Life on the Outer Coast

Katlian River

July 13th
Just back from the Glacier bay trip I had the opportunity to go on a Ground Truthing trip to Katlian Bay with Scott Harris, Richard Carstensen, Bob Christiansen, and Rebecca Hartwell.
Thanks to be able to jog my memory with RC’s excellent journal, I can include most of what I saw/experienced on that trip. I had a rite in the Rain notebook with me and actually took notes, but can’t seem to find the notebook at this point.
Definitely remember leaving at 7am from Crescent Harbor, I didn’t get enough sleep so I was a bit blurrier than normal. We took Scott’s boat, Pinguina. We traveled out Middle channel, around the airport and back through Western channel and north to Katlian bay. I’m not really sure that it is a faster way to travel than going through the channel, but it is a bit less tedious. We landed the boat not too far past the end of the estuary vegetation zone on the north shore. After a complex stern anchoring tutorial, we started down the relatively open former logging road on the north side of the bay.
The lower portion of Katlian Bay is owned by Shee Atika. According to an environmental assessment document that I found on the web (http://www.sitkatribe.org/environment/pdf/katlian_assessment_summary.pdf) Shee ATika selected 2557 acres in the lower Katlian valley in 1971. The land was logged in the early 1960s, 120 million board feet of timber was c cut from 3,270 acres. There was 17 miles of road constructed in the watershed.
Found a bit of information about Katlian Bay in “Haa Aani, Our Land” I’ve paraphrased some;

“There were smokehouses at Katlian Bay, there were humpies (from the Coxe river), dog salmon, mountain blueberries, salmonberries and wild currants. Tseit was also gathered from the bay. The Coho run was said to be quite valuable locally because the run lasts as long as Christmas.”
The Dairy was mentioned in the book, but I haven’t found too much more information about it.
There was also mention that people gathered here after the 1804 battle of Sitka before the trek to Fish Bay. http://www.alaskool.org/projects/history/Hope/1804March_12.htm


One of the tasks of the ground truthing team was to yes, to groundtruth the mapping, the second was to assess the idea of logging the second growth alder for biofuel.

Walked up the relatively open road up the Red alder dominated second growth. Lots of Veratrum viride and Heracleum maximum in the understory, definitely seemed like an unusual mix.
We wandered out to a small patch of blowdown of medium sized timber, not entirely sure why this patch survived the logging, too small to bother with?. Found an interesting Saxifrage on an upturned stump, had to put my glasses on to tell what it was. The way it was growing made it look a bit more like a spider web than an inflorescence. Was introduced to Bob’s fisheye lens while looking at the flower or how far away one can be from an object and still be in a close up photo (about 3ft).
We counted about 100 rings in one large stump (measured it by lying across the top, it was about my size, 5’3”. Found a goodly mixture of nettles in with the cow parsnip on the way back to the bridge.

Walking up the river, we heard voices in the distance. Looked out and saw Rich Billings leading some clients down the river. Nice to see an old friend, it was kind of amusing since I had just mentioned him to Richard as a source of information about changes in the watershed. Rich worked as a soil scientist on the Tongass from the late 1960s until the about 1980 and I thought he might have some useful observations.
We donned chest waders and crossed the river. I had Jojo’s incredibly fashionable, but slightly leaky chest waders. My attempts at repair weren’t successful and I had one wet foot.
The river was rather fast moving and a bit deep on me and of course being an incredible wimp, I took up Scott’s offer of help. I held onto his waist and Rebecca had mine and the three of us crossed the river in a strange side walking way. It probably wasn’t necessary, but I wasn’t too sure of myself and the chest waders. Fortunately, I have no pride whatsoever.
In places across the river, the Veratrum and Cow parsnip were largely replaced by large patches of Circaea alpine and Athryrium filix femina. Gathered some soil/mud from a cut bank in a small stream. It was rather fine sediment, not enough clay to roll out a good log. Bob and I wondered if the relative amount of fine sediment to gravel could explain the change in understory the somewhat diminished size of red alder.
Found the first of several large Cottonwoods right after crossing a rather deep pool of water on a precarious log. I discovered the down side of one log crossing technique. Some day I’ll suck it up and just walk across the darn things.
We had lunch on a gravel bar. I had kind of hoped that the gravel bars would be a source of interesting alpine plants, but they didn’t prove up. Lots of Monkey flower, yarrow and alder, some Oxyria. I did find one small plant that I brought home alive in my sandwich box. I still am not entirely happy with its identification. Okay, I haven’t identified it to species at this point. I think that it is a small ovate leaved Polygonum. The tiny flowers are in axillary clusters. There are 5 white and green tepals and 5 or so stamens, the ovary is superior. None of the species treated in Hitchcock and Cronquist, Anderson or Hall’s Floras really are a good fit. I tried a few different genera in case I was really off, but am still at a loss. Good thing it is alive.

Found several additional cottonwoods after we crossed the river back to the north side. They were part of an older riparian stand of mixed alder, cottonwood, spruce and hemlock. Interesting that this stand was thought to be a blowdown stand from aerial photo interpretation. It would be interesting to core the trees to find out how old this stand might be. The epiphytes on the cottonwood looked similar to what I’ve seen on cedar and larger alder. I did see Isothecium cardotii on several of the trees. The largest of the group had a dbh of 35 inches, others were 28, and 33 inches in diameter. Several of the trees had several bright red shoots coming out of the bark. Not sure if the trees produce shoots from the trunk in response to certain light conditions?

I found a row of Honey mushrooms on an alder log. Don’t remember seeing this species so early in the summer before.
Richard and I walked back to the boat via the road and through the estuary meadow while Scott, Bob and Rebecca traveled down the river.
We saw abundant deer tracks in the forest just before it opened out to the meadow. We did see one doe earlier in the day; she let us get pretty close. Bob and Richard were suspicious that she was so tame because she was trying to distract us from a fawn.

I hope to return and explore a bit further up the river and spend a bit more time in the cottonwoods.