Erin and Hig Made it to Cordova!

Here's to the most amazing trekkers around making it from Icy Bay to Mile 13 of the Copper River Highway since around Thanksgiving. They've updated their blog, Journey on the Wild Coast, with photos and commentary about the current leg of their trip from Puget Sound to Unimak Island.

They're giving a slide show this evening at the Forest Service Courtroom in Cordova.

One of the places they spent some time investigating and photographing was a logging camp at Cape Yakataga. Logging has been going on at various small camps along the eastern portion of the North Gulf of Alaska coast for a long time.

The camp they looked at is winding down their operations, burning buildings and so on. The practices the company engaged in seem terribly wasteful, possibly illegal. Here's Erin's observation:

Logging for your Mental Health: In west Icy Bay, we walked 35 miles of a 50 mile logging road. At the log dump on the shore, piles of logs perched precariously near the surf, explaining the cut logs we’d seen strewn across all the beaches of Icy Bay. In the freshest clearcuts, trees lay piled where they’d fallen - “cull” scrawled on the end of what looked like perfectly good lumber. Apparently, the Japanese will buy only the best. At the logging camp, piles of twisted metal and rubble litter the ground where they’re burning the trailers.

Wasser and Winters Co. are working to take down their camp for good. For now at least, logging is finished here.

Most of the land belongs to Alaska’s Mental Health Trust. Some to the University. But Alaska hardly enters into most of the operation. The logging crew and all their supplies were shipped from Washington. The raw logs went straight to Japan. And in a place so expensive to ship from, and so far from public view, waste becomes part of the operation. Someone who had worked there told us that if a logging company in Washington had been this wasteful and left such a mess, they’d never log again in the state. Here, who’s to notice.

Here's the Trust's home page. Here's how they describe their stewardship, as exemplified in the picture above (!!!). Here's a map of their forestry lands.

I'm hoping to meet and interview this intrepid duo when they make it to where they cross the road system.

these frozen currants in my yard look warm after reading Erin's story!