Photos by Clark Fair, Redoubt Reporter. Kelty and Olivia Fair pick their way through a field of boulders draped in seaweed and covered in barnacles and blue mussels. This is typical of the walking conditions between Tonsina Point and Derby Cove on a hike to Caines Head outside Seward.
By Clark Fair
Redoubt Reporter
A s soon as Kelty and I reached Derby Cove once again, I knew we were in for a delay. While we had been exploring the remains of a World War II fortress on Caines Head, the tide had come fully in, and now gray cliffs and the sea stood as obstacles to our quick return to the cozy public-use cabin just three-quarters of a mile away.
A beach stroll that should have taken 15 to 20 minutes took us, instead, two full hours — and we saved time by scrambling over wave-slickened shale and leaping from rocky perches in our attempt to thwart time and tide.
Of course, my son and I might have been better off to simply relax and bide our time on the crescent of sea-smooth stones that make up the beach on Derby Cove. Kelty might have hurled hundreds of perfect skipping stones into the waves while I lay back and eased into dreamland, almost oblivious to the tiny red spiders crawling like dots of laser light among the shale.
But back at the cabin we had left behind my daughter, Olivia, who had not been feeling well that morning. We had been gone for four hours already, and I didn’t want her to worry. I wanted nature to work at my convenience so I could make sure she was all right.
Olivia looks back as another hiker crosses the steel bridge spanning the north fork of Tonsina Creek. A portion of the bridge over the south fork has been destroyed, and the creek must be forded.
If the Caines Head State Recreation Area teaches the land-bound visitor anything, however, it is patience. The tide is low when it is low. The beaches are open when they are open. All the frustration in the world makes no difference.
In fact, one cannot hike at all to Fort McGilvray, the area’s crown jewel, if the tides are not at ebb. The forested portion of the trail, which begins at Lowell Point, just past Seward along the western shore of Resurrection Bay, will take hikers as far south as Tonsina Point. After that, it’s all a matter of timing.
And since the collapse a few years ago of the bridge spanning the south fork of Tonsina Creek, hikers will find that Tonsina Point also acts as another kind of marker — a time to remove their footwear and perform a brief cold-water crossing.
Olivia crosses the chilly waters of Tonsina Creek’s south fork. Until the bridge here is repaired in either 2010 or 2011, the creek must be forded.
According to the state Web site for the Caines Head trail, the water levels at the south fork can range from 6 to 24 inches — or even greater during heavy runoff coinciding with high tides. Just below the remains of the old bridge, we donned our wading shoes and crossed a narrow neck of the channel, the water barely nicking our knees at the deepest point.
On the south side of this crossing are several campsites, an outhouse and a picnic shelter with tables. It is a sheltered spot with easy access to the beach, where those aiming farther south must reckon with the tides.
When we arrived, the tide was just turning back from its low point of minus 0.7 feet — most guidebooks recommend attempting the beach portion of this hike at a low tide no higher than 3 feet — and far out on the sandy flats we spied a pair of kayakers standing alongside their long yellow craft and watching a large group of barking sea lions thrashing and playing in the surf just offshore.
Olivia hikes through a section of mossy rain forest in the Tonsina Creek drainage.
Just then, a large adult bald eagle dropped out of the trees and winged southward. We aimed in that direction, as well. It was about a mile and a half to our cabin in Callisto Canyon.
Beach walking distances can be deceptive. All those undulations of the shoreline can transform what appears to be a short saunter into a forced march, especially when one is accompanied by two teenagers wondering when they’re going to be there.
The problem, on this particular occasion, was that I couldn’t help them out. Despite the many trails I had followed or made on the Kenai Peninsula, this was my first trip to Caines Head, and I wasn’t sure around which bend we were going to find the cabin we had rented for the evening.
So I tried mainly to distract them as the alder-covered cliffs towered above our heads and the beach terrain shifted constantly — from smooth crushed shale to kelp-covered boulder fields, from splays of stonelike shattered tile to broad arcs of wave-washed rock.
This public-use cabin at Callisto Canyon is well appointed and comfortable. The cost of cabin rental is $65 per night, and arrangements must be made online. These cabins are among the most popular on the peninsula and should be reserved months ahead of time.
When we finally arrived at the cabin, we were not disappointed. It was the first public-use cabin I’d ever seen decorated with artwork — a carved wooden eagle, with a small fish in its talons, hung under the front gable and just above the large sign pronouncing the cabin’s name. Inside, varnished pieces of driftwood had been crafted into shelf supports, and a larger separate piece of driftwood, dotted with rocks and shells, formed a back-wall showpiece.
Four beds in two parallel bunks provided ample sleeping space, and a picnic-style table allowed us to spread out our food and gear. A large front window revealed the bay and the distant eastern shore seen through the sheltering spruce trees.
It was no wonder that these cabins are reserved so early. I had made my reservations in late April, and I had had only two dates to choose from in all of June and July. On the upside, excellent tent-camping sites are available in Derby Cove and are abundant farther south at North Beach.
North Beach and South Beach flank the massive cliffs of Caines Head, and an overland trail between them also provides the only access to Fort McGilvray, which sits ensconced in a tangle of trees 650 feet above the ocean. The fort was part of the Seward Harbor Defense plan of the early 1940s, and it was designed to prevent Japanese forces from infiltrating a key American supply line fed by the Alaska Railroad.
Atop the craggy beachhead, troops carved out enough rock to build a series of concrete passageways and storage rooms, which were then camouflaged with dirt, trees and grass. On each of two outside corners of the facility, flanking the battery command station and overlooking the bay, stood a 6-inch M1 heavy artillery gun capable of striking a target more than 10 miles away.
Kelty peers into the water-filled center of one of Fort McGilvray’s two massive gun blocks, positioned at the edge of a 650-foot wall of rock, giving artillery officers an excellent view across Resurrection Bay. Here, in the early 1940s, Army personnel mounted a 6-inch gun capable of striking targets more than 10 miles away.
The most prominent military landmark at South Beach, accessible by an ancillary trail up the beachhead, is its series of collapsing buildings that once housed the hundreds of soldiers who worked and trained at Fort McGilvray. At North Beach, the most obvious feature is the deteriorating pile-driven pier that juts several hundred feet out from the shore.
In 1944, just as the complex was nearing completion, the fort was abandoned and mostly dismantled, then largely forgotten until the 1980s, when the state assigned its first park ranger to the area and began building trails from the old military roads up the beachhead.
After weaving our way up the gravelly trail to the top of Caines Head, Kelty and I wandered with headlamps through some of the fort’s unlighted passageways, peered out through the command station windows, and walked around the large gunnery stations with their circles of huge bolts. Back down the trail, accompanied briefly by a pair of Steller’s jays, we peered into two abandoned ammunition bunkers and whistled and shouted to enjoy the tremendous echoes issuing forth.
Kelty peers through the gate into one of the concrete passageways of old Fort Gilvray. The corridors here are dark, and explorers should use flashlights or headlamps to avoid falling into openings in the floors.
Hiking from Lowell Point to Fort McGilvray and back is a distance of about 13.5 miles. About half that is fairly flat walking, but the rest involves considerable traveling up and down as the trail manages some difficult terrain.
But the most important thing to remember — except, perhaps, for the many who ply their sea kayaks in to this area — is the tides. The good news is that, if one is patient, the rewards are great.
Kelty skips a sliver of shale in the general direction of the old pile-driven pier on North Beach in Caines Head State Recreation Area.
Timing is everything.
The Mouth of The Kenai 