May 9th, Thursday; We were up, had hot tea and fruit bars and were ready early for our flight. We had time to drive on up the road and do a ‘drive through’ at Klukwan and still be early to the airport! Not one interesting wildlife spotting, but familiar mountains. Ten Mile is no longer there, buildings and all completely gone, but there is a strange (small) complex we later found out to be a hydroelectric site. We saw the big pipe coming down the mountainside and at the time it made no sense! Where could they be pumping water to or from?
At the airport, and we are thinking, “Seriously? That little plane?” Yes, THAT one!
Space for our emergency bag even!
Drake looked at us and said “Uhhhh, okay.” He DID know he was getting four passengers to Glacier Point, but the reality was us standing there. Then he asked if we had bear spray. “What?” “No one goes down there without some kind of defense.” “Okay, but we really did not worry about it. We lived there for many years and ran through the woods all the time.” “But you had adults with rifles with you.” “They did have rifles, but they were busy and not out playing with us. We’ll just be noisy like we always were!”
Instrument panel
He was very concerned for our safety, and then concerned on how he was getting us in the plane. Two of us are big girls, the other two more his size! With many comments on ‘Don’t touch that!’ ‘Don’t lean back’ etc, and the use of an invisible shoe horn, Drake got us into the plane. With one more comment about ‘I’m not charging you enough’, we were ready to take off.
Once in the air, he began asking us questions about our life on Glacier Point
Davidson Glacier, used to cover most of that lake area…
and by the time we landed he was into the experience and understanding our goal. He gave us a good sighting of Davidson Glacier as well.
Note that as we lined up with the airstrip I realized it was NOT as smooth or even as straight as it appeared on Google Earth. Oh boy.
YES WE MADE IT!
Once on the ground and unloaded, we asked if he could take a picture of us with his plane to show we really were on Glacier Point after a 53 year absence. He took several, shared his down jacket with Linda who was shivering, and then left with a promise to be back around 5 PM.
We are really standing on Glacier Point. What a GREAT DAY!
We hiked south, constantly trying to visualize where things were as compared to what is there now. BRUSH, lots of brush. Spruce trees of course have grown a lot in 50 plus years. Alder and Cottonwood are very prolific and with no activity until fairly recently to keep them in check, they abound. At times we walked the beach, for the view, the sun, the rocks, the seaweed and sometimes we followed the ATV trail. There were a couple places we did not know the story of, and then Mark McNamara’s out in front of where the Teston homestead had been. Across the old riverbed, a boat hulk near where our folks sometimes harbored their boats. We didn’t know the boat! [If one could fight through the brush toward the mountain and not get disoriented, one might find the remnants of the Laughlin/Roth cabins back in the spruce. We didn’t attempt it.]
Looking south, Rocky Point, Horton Pt & River, Sullivan Island
On a bit further [no evidence of where our airstrip used to be, although the ATV trail is probably on that bench] is the cabin of Caroline Van Demert & Pat Ferrell. They own the northern most part of our old homestead.
Availed ourselves of their outhouse, being careful to close it back up the way we found it. Also there was a can of ‘bear spray’ hanging on their front door which we borrowed for the remainder of our trek as we knew we would be going back into the woods further on.
The brush is clear out to the beach, with none of the grasslands that used to be there when we were in residence.
Finally, Stelting Creek! Cheers and hollers and high fives…and a log to sit on!
Across the creek we could see the cabin belonging to Annette & Ken Kreitzer who own the southern most part of the old homestead. This is the piece that was originally sold to Berg around 1960. Later the Edwards family lived there for some while.
Time for lunch and more importantly a drink of water! Out with our collapsible cups and “Oh my, it tastes just as good as it did when we were kids.” Some lunch [Little Smokies, cheese sticks and fruit/nut bars] and we are recharged.
Linda and I were pretty sure the tall old growth spruce we could see towering over the brush and smaller trees had to be our old building site. We found a spot to access the ‘trail’ from the beach and followed it up around the curve.