Culture Camp

Building Baidarkas

Making Bentwood hats

Making Drums

Views of Cold Bay and environs

Views of Cold Bay

Cold Bay is located almost at the end of the Alaskan Penninsula, six hundred plus miles southwest of Anchorage. During WWII, Cold Bay was an Army base with a mission of holding back the Japanese invasion. Today, the military is gone and Cold Bay is a civilian town with 60 some inhabitants. The main industry of the town is the airport with its 10,000 foot runway. The airport is a local hub and also allows for emergency landings of planes of all sizes.

Cook inlet outside of Anchorage is still covered with ice. However, by the time one gets to Cold Bay, the ice is gone.

With the wind from the south, the plane approaches the runway from the north, here crossing the barrier islands of the Izembek lagoon on the Bering Sea.

The view from the front door of the school on a sunny afternoon.

The town's church is housed in a quonset hut left behind by the airforce.

The military also left behind 29 miles of gravel road that used to service outlying structures. Four wheel drive is recommended.

One of the roads heading south to a former gun emplacement crosses a creek. Here, Kurt has donned his waders to check the depth of the creek which is running slightly higher than normal with spring runoff.

On most days, the tops of the mountains are covered in clouds. But on a rare clear day, we can see the craggy Egelin Peaks.

And a little off to the side we see more mountains.

Just south of town, the view from the bluff overlooking the bay on a rare windless morning.

Foxes come down to the beach at low tide to see what's to eat. They come quite close to humans perhaps because they are not hunted, or perhaps because we wern't carrying guns.

The view east across Cold Bay with volcanic mountains in the background and tussocks of moss and grass in the foreground. The tundra likes to arrange itself in these lumpy mounds.

Perhaps to combat homesickness, the military planted some evergreens in the environs of Cold Bay. This specimen off to the left of the picture has grown to a height of four feet. While grasses and mosses dominate the tundra, a few willows and alders also grow here, though they tend to stay low to the ground.

A mossy tussock close up.

The road ends here at the site of a former gun emplacement meant to guard the approach to the military base from the south.