Once again, the Blog has been neglected – we get busy, and there hasn’t been as much to photograph for a while. I’ve started receiving emails from friends asking for “proof of life” since the Blog appeared to be dormant. Rest assured, we are well… just a little overwhelmed by a long stretch of difficult weather.

First, it started snowing just after Thanksgiving, and it didn’t stop until about mid-January. The snow piles got pretty big… and we were pretty exhausted.

We had single digit temperatures for weeks – which is very unusual for here. The snow was so deep and so light and fluffy that my attempts to snow shoe were a little scary – it wouldn’t have mattered how big the shoes were. I stuck to some packed areas where snowmobiles had been running. Still, the view of the Coastal Mountains and Frederick Sound are worth it, and nothing makes me happier than being outside.

The super cold temperatures gave us some pretty frost formations – everywhere I turned there was something different.

For about six weeks, we moved snow around every single day – which left little time to get out and photograph. When the snow finally stopped, it warmed up to almost 40 degrees F and started to rain, creating a thick layer of ice underneath everything. After a few weeks of that, the snow piles are shrinking, a few optimistic plants think that Spring may be in the offing, and we can finally venture out on foot without fear of slipping on the ice. Winter isn’t over yet, but we’re long overdue for a break from the worst of it and it’s good to be outside without a shovel in hand.

People wonder why we want to live here, and this Winter has certainly been less fun than usual, but it is so breathtakingly beautiful… we can’t resist!

Enjoy this little one-minute drone video showing a little of Winter’s beauty from the water.

Will it ever stop raining this summer?? The good news is that our mountain lakes are overflowing and that means hydro power for our town will be in good shape for a while, after a couple of years of drought. Yes, we live in a rainforest, but if it doesn’t get the usual over-100″ of rain every year, it’s still called a drought.

We stopped back in town for a few days to re-provision then headed back out to the beautiful wild places. Portage Bay on Kupreanof Island is a good place to anchor for the night when heading out of Petersburg, and we ended up spending two nights there because of a nasty weather front passing through. Before the front arrived, conditions were perfect to put the drone in the air to shoot video of the bay and a few photos of two DeFever 49s – ours and another one owned by friends.

The dock is adjacent to an abandoned log dump, from a time when Portage Bay was an active logging site. Now it’s home to a handful of old beater cars and trucks, brought over by landing craft and left there so their owners can use the old logging roads to explore or to hunt.

We saw 41 knots peak wind as the storm came through, as well as some very rare thunder and lightning! We were used to seeing lightning on the east coast (and always hoped that something taller would anchor nearby), but lightning… here? Really??

The storm front didn’t clear the weather as we had hoped; instead the skies resumed their gray overcast, and rain and mist were our companions again. Regardless, the mist rising from the forested mountains can be beautiful, and it didn’t stop us from enjoying quiet places…

…and looking for bears. Found a brown one! The bear was around for a while scavenging in the tide line, but the real entertainment came from a mink. We spotted it from the boat, and he only paused his hunting for a moment when I came to visit in the kayak.

The early morning mist reflected in the calm water was so beautiful… It’s good that we can appreciate the many moods the weather and the landscape combine to show us. Brooding and misty (and rainy) is the norm this summer.

On our way to the next anchorage we spotted some humpbacks feeding closer to shore. We turned towards them and stopped the boat a conservative distance away. Drifting with the engines out of gear, we stood on the bow and watched a large group diving in all directions…

Whales to the left of us… whales to the right of us… a mother and calf diving in unison…

…and the whales kept moving closer to us, some swimming towards the boat…

…until we were surrounded! It was amazing – we didn’t know where to point the cameras.

It began to rain quite hard, and we waited until the whales passed by us before we put the engines back in gear and continued on our way, exhilarated.

We headed back to a favorite spot – Takatz Bay on the east side of Baranof Island, where we waited for some more weather to pass. We enjoyed the waterfalls…

…picking ripe salmonberries and blueberries…

…and of course, looking for bears.

This bear was unusual because it was a black bear, and they are not at all common on Baranof Island. I’ve never seen one here before – only brown bears. This one was making snorting noises at us, so we kept our distance and let it eat in peace. We may be having a cold, wet summer, but we’re still seeing a lot of wildlife and sublime landscapes.

Brown bear cubs are born in the late winter, and we refer to these new little ones as “first year cubs.” There is no mistaking first year from second year cubs – the firsties are skinny little fluff balls, and the second year cubs are much bigger and more rolly-poly.

I found this brown bear sow and her two cubs on Chichagof Island in Pavlov Harbor. They came out to eat grass by the beach several times a day on one side of the peninsula or the other. If I didn’t see them for a while, I would paddle around the corner and wait – which was usually worthwhile.

The sow was a pretty bear, and one of the two cubs was particularly curious – climbing on small tree limbs and trying to eat flowers.

One of the little bears was very curious about me, even though the sow didn’t seem to mind.

I’m sure you’ve figured out by now that I adore bears. I can’t get enough of them, especially brown bears, and my idea of a perfect day involves hanging out with them.

Pavlov Harbor is a nice anchorage with a good salmon stream, small waterfall and a lake up in the woods. I flew the drone one morning to show you what it looks like, and I got lucky towards the end when an eagle soared below my little bird for a bit.

The area just below the waterfall is a favorite of the bears when the salmon start running – in very late July and early August for this stream. The incoming tide brings the fish up, and as the tide goes out the fish are trapped in shallow pools among the rocks – easy pickings for the bears. We’ve seen as many as 9 bears at a time fishing here in late summer.

We made a very short stop in Juneau to hit Costco and fill the freezers, glad to see so many people wearing masks in the capital city. The weather continued to be pretty rainy, which made for rather unhappy eagles who just want to dry out.

Heading south down Stephens Passage we encountered a lot of glacier ice from Tracy Arm – a sure sign that the glaciers are calving a great deal, and that getting up the fjord to see them is not very likely right now.

Whales were abundant in Stephens Passage as we got closer to Five Fingers Lighthouse and the intersection with Frederick Sound. We stopped counting at 40 one day, but it seemed like the only ones breaching were far away.

It’s always a special treat to see Dall’s Porpoise riding our bow wave. If we’re lucky we’ll see them once or maybe twice a summer, but one afternoon we had pods riding our bow wave twice! They’re incredibly hard to photograph – they are very fast swimmers, able to hit 34 mph over short distances – but I realized that my camera shoots video too.

We just never know what we’ll see around here. And if we stay up late enough we’ll even get to see the sky just after sunset.

The Summer Solstice has now passed so the days are starting to get shorter. Today we’ll have almost 18 hours of daylight, but it will shrink to about six and a half hours by late December and we’re all very aware of losing those precious minutes every day.

Speaking of seasons, we haven’t had much summery weather up here so far. It has been chilly and rainy, with highs in the mid 50s and lows in the high 40s. But sometimes the rain brings a rainbow…

The flowers don’t seem to mind the weather – the lupine has been blooming…

…and the plants that thrive in the acidic muskeg (Alaskan bog).

Deer stroll along the rocky shoreline when the tide is out…

…and the salmonberries are just starting to form fruit. I suspect the berries will be late this year because of all the cold, wet weather.

From Red Bluff Bay we cruised to Warm Springs Bay – a place we’ve often visited, with a dock and tiny boardwalk community. The roaring waterfall is deafening, especially after weeks of rain and plenty of snow up on the mountains.

Warm Springs Bay is also where there’s a natural hot spring next to the top of the falls – you can hike up there to soak in the rocky pools, or there’s a little bath house plumbed to the hot springs if you prefer to soak in a tub. Understandably, the tubs were closed due to the virus.

The phase of the moon meant that we had some very big tides, which is a great opportunity to take the kayak into the salt pond across the way. It’s not accessible at low tide, and with these big tides it was like running rapids as the incoming tide was rushing through the narrow entrance. Inside it was a world away – peaceful and pretty.

From Warm Springs it’s only five nautical miles up to Takatz Bay – another beautiful place with a number of waterfalls. Here’s a drone’s-eye view of it.

Words can’t describe it.

It’s hard to leave, but there are more places to explore…