Brrr...........There's Snow in them there hills!

On Monday, we woke to our first snow on the ground. Sure, it's been up on the mountains and hills for a bit now, but this was the first we could actually touch without a major hike. We got about an inch, maybe a little less, and it was cold.

It didn't last too long, as it turned to a 37-degree rainy day, but it was cool while it lasted.

We went on our first cold winter hike today. We did the West Glacier trail about 5 miles. We must really love each other when we both look like a bunch of dorks.

Of course it was extremely cold, I think about 27 degrees. We each had on about 4 layers of clothes on. About an hour into it we starting taking off the hats and balaclava. The sky was real blue and the air real crisp. It was a perfect day for a hike. On the way to the trailhead we stopped at Skaters Cabin on Mendenhall Lake. It is all frozen and there were about 50 folks ice skating. I was so excited to see the lake frozen. I haven't skated on a lake since I lived back in Minnesota and that was a long long time ago. On Saturday we bought ourselves some cheap ice skates and plan on going skating this next weekend. Ken has only skated twice in his life so I'm sure it will be a sight to see. (I'll take pictures if I'm not laughing to hard)

This is an iceberg frozen in the lake. If we'd had our crampons we would have walked out to it.

We ended up looking over the top of the Mendenhall Glacier, it was kind of weird being above it. You could see the blue in the ice. You can't see it in these pictures but trust me it was there.

We started back down about 3:30pm so we could beat the dark. We didn't make it, about a 1/2 hour later it was already getting dark enough that it was hard to see where we were walking. We ran and speed walked the whole way down, a great work-out but tiring. We are hoping the next time we go up which won't be until December that the snow will be plentiful for some snowshoeing.

Jess, get ready to do some ice-skating and snowshoeing when you are here for Christmas. YEAH !!

Julie

Pictures From the MUNRO

This is MUNRO in Kodiak where I embarked.

A view from the pilothouse during the low pressure storm in the Gulf of Alaska.

The car carrier OVERSEAS JOYCE bouncing around during the SAR case for the OCEAN CHALLENGER. The smaller fishing vessel had rolled over in the 30 to 40 foot swells within a few miles of her.

Dawn breaks over Unimak Island as we pass thru Unimak Pass, the wide gap in the Aleutians where vessels move between the Bering Sea and the Gulf of Alaska. This is desolate country.

Crab boardings are why we are here, and we finally found the right combination of the crabbers we were after and weather that cooperated for small boat operations. On Sunday the 22nd, we boarded four crabbers. Unfortunately, none had the camera guys from the Deadliest Catch...

Looking rather heavy is your humble author, captured while encased in a careful laminate of polypropylene underwear, fleece coverall, ballistic armor vest, gortex drysuit, type III PFD, and survival vest. Though all of this was supposed to breathe, I sweated out about a gallon of fluids during the course of the day.

In-season boardings were new to the "rationalized" fleet, so there was mutual curiosity between the boarding party and the skippers and crew. We sized each other up, but it was all business. No major safety or fishery violations, and I had the time to do some in-depth training with the crew. And no one got hurt. My biggest fear was getting hurt while climbing on and off, but all went went safely.

Search, Day Two...

The master of the OCEAN CHALLENGER never woke up yesterday thinking it might be the last. No one sane does.

We searched a second day, weaving through and around the rapidly dissapating debris field. The seas are still big, often to 20-feet or so, but more muddled and confused as the strong winds have died to a more moderate 20 to 25 knots. The Cold Bay helo was out with us earlier, as was another C130 from Kodiak. They relocate the fish tote, the wood pieces, the fish floats, the data marker buoy with it's radio homing transmitter dropped from the aircraft, the lifering thrown from the OVERSEAS JOYCE. We are still looking for the master, or anything else that will help to explain why this vessel capsized yesterday, when it never capsized in previous years of worse weather.

About 7-ish tonight we finished our last creeping line search, with negative results. District Seventeen released us, and we made one final track thru the search area as we head toward the Bering Sea.

I am onboard to help with crabber boardings, and this case set us back about two days in our law-enforcement mission, but SAR is what we do, and this was a good reminder of why I love this organization as much as I do. We're seasick, getting slapped silly by a gale in the Gulf of Alaska, no one having fun, and we drop everything to focus on the matter at hand... our fellow mariners, slapped by the same gale, and definitely not having any fun. Less important than our feeling of having done the best job we could, is the tragedy borne by the families of the three men who did not survive.

It would appear, being the stickler for detail and fact, that I may have erred initially in some parts of this. I just read the online article in the Anchorage paper (at http://www.adn.com/news/alaska/story/8320812p-8216970c.html), based on press releases out of Juneau, and it seems the survivor may have been the only one of the four wearing his suit. Also, it is not the skipper we were looking for, but one of the deckhands. In the thick of the fight, as the historian Clausewitz would call the "fog of war," we don't always get the picture correctly as it unfolds around us. I have no doubt that in the post-mortem that I know will follow this tragedy, the facts will out. What's important to the men and women on the MUNRO tonight is that we did what we could in an awful, cold and uncaring environment.

My thoughts and prayers go out to the victims and their families.

KML

The Weather Turns Deadly...

Just another commercial fishing vessel sinking. Just another all-night search for a missing crewman. Just another storm in the Gulf of Alaska.

We received the Mayday relay from District Seventeen about 1000 this morning; a 59-foot longliner with 4 souls onboard was sinking, and the crew readying to take to their survival suits and raft. They were about 40 NM to the west of our position. The HH60 helo that was pre-deployed to Cold Bay for crab season SAR launched, and would beat us there.

We had spent the night slowly steaming southward, into the wind, gradually coming to starboard to follow the weather. Even so, the berthing areas became hellish places... everything that was not already tied down, and alot of stuff that was, came crashing to the deck. TVs, book cases, people. No one I talked to got more than 10 or 15 minutes of sleep at a time... and so in the morning, the ship's routine was not, but was quiet and slow. The deepfat fryer in the wardroom pantry sloshed it's contents out on the deck just after I got my breakfast... two fried eggs overhard and a scoop of cornedbeef hash.

When we got word of the Mayday, we had to come beam to the seas and things got worse. We were taking 25 to 30 footers, and doing some spectacular nosedives. I went to the bridge for a while, and we took spray to the windows, some 50 feet above the foc's'le, every 5 minutes or so. I went out onto the bridge wing in 40 knot gusts to take some pictures... very dramatic.

By the time we arrived at the location passed, the helo had already rescued one survivor, and picked up the bodies of two other crewmen. Nobody had gotten into their suits it appeared after all. No one made it into the raft.

We were joined in the search by a car carrier, the US-flag OVERSEAS JOYCE, and the US-flag container ship R. J. PFIEFFER. The sight of those two leviathans careening around the area in the seas was awesome. We were joined by a C130 flying out of Kodiak, and the four of us churned through the debris field and downwind, looking for whatever we might find.

We pulled two survival suits out of the water, empty of signs of use, as well as pulling the liferaft next to our hull... again, empty and devoid of any sign of use. The raft was thrashed from the seas, only partially inflated, the canopy not deployed. It was a bad sign.

We are continuing the search thru the night, and expect to be released after another first-light aircraft search of the area. The winds have died down as the low passed, and the seas are not as high, but are chaotic and sloppy. We are still rolling heavily. It has been a helluva day, and I am ready for bed.

The ocean swallowed another boat and her occupants, and it doesn't care.

KML

Say Hello to Ralph, My Little Friend...

Sometimes, the weather guys are just a bit off on timing. They forecasted a steep low pressure in the Gulf of Alaska, and we finally ran into it, or it into us. The effect is the same.

The wind has picked up as the center approached, and with it the waveheight. As we are headed west and it roughly east, the winds have been behind us, but that will change: the wind direction has started to rotate toward the south, and will sooner or later be on our bow. Quartering seas are not too bad a ride, the roll so far pretty gentle. The bad part is the pitching... the nose dives followed by the climbs back up. Every few minutes we encounter a deeper dive, that ends with slamming. Slamming... a term known by sailors everywhere, and entirely self-explanatory and self-descriptive. Slamming is followed by a shimmy that runs the entire length of the boat, akin to a guitar string vibrating along it's length.

The motion sets everything to making noise. The pitch from the big medium speed diesels changes up and down as the props dig deeper into the water and have to work harder. The ceiling panels squeak as the ship structure flexes and they get pinched longwise, doors creak as their frames are misshapen. I wonder how I will sleep tonight, but I suspect that I will wedge myself in my sleeping bag, and somehow fall away. Strange how laying down is almost worse that sitting up... my body mass itself rocks and sways with the ship, even as I lay still, like the water moving in a fishbowl when you carry it. No matter how careful and slow, the water still sloshes. The naval architect in me knows that the force is all about the free surface of the fluid, but it's still strange.

Just finished a wonderful but weird run of e-mail with Julie... because of the slight delay in getting messages, we fell into a routine of two tracks of conversation. Each of us is typing at the same time, then replying to the second-to-last message from each other. It is pretty neurotic, but it works when there is no other alternative. But anyway, in the hour or so between starting this entry and doing the e-mails with Julie, I can feel the boat starting to roll more now as the wind has shifted southerly. We are still slamming, but more roll added in, like a cork-screwing figure-of-eight.

I would be remiss, gentle reader, to fail to mention my good friend, meclizine hydrochloride. As of yet, I have had no seasickness. No desperate need to see the horizon. Only the ever-constant need to hold onto something solid, lest I roll across the deck. I only hope that I can continue to hold Ralph off thru the night and into tomorrow. 'Cause as every sailor knows, as soon as you embrace Ralph, you're gonna have to hug Alice and Huey, too. And that just sucks.

KML

My Busy Life with the US Coast Guard...

I am doing a crappy job of keeping up with this, my humble blog. I entreat my gentle readers to give me a bit of understanding, given these busy days...

I never finished a discussion of Dutch Harbor, my stay at Charlie's new house, my tour of the crabbers and docks, and my foggy foray into the WWII ruins above the cloudline on Mt. Ballyhoo. I took some good pictures, and I will get to those... soon. Just as I still promise to write about my "Alaska is bigger than your butt, and doesn't care a wit about you" adventure earlier this summer when Chief Garcia and I rented a truck in Nome and attempted to drive to the "Train to Nowhere" one afternoon. All the makings of an epic start, without the clear disaster ('cause we were smart, and a man's got to know his limitations...).

So, as I make these feeble excuses, I am riding onboard the CGC MUNRO in the Gulf of Alaska, somewhere south and west of Kodiak Island, enroute the Unimak Pass and the promise of boardings of Bering Sea Red King Crabbers. It's what we do on ALPATs...

The weather has been pleasant thus far, and the seas very moderate for mid-October. We were promised 10 to 14 footers by the weather guys, but have only seen a 3 to 4 ft chop. It has us uneasy, waiting for the other shoe to drop. It is nice now, but we all know that the weather made famous by the Deadliest Catch can catch us at any time.

The bandwidth on the internet connection really sucks, so there will be no pictures until I get home.

The crew is out of San Diego, although next summer the MUNRO's homeport will change to Kodiak, and then they will be blessed to be Alaskans. They are professionals, serious, and ready to get to the law enforcement tasks in front of them. I am here to do some training with them, to help them get up to speed on enforcing the safety regs, and for my own education. I hope to get out on a few crabbers before I leave the ship later this week. I could tell you more, but then I'd have to kill y'all (wait for the after-action report...).

Julie is sad and lonely with me gone to sea, but we trade e-mails and that makes things a bit better. I think of her often, and it always takes me back to the conflict raging in my heart and soul: do I stay at home safe, or do I obey the lizard-brain longing to go to sea, just as I imagine my ancestors torn between the thrill of the hunt and new adventure, or staying close to the tribe and gathering instead. I suspect I will never resolve this dilemma... but I thank God that I have the opportunities available to me to have this conflict. A desk job with no prospect of new sights, new perspectives, a measured amount of danger... that would kill my spirit.

Or at least that's the crap I tell myself as I hold steady on this desk with my knees as I type, so that I don't move around too much.

Enough for now. Hug a serviceman for their sacrifice, especially a sailor.

KML

My Fiance' Went to Dutch Harbor, and All I Got Was This Ridiculous Hat...

Is this a ridiculous hat or what? Ken was gone almost a week and I missed him so much. He told me he had gotten me something and of course being a woman I'm thinking jewerlry or something girly. But no I got this hat that is real colorful, oh and a Dutch Harbor sweatshirt. Actually the hat is pretty cool and it will keep us warm this winter when we are snowshoeing all over these beautiful mountains in Juneau. Aren't we so cute together. I'm so lucky!!

Julie

Oh, Lord, Stuck In Anchorage, Again...

02 October 2006: There is a very good reason that the Aleutian Islands have a reputation as a nasty, difficult place. In three words: the weather sucks.

Alaska Air no longer flies out to Dutch Harbor in their large, fast 737's. Instead, a small partner named PenAir flies smaller, prop commuters out on a three-hour trip, a three-hour trip.

The fog never lifted in Dutch Harbor. We who watched the internet saw a forecast of gusts to 60-knots, but the truth was the fog never lifted. Apparently, those regulatory tud-balls at the FAA require that pilots be able to see the ground before they can touch it. What, and deny the rescue swimmers an opportunity to make the front page?!

I was scheduled to take the third, and final, flight of the day out of Anchorage. But PenAir already had two planes gone, and neither could land in Dutch. The first circled for a while, waiting for a sucker-hole in the ground-level cloud cover. When it reached bingo fuel, they climbed back to cruising and diverted 75 minutes back the way they came, landing at King Salmon. The second flight, launched as the first was turning around, headed straight for King Salmon, to wait and fuel.

From what we gathered from the customer service folks at the counter, nobody was going anywhere close to Dutch. Our 2:00pm departure time came and went, and we hung on, waiting for the top of each hour for the update from their operations manager.

At 5:00pm, they informed us we were not leaving this day. The good news (?) was that they were adding two extra flights to tomorrow's schedule, to handle the folks who tried but failed to get to Dutch Harbor.

But wait, they cancelled three flights... where did that leave me? Good question, call Alaska in a few hours because the extra flights won't show up in the computer for a while. My only consolation was that I didn't have to sit in a loud, prop-driven can for 6 or more hours so that I could have two hours standing on the tarmac at King Salmon.

Retreat to hotel, after waiting for my checked bags to get pulled off the plane we had watched sitting on the ramp outside the window for the past 4 hours...

Later that night, the very nice woman at Alaska promises me, no doubt, I can fly to Dutch Harbor on Thursday afternoon...

The weather in the Aleutians sucks.

I get up at oh-my-god-four o'clock on Tuesday, get to the PenAir counter third in line when they open at 5am, and get on stand-by. The 0600 flight is full, but I get a boarding pass for the 0930. A very short nap, an expensive airport breakfast, and a long flight in a noisy, prop-driven tin can, with a refuelling stop in King Salmon (just in case). We emerge from the overcast, into the rain, but we can see the ground.

I am in Dutch Harbor, and the weather sucks.

KML

Ken is definitely the writer in the family

I don't imagine that I will ever get tired of seeing these beautiful eagles. This is one that they rescued and now her life will be in captivity. She is blind but I was talking to her and she seemed to listen to me. I think we had a connection. Ya right, Julie.

It has been a long time since I have written on the blog. I think I get lazy and let Ken do it as we all know what a great writer he is. Like most men not so good at expressing or saying how they feel but good at putting it down on paper.

It's already October and so much has happened. I think as you get older time just flies by so fast 'cause it sure seemed to stick around a lot longer when I was younger. In January we were traveling in India, east and west coast. It was such a great adventure and we saw things that I'm sure we will never see again. We just printed out about 25 of those pictures as I have been invited to a scrapbook party with the ladies from the Coast Guard. My friend Carol gave me a traveling scrapbook for Christmas last year and I'm finally going to use it. I think it will be a nice way to put down the great trip with some extra artwork added. Those two weeks in India was one of the best and most exciting times in my life. I will never forget it and would go back in a second. We did learn that I was the more calm traveler in the family. Ken is more detailed oriented and has to check everything over at each transfer. I on the other hand just want to go and get to the next place. We had a great time together, and learned that we are a great team and work well together. I am so blessed to have such a wonderful man as my partner. A blog about our India trip with pictures would be a great job for Ken, I'll let him know.

It has only been 4 months that we moved to Juneau. And again it seems like so much longer. We have already done so much here and finally getting settled in our ways. We really like our house, it is very comfortable and homey. We bought a fire pit about 3 weeks ago and that has been a great addition. We have already made several smores. I could sit in front of a fire for hours and just stare at it. To me, it is so relaxing and calming.

Its only 1 -1/2 months until our wedding day. And guess what we are done with all the planning and organizing of the event. When Ken asked me if we could plan a wedding in 4 months, I said I'm sure but it's going to be lots of work. Honestly, it hasn't been that hard at all. I'm a girl that likes nice things but I don't need several choices to decide what I want. I see something, I like it, I don't need to keep looking. We have had a great support team with Jess, my parents and Ken's parents and friends. Which without all of them it would have never happened. It has all come together... long distance, emails, pictures and phone calls have made it very easy. I will probably start crying when we get to Portland and I actually see everything in person for the first time. Everything is already so beautiful and blending so well, I'm sure its going to be amazing. It is so awesome to have people that really love us and want this marriage to happen just as much as we do.

The first job I received here in Juneau at the Native clinic just didn't work out. I was way over qualified and tremendously bored with the job. I couldn't stand to go to work and every morning I complained. I'm sure Ken was saying to himself, "what the hell did I do". But of course it all worked out. It only took me a week to find another job after I decided to move on. Now I work for a construction company as a Project Administrator. It's more my type of work and I really enjoy the people I work with. I am not the type of person to stay home even if we had the money. My ideal job would be taking care of animals, like an animal refuge. Maybe sometime in the future when money isn't so tight.

Well I think I've bored you all enough. I promise I won't write for at least a couple more months.

Boy, I miss my Jessica!!!!!!!

Julie

The Guardian Goes To Dutch...

Well, my hair is as short as Kevin Costner's anyway...

I am packing to head west to Dutch Harbor for the week. Unlike the movie's Senior Chief Ben Randall, I am not a rescue swimmer, but at least in my mind, I am a helluva Coast Guard Marine Inspector.

It brings to mind the classic argument within the Coast Guard: is it better to be the guard-rail at the top of the cliff, or the ambulance at the bottom?

Unfortunately, the ambulance-guy gets to jump out of helicopters, roll surfboats over, get all the cool medals, get on the cover of Time Magazine after the massive Katrina response...

And the Prevention troops get to travel out to distant, out-of-mind ports with a clipboard, the Code of Federal Regulations, and a cellphone. Instead of drysuits (although I do have one), we wield the authority of the Captain of the Port. Instead of defying death in the frigid waves, we tempt back injuries climbing to the top of the pilothouse to check liferaft installations.

The Rescue Swimmers' motto is "So others may live." The Surfboat community says, "You have to go out, but you don't have to come back." The Inspector lives by the concept that "You have to go to lunch, but you don't have to come back."

Try as we might, inspecting vessels (especially fishing boats) just isn't sexy. Steven Spielberg will never tell our tales. Rather, we work ignominiously, behind the scenes, dull, cold, dirty, un-sexy. Pissing people off, getting in the way of commerce, welding boats to the dock, but mostly:

Gaining compliance with minimum standards, taking the "search" out of Search-and-Rescue, so that the rotor-heads will fly back with survivors.

It's good to be a guard-rail.

On a final note: No, the cat is not going to Dutch Harbor. Yes, I forgot to pack retro-reflective tape. Ohhh, I might get hurt...

And, I am pretty sure there will be no cell coverage, BooBoo...