A Southeast Alaska Rainforest

On Wednesday Joe took us on a road trip across the Island. Once we left the main road that follows the shoreline, we only saw one pickup for the next 10 miles or so. Just like the bears and other critters, the people stay pretty close to edge of the island. It was a really rainy day, so we didn't see much wildlife, a few sitka blacktail deer. We stopped by the fish hatchery where Jim and Rosella Billi called home for quite a few years, and where son Keith learned to fish, I understand, when his dad wasn't watching. Our next destination was over the top of the Island, past some areas that had been logged during the late 60's, thru the late 80's. This was interesting to me to see the new growth is coming back. I'm used to moisture limiting growth due to the lack of it, but here I'm sure there is too much, and it leaches the limited amount of soil of nutrients. Any roads have to have large amounts of base rock placed, before the gravel running surface, to armor them for hauling a load of any size. The picture below shows some of the flora, including huge amounts of Devils Club, a large leafed, spiney stemmed plant. We didn't see much "old growth" timber like the sitka spruce below, but there is such a lack of good soil on the Island to grow one like this, I guess it didn't suprise me. This is in a little park near the fish hatchery. I'm sure there's more timber like this if you got out and started hiking around. Joe said that in one 2-mile stretch of road they installed 90 culverts on a recent reconstruction project. Below is a stream leading from the sea up toward the hatchery. Notice the large salmon, dark shadows in the center, and bottom of the picture.We stopped to experience walking on the muskeg which makes up a lot of the island perimeter. The town of Petersburg is built on it. It is a thick mat of vegetation, or decomposing vegetation, maybe 6 ft thick, on a hardpan clay layer, that holds the water from draining away. Thus its like walking on a sponge, the water coming halfway up your boots. The trees look hydroponic, kind of stunted with short needles. Houses have to be built on pilings that are driven down into the clay layer. Below, Judy and Joe standing in the muskeg.

Our main destination for the day was a little garnet mine, where people have gone and found garnets in a vein of rock near a creek bottom. Garnets are a gemstone, kind of redish colored. Joe took his bear spray, the 44 magnum type, and we decended down a steep trail, thru extremely thick brush, off the end of the road. We didn't see any sign of a bear, thank goodness. Below is a couple pictures of Judy searching the steep slopes above the creek.