August 4: Inian Islands to Column Point S.

Another mid-morning start after a restful night.  Made the quick hop from the Inian Islands to Elfin Cove, and paddled through the community, but had no reason to stop--still too early in the leg to want to resupply on snacks or buy soda or ice cream.  Pretty little place, and generally well kept, though the protected location makes it easy to forget how stunning the surrounding waters are.

After a quick snack, headed out of the cove and across Port Althorp, then worked our way Southwest, down the shore of Chichagoff Island, towards column point.  Lots of seiners noisily working this area, though always interesting to see them mid-harvest.  This area has beautiful rocky bluffs and gravel beaches, and Three Hill Island as well as the Chichagoff stretch between Port Althorp and Lisianski Inlet looked ripe for camping, though we did not stop to investigate.

Beautiful evening, looking towards Yakobi Island and Column Point.  Note the seine boats in the Inlet.

Column point, marking the Eastern entrance to Lisianski Strait, does indeed feature a number of hoodoo like columns and other interesting rock formations.  We paddled through low swell here (maybe four feet) and turned the corner, through a gaggle of seiners, down the inlet.  Camp was above a beach in a bight about .65 nautical miles to the SE of the point.

We ended the day quite early.  Weather was beautiful for paddling, but we had two days to reach Pelican and were only about 12 nmi away.  This left us several hours to lounge on the beach, cook, etc.  Since we had so much time, we were a little lazy setting up camp, pulling out on the NW end of the beach, then deciding to move our things to a different location, nearer a creek mouth to the SE, about a half hour later.

As we were discussing tent locations (which were abundant, above the beach in some tall grass as well as under the trees), we turned around to see a sizable brown bear fishing at the mouth of the creek, no more than 75' away.  No problem except that the seiners, creek, and breaking waves on the beach were making so much noise that we couldn't get her attention and alert her to our presence.  One shot from the .44 I was wearing solved that problem, and also the problem of being able to hear any conversation for the next half hour or so.  Who doesn't love a little tinnitus?  It goes without saying, we moved our tents back down the beach, away from the creek and the bear!

A few hours later, the same bear was back, but clearly aware of us, probably wondering if she could go back to fishing.  We banged on our pot lid with a spoon to let her know we were still around, and she disappeared again.  No further bear sightings that night, though we did find a couple sets of bear tracks on the beach in the morning, and a headless chum salmon, still bleeding, about 30' from our tents.  Peace offering?  Mafia, horse's-head-under-the-sheets threat?  Very picky eater?  The world may never know.