up a ladder with a snow shovel and clearing it off. Thankfully, the Subaru wagon did remarkably well in this weather. With it’s all wheel drive and studded snow tires, I was never unable to go where I needed to go. The only place I got stuck was in my own driveway, trying to break out of the deep snow that had accumulated the night before.

My driveway is finally clear down to the pavement though, even though the rest of the land is still covered. I hiked up to the back of the land this afternoon and was still finding snow deep enough to go over the tops of my rubber boots. The heavy snow did a lot of damage to the fruit trees and shrubbery near the house, and I wanted to see how the forest had fared. There wasn’t a lot of damage up there, mostly small hemlock and spruce trees bent over and some breakage in the wild cherry and alder. My Port Orford Cedars and Redwoods will need to be dug out of the snow and propped back up again, though. I’m hoping I can save them.

There were elk tracks everywhere, and evidence of them resorting to eating the usnea lichen off of the trees wherever they could get to it. I’m sure they will be glad when this snow finally thaws away. At least one of the feral bunnies is still alive though, having holed up in the empty barn and successfully foraged under the trees.

Yesterday was the annual Christmas Bird Count. I was feeling a little under the weather and didn’t go out for a full day, but went out for three hours, and paddling about eight miles. There were a lot of duck hunters blasting away in one of the most likely sloughs, so I avoided that one. And there was a cold east wind blowing, too, so most of the little perching birds stayed low and out of sight. But I still managed to get 19 species, mostly waterfowl and a few raptors, and I hauled a pile of trash out of the tidal area of Welch Island. These bald eagles let me paddle right up underneath them.

Well, that’s that for 2008, there’s only a few hours left now. Here’s hoping for positive change, health and prosperity in 2009!

So, it doesn’t often snow this much in Skamokawa, but today I’ve had several inches of snow on the ground for days already, and more is predicted to arrive this afternoon. It is already about seven or eight inches deep in the pasture.

Alice and I went out to do some sledding, which usually gets done with garbage can lids at my house. When it rarely snows, you don’t own a proper sled. So we were scrutinizing the garbage cans again, when I suddenly remembered the whitewater kayaks! Perfect sledding substitute!

It took a couple of passes down the driveway to get the snow nicely packed down, but then it worked very well. Too well, almost! On one pass Alice ended up under a rhododendron bush covered in snow, and on another pass she ended up in the ditch by the road, having just missed a small alder sapling.

Already being a kayaker, I knew a little better how to steer by leaning and bracing, but having no paddle, I used my bare hands for bracing, which worked alright until my last run, when I hand braced into the blackberry bushes on the side of the driveway… and then ended up flipping over at the bottom while leaning a little too hard trying to avoid the ditch.

All in good fun…and I’m still picking blackberry thorns out of my hands.

In breaking with my tradition of not getting around to blog entries for days or weeks after the event, I am writing this one up the very next day!

Last year was the second annual Deception Pass Dash, a kayak race staged at Deception Pass in northern Puget Sound and last year was the first year that I volunteered to be a safety kayaker for the event.

For those who have never seen it, Deception Pass is a narrow slot of water between the mainland and the northern tip of Whidbey Island. On every tide change, the water rushes back and forth through this narrow slot, which has a small island in the middle, dividing the pass into two passageways, one much smaller one named Canoe Pass, and the larger side known as Deception Pass. There is a tall bridge connecting the mainland with Whidbey Island.

On a large tidal exchange, like those near the full or new moons, the current speed in Deception Pass can reach over 7 knots, and the turbulent water attracts kayakers from all over to play in the standing waves and whirlpools.

The race was organized for the first two years by Seattle Raft and Kayak, but this year it was handed over to the Outdoor Adventure Center in Seattle for them to run. Considering the last minute change in organizational personnel, things went very smoothly.

The day began with arriving at Bowman Bay, just north of the pass. Safety boaters had their meeting at 8:30 and then headed out to their various stations around the course. Racers had their meeting shortly after, and the race began at 10 AM.

The race starts in Bowman Bay, goes around Deception Island, and then heads back east to the pass, under the bridge through Deception Pass, around Strawberry Island just inside the pass and then out through Canoe Pass. Before returning to Bowman Bay though, racers have to go back around Deception Island again. This course is about 6 miles, and is timed so that if you are reasonably quick, you can get around Strawberry Island at slack tide, and ride out through Canoe Pass with the ebb. If you are not so quick, you may miss that timing and end up paddling on a treadmill under the bridge, as the ebb tide builds and attempts to push you back out to to sea.

Last year I was at Strawberry Island, and the only rescue that needed to be effected happened right there, when one of the racing surfskis cut to close to the rocks and snapped off his rudder, capsizing him. I rescued him and his craft, and he continued on with the race, rudderless. This year, I took that same station, since I was the only person there that had worked at that location before. But this year, there was no action in my area at all. All the surfskis stayed clear of the rocks, and our station was uneventful, but we could hear on the radio that the Deception Island station was much busier, with many capsizes and troubles out there, since there was a brisk southwest breeze and 3 to 4′ seas at the beginning of the race.

After the last racer went past, we packed up and followed him back through Canoe Pass, where there was a nice standing wave pattern building up. I stopped to play briefly and then headed out a little ways towards Deception Island to see what all the fuss was about. Another paddler who I had met there last year came along and we were both thinking the same thing: that we wanted to go out and play, but neither of us felt we should go alone. So we went together.

The seas had gotten larger since morning, and now were looking more like 4-5 feet, with stronger wind and a strong current. When we got around to the southwest side of the island, we found ourselves in an area where the waves were getting very big and close together and were interacting with the waves reflecting off of the rocky island as well. It was an exciting area to be in, and I took a lot of pictures, most of which were blurred from water on the lens. Right after I took this one, I dropped the camera in favor of the paddle, and the wave broke right in my face, shoving my kayak backwards quite a ways. What fun!

After some of that, we headed back to the bay and portaged the kayaks over the little sand spit and headed back over to Canoe Pass to see if anyone else was over there. It was just the sheriff’s deputies on the jetskis, and we played around in the standing wave for a little while, before finally heading back over to the launch to see if we could find some food. All in all, a good day, and no snow like last year!

Once again, the camera was all wet and gave me another pile of almost useless, out of focus pictures. This one though, was kind of cool the way it was, so I kept it. Coming soon: a somewhat grumpy and not entirely glowing review of the Pentax Optio W60. There is a lot about it that I like, but it falls short in some significant areas.

PostScript:

check out the totally awesome “stern cam” video of the race at Andrew Elizaga’s blog here and some stats from the race at his blog here.