Clarence Strait is known by some as "The Great Equalizer."
On paper it looks like an easy crossing, but to those of us who have been boating in this area for some years, we know it can be brutal, even life threatening at times. The marine forecast for Clarence Strait was excellent for the next few days, so this was my chance to make it across.
Here is a map snippet from my Garmin InReach that shows the route from Bar Harbor, across Clarence Strait, and into Kasaan Bay, into Kina Cove, and eventually into Karta Bay.
It's about 34 miles total to Karta Bay, but I did not go directly there. That little deviation near the end of the route is me pulling into Kina Cove to spend the night. Because of commitments in town, I could not leave Bar Harbor until about 2:30 PM. I ran pretty slowly to conserve fuel, so I did not get into Kina Cove until about 7:30 PM, too late to go over to Karta Bay that night.
After getting securely anchored and set up for the night I noticed an unusual glow in the sky behind the hills.
In the morning I was up very early and pulled anchor and ran the 5 miles over to Karta Bay.
There's a mooring buoy in Karta Bay, but it is a very long way from the cabin. The bay really empties out at low tide, so you have to plan your arrivals and departures around the tide. You need at least half tide in order to launch a dingy or a raft.
Here's a shot from the beach in front of the cabin which shows just how far it is from the cabin to the mooring buoy. You can barely see the boat way off in the distance.
This place holds a special place in my heart. I started coming here decades ago. We would come in the spring, late March, for Steelhead fishing. I came with my buddies for years and then when my son Steven got old enough to make the trip, he and I would come together. Steven passed away in October 2017, and I miss him terribly.
This is Steven and me in March 2009. Lots of snow on the trail that year.
When I first started coming here the USFS cabin was a pretty basic affair, like almost all the cabins in SE Alaska. But somewhere along the way the USFS decided to rebuild the cabin with a handicap access. Not sure if it is true, but I also heard that because it is in special wilderness area, that only hand tools could be used in the construction of the new cabin.
Here are some shots of the interior of the cabin. There is a ramp up to the door, but the access to it is so overgrown with brush that it is essentially unusable. I am all for handicap access, but I just wonder how someone in a wheelchair would be able to make it up that rocky beach to even get to the cabin.
This is the wood stove and the cooking area. When I was coming here, they had an oil stove and we had to bring our own stove oil. For a time, the USFS did not like to have wood stoves in the cabins because people tended to chop up various parts of the cabin to feed the stove.
Every USFS cabin has a logbook. It is interesting to read what others write about their stay here at the cabin. When I first came to Ketchikan in 1978 it cost $5 a night to rent these cabins. I have heard that now it is up to $80 a night, but I have not confirmed that.
Here are the bunks. In a "typical," i.e. not handicap accessible cabin, there would be a double bunk on each side. In this cabin there is an extra wide bunk on one side, and a double bunk on the other side. I guess the extra wide single bunk makes it easier for a wheelchair bound person to get in and out of the bunk.
When you come to stay in these cabins you must bring air mattresses as well as sleeping bags. On my first trip to a USFS cabin back in 1978 I didn't know that. Sleeping on these hard bunks without an air mattress is difficult to say the least.
There is a table between the bunks, and you have to sit on the edges of the bunks to sit at the table. However, the spacing is off. I guess they left extra room between the table and the bunks to make room for wheelchair access, but you can't easily sit at the table and eat because it's too far away.
As with all of these remote USFS cabins there is an outhouse strategically placed up in the woods near the cabin. It's a bit of a walk, especially if it's dark and cold out when you have to make the trek.
No need for privacy in these remote places. The outhouse is up in the woods quite a way from the cabin, so there wouldn't be a lot of prying eyes anyway.
Someone added a hammock in the years since I've been here. It looks to be home made from a fishing net. I didn't try it out though.
There is a trail that mostly follows the river for quite a way. There is a small waterfall about a mile and half up the river. And then at about 2 miles up the trail I think, there is another cabin. We came in one year in March to find a group of guys already in the cabin. They were not from Alaska and had mistakenly booked the lake cabin, 2 miles up the trail, not the saltwater cabin. We had the permit for the saltwater cabin, so we had to boot them out. They had to hike up to the other cabin, but their gear was not designed for a lengthy hike through the woods, so it was difficult for them.
When I used to come here to fish it was early spring and all the brush had not grown up. The trail was a relatively easy walk, but there was a lot of Devils Club and berry bushes and other brush covering a large part of the trail.
I love this river. When I was young, we would wear hip boots and wade out over the slippery rocks in rushing water in search of the wily and elusive Steelhead.
Blue berries (or perhaps Huckleberries) were plentiful along the trail.
I did fish at a few of the more easily accessible spots along the river. I got several hits that looked to me like small trout, but did not get any to shore.
I made my way back to the cabin to enjoy the lunch I had brought with me. I had to hang out for a couple of hours waiting for the tide to come up far enough so that I could launch my raft. I have hard plastic wheels mounted on the stern of my raft that make it easier to drag the raft up and down these beaches. But it is still difficult, so I just waited for the tide to come up. I did some fishing down near the spot where the river flows out into the saltwater. I got a couple of cutthroat trout about 12" long and some Dolly Varden about 6" long.
I left Karta Bay at about 3:30 PM. It was a rough ride back to Kina Cove, made more stressful since I had decided to tow the raft. It takes me about 45 minutes to either deploy or stow the raft, and I wanted to use it to set crab pots when I got back to Kina Cove, so I made the decision to tow it.
When I got back to Kina Cove I prepped and baited and set my 2 crab pots.
In the evening I saw this bear on the beach. He was pretty far away, and I cranked my telephoto lens all the way up to try to get a decent shot of him.
On Sunday morning I was up early and ran out in the raft to pull the crab pots, one at a time. I had difficulty pulling the first pot and I thought that perhaps it had gotten snarled in an old cable or maybe had a rock on top of it. Turns out it was heavy because it had 11 large legal male crabs in it! I usually don't do this well at crabbing, so this was quite a surprise.
I ran over and pulled the second pot, and it had 3 large legal males in it.
I dumped them all in my cooler to keep them alive until time for cooking. I have read that crabs develop toxins if you butcher them and then wait several hours before cooking them. I wish that I had thought to take a video of when I dumped them one at a time into the cooler. Dungeness crabs are very aggressive, and whenever I dumped a crab into the cooler, the other crabs got very aggressive and there was a lot of fighting and waving of claws going on. But, as you can see, once that initial fighting was over, they settled in, one of top of the other, and sat very calmly awaiting their fate.
My crab cooker died earlier in the spring, and I have not been able to replace it yet. For that reason, I have had to use my Coleman stove to cook my crabs. It works but it does not put out the same BTU's that a real crab cooker would. So, it is a very slow process to cook a lot of crabs. The pot that I use can only hold 3 large crabs and perhaps 4 regular sized crabs. I decided to cook only 7 of these crabs and release the other 7. I cooked 3 in one batch and 4 in the second batch. The whole process took a few hours.
While I was wrapping up cooking the crabs a 37' Nordic Tug from Anacortes WA pulled into the cove and anchored behind me. If they had come in about 15 minutes sooner, I would have offered them the crabs that I threw back.
I secured the raft and all the gear and got ready to head in. I pulled the anchor about 10 AM and left the cove shortly thereafter.
I made it back to the slip at about 3 PM.
It was a great trip and I logged about 79 miles.
The boat is pretty dirty. If you use the boat, it gets dirty. Time to do some cleaning before my daughter and grandson come in July 6th.
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