Kalinin Bay & Sea Lion Cove - The Hike

Tonight we're anchored in Appleton Cove

This post is about a hike we took a couple of days ago. It begins at the head of Kalinin Bay, up and over a low mountain to the west side of Kruzof Island. The destination is a wild and beautiful beach that faces the Gulf of Alaska. The trail is steep in places, muddy in places but so beautiful.

We anchored overnight in Kalinin Bay. In the morning we dinghied to shore and followed a trail around the edge of this estuary to the trailhead. There were thousands of salmon in the estuary waiting to go upriver and, of course, lots of bear sign too.

At the trailhead.
Why do people think that signs need to have gunshot holes in them?

Going up!

Foraging. There were berries everywhere!
A bumper crop made the hike take quite a bit longer than it should have.

There were boardwalks across much of the muskeg and steps in the steep areas.

There was bear poop everywhere! The bears obviously like using the trails too.

More foraging.

Bear track across a swamp.

This bee is busy pollinating.

Not sure what this is called but it's cool!

The beach at Sea Lion Cove is beautiful. However we were not able to locate even one sea lion.

River otter tracks.

Bears love the beach too.

Feelin' it.

Scrubby conifers are trying to establish on an old dune. Conditions must be extreme here in the winter with full exposure to the Gulf of Alaska.

Wild strawberry.

The vegetation looks a bit like an illustration from a Dr Seuss book.

Hmm, this is awkward.
We always tie the dinghy to a rock if we're going to leave it for any length of time. In this instance that habit paid off because otherwise Tuglet would have wandered off. We would have had a loong coold (impossible) swim to Invictus, which you can see is the little white dot, centered in the distance.

Luckily, there were no other boats around to observe the retrieval.

All's well that ends well.