My Sidekick - Trahern Wallace Jones

The Christian Waffle Shop, Auke Bay

Midweek Hiking Trips - Trying to do Everything

On Thursday night I reserved a US State and Parks Cabin looking out upon Eagle Glacier. The federal cabins are a luxury for a camper - dry, equipped with propane heaters and wood stoves, gorgeous locations, entirely your own. For $35 a night they make cold-weather and wet-weather overnight hikes a delight.



A wet and beautiful 5.5 mile hike through old growth forest and beaver-dammed ponds brought us to the cabin. The view looked out upon Eagle Glacier itself, a waterfall suspended in time, slowly leaking into the large lake stretching before it.



We left our gear at the cabin (setting the thermostat on the propane heater at 70 degrees farenheight) and attempted the climb to the blue ice. After 2 large river crossings, and hours of sliding around on our arses in the rain on slick, steep rockface like primordial sludge, we admitted defeat - we would not be touching ancient ice today. We retreated back to the cabin for a hot dinner.



Impeccable planning and a 4:30am start brought us to the borrowed car by 7:30am with ample time to drive to Auke Bay, visit the Christian Waffle shop for a spelt waffle, maple syrup, God's word and a coffee - and still be on time for work at the Kayak shop at 9am. A quick high-five to congratulate ourselves on the success of our journey in the cabin of the car was soon regretted as I turned the car-key and the truck made absolutely no response. Flat battery.



We started walking. 27 miles out the road, there is not much traffic, but we kept our thumbs out all the same.


Fortune was on our side that morning and we scored a lift in a plush SUV. With just enough time to scoff down some breakfast as planned before 9am.

After Work

I've been Kayaking


And swimming.

Alaska Boat and Kayak

Auke Bay, 17 miles, Juneau




I entered a new niche of Juneau culture today: boats and kayaks. Over a five hour shift I saw a few kayaks come in, a few tinnies, washed some out, sent a few merry paddlers on their way, and chatted to folks about their adventures and the trips they want to do. What fun. What a pleasant way to spend an afternoon at $12/hour.

By knock-off I had made a new friend from Oregon who stayed around until I shut up the shop and we wandered over to the seedy yaughties pub above the Christian waffle shop. One beer and three hours later I was shocked to find it nine pm, with the perpetual Alaskan dusk apon us, it could have been five pm on a Melbourne winters day. The Oregonean had given me some travel ideas, some job concepts in Washington state and Oregon, and I had imparted a list of the best things in Australia to see on a wonderfully etched map of the country that was no more than two centimeters by three centimeters tall. Americans are fascinated with Australia and throw all sorts of questions at me that I had never asked of my country whilst living there. Tonight I was again struck by the phenomenon in the US of exodus from cities to have the ultimate sea-change and find lusher towns with clean air and water. I don't think this is happening in Australia. I think our cities are still too livable. Perhaps it is a function of population, Melbourne or Sydney are not yet suffocating the inhabitants. Are they? Here they talk of 'Californication' - Californians leaving their state for greener pastures, only to turn them into the place from which they ran. I don't see it at home, but I wasn't looking for it now, was I.

This week there is no working amongst the hazardous waste, so I am taking some hours at the kayak shop for Kerry and Mike, who's house I am staying in and who's dog I look after when they go to fish their yearly quota of Halibut, or attend a wedding in Boulder, Colarado. Tonight the journey is making sense and i've once again caught that ribbon of traveller's flow - catching the currents and they present themselves.

The Curse of the Cruise Ships

Taking Shelter

Shelter Island, 2 hours kayak from Juneau, Alaska




Here above the muskeg a sweet breeze blow hints of the spring – Labrador in bloom. I have never smelt a sweeter breeze, there’s something to it. I’m sitting on the future porch of the cabin-in-construction. To my left is the small ‘chapel’, soon to be the sauna. The amber shingles of its carefully insulated roof glow in the morning sunshine.

I hear a whale breathing. I cannot see the water that is above 500 metres away, across this muskeg front yard, over the thick spruce forest, and down to the rocky beach. Beyond this waterbody - the Lynn Canal, and mountains – the Chilkat Range, their snowy reaches bathing in sunshine on this still day. Follow the mountains north and you will come to Haines, and meet Jeff, Robin, and Eli, for a cup of tea and a gossip about who did what this week past.

Here we are at Rick’s with a familiar WWOOFing feeling: travellers, not much money, plenty fit, with appetite, and learning alternatives. Trahern is here. I work with Trahern. He is twenty years old, a self-confessed nerd, tall as hell, skinny, coke-bottle glasses, a mental sponge and a chemistry enthusiast. I like him a lot.



Rick’s Rick: playful, risk-taking, playing the game his own way and bollocks to the rest of it. He’s built a maze of structures here, on muskeg and forested slope – watching where trees fall and milling the bounty, building on-site, or making steep trunk-staircases up to the next level. Walking around here requires fitness and dexterity. There is no wheelchair access. Thin, bouncing boardwalk suspends above deep bog, a narrow log will bring you to the other side of the otherwise impassable slope – if you have the balance. This place is gorgeous and speaks of Rick himself, may he never have to get around with a cast on his leg!

There is Mark, an environmental studies major from North Carolina, and Debbie, an organics researcher from Colarado, and Andy, who is Rick’s surly computer scientist little cousin.

And the hindrances? Mosquitos. In full force: swarms, mists of mosquitos. Graciously, they itch only a little. And the flight path, that is a nuisance I’d do without: Juneau air traffic.

Haines Beer Festival

Haines, Alaska

Whale Breath

Cohen Drive (21 Miles), Juneau, Alaska



It feels as though spring has finally come. After weeks of rain and grumbling locals, the sun is out in Juneau and the moist new leaves are stretching out under the surprising warmth.

Last night I spent my final evening at a house-sit 21 miles 'out the road'. I paused from cleaning to enjoy the late twilight, walking out onto the balcony overlooking steep forest down to the water. Silver light of the Alaskan summer night spread out on the calm waters below. At eleven o'clock there was still enough light to warrant a stroll down the two hundred and seventeen steep steps to the rocky beach below. I couldn't resist letting my feet, that were bare for the first time in Alaska, take me there.

Padding gently down the stairs I noted the stillness of the night, and listened for the presence of other night wanderers - squirrel? Owl? Black Bear?

"Whhhooosh" The sound, like a gust of wind, hit me. Whales, I thought. Fantastic. Carefully descending, I scanned through the tall Spruce for the tell-tale spray shooting up from the ocean horizon. There. A spray, that smeared vision of the dark glossy water behind, hung suspended - a memory of the whale's breath that breathed it a moment earlier. Then a dark curve was born from the horizontal plane, an inch ahead of the previous spray. A smooth black eclipse, finger-digit long to my eyes, but in reality a mammoth beast of warm blubbery flesh. Whale. This time I witnessed the exhalation, a violent white shout, and a second later, wwwhhooooshh, the sound-wave hit, having finally crossed the distance, the whale already sliding back into her immense underwater world.

I let out my own exhalation. I breathed deep. I looked around, and above, at my feet and to the far-off Chillkat mountain range. I put my effort into this feeling and this moment, in absorbing its clarity into my every atom. I breathed in and out. Sitting, I watched the whale travel and wondered what I knew of her. I didn't know her sex, there was a good possibility she was coming from Hawaiian water because scientists told up she had, and was on her annual trip to Skagway, to mate and return south once more. This on, where had she been? Maybe she had stayed in Alaskan waters. Maybe researchers had misjudged the signs. Nothing is certain in approximate science.

In the grace of her forward motion, the thrill of how enormous both she and her journey was, and the intimacy of her breath touching me, I was moved by these things that happen whether we observe them or not, this precious beauty.

Zipline at Eaglecrest

Dad zips through the trees, 30 feet up. What fun.


Something about the zipping got us real high.

Where they pack the brown bears closer than anywhere

Funter Bay, Admiralty Island


Bear turd?


Did you know that barnicles have the longest phalis of any living creature relative to it's body size?


Needle fish off the dock


We watched the red tide of crill swirling in whirlpools from the mass of herring bodies, swiftly chasing the direction of the next herring in circles and arcs, first this way along the dock, then in the other direction. The effect of these thousands of individuals moving in sync was as a blue heeler at cattle - rounding up the crill for their final supper before their spawn. In this mad frenzy of eating, herring jigging was successful.


Kate, Damon, and Dad enjoying some pre-dinner drinks and herring jigging. To the left of the dock the disturbance on the surface of the water is the swirling crill.

King Salmon

Mike and Kerry's, Indian Cove



Although no one else was catching fish, Dad managed once again to prove his prowess as a fisherman by catching one of the few spring King Salmons. He admitted, 'It was a fluke'.

Dad in Juneau

Breadline Bluff, Juneau

My first day at work

Gold Creek, Juneau

My first day at work for the small environmental consultants commenced at 8am. We got grabbed the sampling equipment and got in Jason's giant SUV (ute) with the representative from the government department of the environment. Before heading to the sampling site we drove a few blocks to a carpark downtown that provided a good view of the mountains above Gold Creek. 'See that crack there?' Said Jason, gesturing to the fine hairline fissure in the thick embankment of snow on the crown of the mountain range. ''Bound to be an avalanche soon'.

Below the fissure there was a heavy whack of snow, perched at the ready for gravity's steady pull to lead her down the cliff-slope and into the cravasse. We were hoping to be standing in this cravasse in a few minutes, extracting 500ml of water from Gold Creek to test for mercury content, in this, the town water supply that spewed forth from the old mine shaft.

My companions decided that the day was cold, as it had been for the last few, and therefore snow-melt was significantly retarded. It was safe to enter the avalanche zone.



On-site, an earlier avalanche was frozen in motion at the creek bed. Jason donned safety clothing to protect the sample from contamination from his mercury tooth-fillings, and we were home and hosed.

Gustavis - Getting away from the Rat Race

Gustavis, Alaksa

Between the 13th and 16th of May I went to Gustavis to visit Jeff. In summer he escapes from the tourist gridlock of Juneau to his cabin in the woods. Gustavis is unusual in that you are in the midst of Alaska, and it is absolutely flat.


On the first night we visited some friends for dinner. This involved driving to the end of a road, parking, and walking for about a mile through the forest and muskeg, spotting bear and moose prints along the way. Gustavis, unlike Juneau, has moose because it adjoins the mainland connecting Glacier Bay and Haines, and the rest of Alaska. Moose are big, curious looking creatures with soft noses that cause more fatalities than bears each year. They get pissed off if you mess with them, or suprise them, or go near their little 'uns. I have much respect for their long legs and heavy hooves.

At the cabin, little Oola was learning to plant peas with charming confidence and delight in the giant playground where she lived. Pink skirt and big rubber boots, she was a stunner. After dinner there was music making and good old fashioned merriment. The walk home throught the dusk of midnight was accompanied by the ka ka kaa of snipes - little loud birds that whizzed all around us as we navigated the boardwalk through the mud. It was magical, and only slightly distracted me from the great fear of roaming bears in the dark.



At Jeff's there was gardening to do and big trees to climb. The simple life was had at Gustavis.