Small early kings offer big fun — Local anglers net success with early run Kasilof salmon

By Joseph Robertia

Photo courtesy of Jacob Gauthier. Jacob Gauthier and his friends netted an impressive take of three kings in one outing on the Kasilof River on Thursday.

Redoubt Reporter

One of the oldest clichés in the fishing phrase book is, “There’s a reason it’s called fishing, not catching.” But sayings such as this get passed around for a reason. The king salmon season is still weeks away from reaching a boil, and anglers typically have to work the water hard while waiting for still-simmering salmon runs to reach their peak. That’s what makes Jacob Gauthier’s catch last week so remarkable.

“We picked up three kings in one evening,” said the former Kasilof resident, who has recently moved to Anchorage for work.

He returns to where he was raised on weekends to drift the Kasilof River in the hope of seeing a slab of silver on the end of his line. While floating along in the lower river with two friends for the first time this season, he did what few others that evening were able to.

“We weren’t seeing many come in. We saw six or seven other boats and only a few guides were having some luck, so we were a bit surprised to pick up so many so early. We were just getting out to see what was going on.”

The water was low, as it usually is the time of year in the glacially fed Kasilof River. The young men had put in miles upriver, and had seen little action. It wasn’t until they were nearing the mouth that their luck began to turn with the tide.

“It was about three hours before the tide was to fold in. Everyone has a different opinion about when the best time is, but I’ve always believed the fish flood in with the high water, so a few hours after high tide is a good time to be out,” Gauthier said.

Alive with action — Relay for Life raises $76,550 so far for 2012

By Jenny Neyman

Photos by Jenny Neyman, Redoubt Reporter. Belle Saldivar gives Sophie Saldivar a swing around the bandstand, while Dave Saldivar and Miriam Olivo sway to the music of Troubadour North at the Relay for Life fundraiser on Saturday at the Soldotna Sports Center.

Redoubt Reporter

Though 10-year-old Joey Workowski, of Nikiski, was wearing a purple “survivor” shirt at the Central Kenai Peninsula Relay for Life event last weekend at the Soldotna Sports Center, cancer wasn’t the first thing on his mind.

Even the worst of his worst experiences undergoing two and a half years of treatment for leukemia were superceded by matters far more attractive to the attention of a fifth-grader: There were games to play, after all, and horses to ride and bands to listen to and food to eat and the nervous excitement of being a guest speaker.

Even in that role, as a short-brown-haired, bespeckled kid in a too-big purple shirt stepping up to the mic and delivering a speech to the crowd, he wasn’t, in his head, Joey with cancer. Asking him why he was a guest speaker required a prompt from his mom, Laura Niemczyk.

“Because I was speaking to the high school at the minirelay at Nikiski High School (an event held May 23 as a fundraiser for the larger Central Peninsula Relay for Life),” Joey said. “And Jonah asked me if I wanted to be the guest speaker for the… .”

“Yes, but what kind of guest speaker are you? What are you wearing that shirt for?” Niemczyk interjected.

“Oh, because I’m a survivor guest speaker,” he said.

A participant winds up to throw a sponge at Joey Workowski, volunteering as a target in a fundraiser booth at the Relay for Life on Saturday at the Soldotna Sports Center.

In a larger sense, yes, his speech was about cancer. He gave an outline of his experience with leukemia. How, at age 4 ½, he became sick — excessively tired and not wanting to eat or walk anywhere.

“I thought he was anemic, dehydrated,” Niemczyk said. “We walked into an emergency room and took a quick little blood test and the bottom fell out of everything we planned.”

Living in Washington at the time, he was rushed to Seattle Children’s Hospital, where he began 39 months of chemotherapy treatment, with all the ups and downs, and literal pins, needles and bumps along the way.

“Some of the medicine I had to take made me hurt and stuff. My steroids, I had an allergic reaction to it and it made me really itchy,” Joey said.

“The number-one leukemia-fighting kids drug, he was mildly allergic to it. Oh yeah, that was fun,” Niemczyk said.

But though the topic was cancer, the point was something much more than that — living through it, getting past it and thanking those who helped with all aspects along the way.

“We wanted an adventure, and we weren’t about to let his cancer slow us down,” Niemczyk said of why, during Joey’s treatment, they moved from Washington to Nikiski.

They like it here, Joey said, especially the wildlife — though not the big moose when they act scary at his bus stop, he

Joey Workowski laughs in anticipation of the next toss. Workowski, a cancer survivor, was a guest speaker at this year’s Relay event.

said. And the chattery, toothy-grinned ball of energy likes life, especially since he finished chemo treatment.

“I’ve been out for two years and five months — not that I’m counting,” Joey said. “I like that I don’t have to worry about the cancer and stuff, and I can do sports. I like soccer and basketball.”

He doesn’t even mind being a public speaker.

“It’s scary at first but, normally, once I start talking I can’t really stop,” he said, as his mom gave a wide, almost eye-rolling head nod to affirm that statement.

“It’s about all the stuff I can remember about chemo, and about why I relay,” Joey said of his speech.

To Joey, he’s a kid who happened to have leukemia, and also happens to like soccer and basketball, and happens to attend Nikiski North Star Elementary School, and happens to get nervous when moose come around while he’s waiting at his bus stop. Cancer is a detail of his life, not the defining characteristic of it, and not — as his mom cries with relief while listening to him speak — the end of it.

“It’s very emotional for me,” said Niemczyk. “But I’m really proud of him, and he’s turning into a good public speaker. And we had a good outcome so we’re more than happy to share his story and help inspire others to keep fighting the fight and raise money. It makes me cry every time.”

Good, clean (or not) fun — Mud Run returns with a sloppy splash

By Joseph Robertia

Photo by Joseph Robertia, Redoubt Reporter. Brayden Holt, of Soldotna, makes a grand entrance into the mud pit during the New Beginnings Fitness Center’s Mud Run in North Kenai on Saturday.

Redoubt Reporter

While waiting for their son, Brayden Holt, at the finish line of the Mud Run sponsored by New Beginnings Fitness Center in North Kenai, his parents discussed what type of finish he would have, in the way parents are oft to do, but with a bit of a twist.

“In high school he ran track and cross-country, but since he went off to college he hasn’t run as much, and he only decided to run this at 10:15 this morning,” said his mother, Kim Holt. “And, he has his good shirt on. I don’t know what he was thinking.”

While his mother worried about his wardrobe, his father was a bit more relaxed.

“Whatever he does, he has a good time in mind,” said Alan Holt. “I wouldn’t be surprised if he did a nosedive.”

Amanda Burg, of Soldotna, wallows her way through the pit in her costume — an elephant/clown/shark.

In the end, the senior Holt’s prognostication wasn’t far from the mark. Upon completion of the five-kilometer event, Brayden cannonballed into the center of the mucky mess that awaited all the finishers of the Mud Run, sending waves of brown slop sloshing skyward.

A filthy finish was the point of the day, though, and what separated this event from other numerous running competitions around the Kenai Peninsula during the summer. In addition to large tire tunnels and other obstacles along the way, a 1,000-gallon, 20-by-50-foot mud pit had to be crossed to reach the finish line. Many competitors embraced their messy side and wholeheartedly sloshed their way through the slop to the end.

Art Seen: Well-seasoned photography — Fall, spring photo contest winners on display in June

By Zirrus VanDevere, for the Redoubt Reporter

“Kenai Lake Reflection” by Edward Beddow Jr.

Thursday at Kaladi Brothers on the Sterling Highway will be an opening night for the joint exhibit by Redoubt Reporter photo contest winners. Two contests were held, in the spring and fall, and the winners have been asked to offer their framed prints up for exhibition this month. The artist reception is to be from 5 to 7 p.m. Come by to see the show and meet the photographers.

I thought it might be fun to take my very favorites from that lot, and to see if I can’t come up with both hearty accolades and constructive criticism for each of them.

Foremost in the body of work for me is a piece called “Kenai Lake Reflection” by Edward Beddow Jr. It’s funny to me that the title could go with just another landscape shot of the beautiful place we inhabit, but, instead, it seems an intensely personal and almost creepy image of a child’s reflection in water that is so full of leaves and sticks and moss growing underneath that it feels like a story I’m a little bit afraid to hear.

Common Ground: Don’t let vocabulary trip up good management

By Christine Cunningham, for the Redoubt Reporter

I converted to The Great American Hunting Tradition at the ripe age of 27. My calling came upon firing at — and missing — a widgeon after a miserable 400-yard crawl through swamp muck and polar grass. If I had killed that particular duck, the craze that followed would not have ensued. I may have adopted a “been there, done that” mentality toward waterfowling. Instead, the hunter I followed into the fold picked up the spent shotshell from the grass and held it up to my nose.

“This is what fall smells like to me,” he said.

I was hooked.

My attachment to the doctrine and conventions of the outdoors came after my conversion, which was near instantaneous. I was in a gun store the weekend after my first duck-hunting trip looking at shotguns. It was with a blind ambition that I spent day after day in the field. It wasn’t the quarry I was after, as there weren’t many ducks around that season, a fire had started inside and I was running on its fumes.

Years later I find myself as a member of various outdoor-affiliated organizations, and I rabidly read literature on this year’s migration numbers. Stories about the purchase or demise of fine hunting dogs bring tears to my eyes. The house is littered in outfitter catalogs. I own more gun-cleaning kits than sewing kits.

I have no children or excuses for my behavior. I am a devout follower of all things outdoors. I live with some chocolate Labs and an English setter who thinks life is about athleticism and breakfast, and I agree. A new puppy is like a new lease on life.

On the way from a spruce grouse hunt, my hunting partner, who also is an excellent fisherman, brought up the decline of fish on a certain lake. He was up on his current events and discussed the issues articulately and in the same vocabulary as the officials.

“It is the only fishery of its kind,” my hunting partner pointed out. He was speaking as a conservationist of a lake that was being overfished.

“Since when did a ‘lake’ become a ‘fishery?’” I asked.

Oilers wind up to defend title

By Ed Kobak, for the Redoubt Reporter

The Peninsula Oilers, the defending champions of the Alaska Baseball League, begin their quest for another league title at 7 p.m. Monday, June 11, with a two-game, two-night set against the All Stars, kicking off nine consecutive nights of baseball at Coral Seymour Memorial Park in Kenai.

The Oilers are one of six baseball clubs in the summer collegiate Alaska Baseball League, one of the premier summer collegiate baseball leagues in the country. There are more than 40 summer collegiate leagues in the U.S. that play under National Collegiate Athletic Association rules, with all players being current NCAA (all divisions), National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics and junior college players. Occasionally a high-school player dots the ranks of these amateur collegiate teams.

The Alaska Baseball League traces its roots back to the 1970s. It is a traditional wooden bat league, much like the professional leagues and unlike several summer collegiate leagues that play with aluminum bats to the sound of a metallic ding, rather than the more historic wooden thwack, when a hitter connects with a ball.

Alaska baseball itself has roots going back to the early 1900s, when gold prospectors made their way up from Seattle and San Francisco to Skagway via steamship and over the Chilkoot Pass and onto the goldfields and streams of Alaska and the Yukon.

Some of these prospectors were ballplayers from organized baseball of their day who began gold camp and town baseball teams throughout Alaska. The Alaska Baseball League grew from these early prospectors and baseball players. The Alaska Goldpanners of Fairbanks honor these former players in their name.

The Peninsula Oilers previously have won Alaska Baseball League titles in 1998, 2000, 2006 and last season’s 2011 league championship title.

Almanac: Bridging the divides — Routes to link Kenai, K-Beach up for debate

By Clark Fair

Graphic by Clark Fair, Redoubt Reporter

Redoubt Reporter

When Alaska Gov. Jay Hammond stood in a driving, late-autumn rain and dutifully participated in the chilly ribbon-cutting ceremony for the Warren Ames Memorial Bridge, he may have flashed briefly on the irony that he was out there getting wet only because the weather had been too bad for him to fly on to another engagement in Nome and Kotzebue.

Fortunately, the damp outdoor proceedings in Kenai that day — Oct. 11, 1975 — were mercifully brief. Soon, the proper words had been spoken and the official ribbon had been severed, and then the sizable crowd of participants and onlookers had retired indoors to the new Kenai Courthouse for the bridge dedication ceremony, the obligatory speeches, and, of course, the refreshments.

Although the bridge had been opened to traffic since July 15, the dedication and ribbon-cutting ceremony had been postponed twice before, and officials seemed determined this time not to allow the delays to continue. After all, the structure had taken two and a half years to complete, had cost more than double the original estimates, and had actually entered the serious discussion stage more than a decade before Hammond’s arrival.

In fact, on Page 1 of the Feb. 2, 1962, Cheechako News, a brief article had announced that a survey had begun for a new bridge over the Kenai River to connect Beaver Loop Road to Kalifornsky Beach Road. In those days, Beaver Loop extended from its current western terminus all the way up to the Spur Highway.

When the bridge was constructed, however, Beaver Loop was truncated, and the connecting ribbon of asphalt from the Spur to Kalifornsky Beach Road was given the innocuous moniker, Bridge Access Road.
Seven years after the announcement of the bridge survey, a public hearing was held in Kenai to help Highway Department officials determine which of the proposed routes (or corridors) for the new bridge would be built.

The May 27, 1969, hearing offered these four alternatives:

Plugged In: Digital imaging shifts photography’s paradigm

By Joe Kashi, for the Redoubt Reporter

In the 10 short years since affordable and practical digital cameras were first marketed, digital imaging has become the most transforming photographic change since Eastman Kodak invented portable roll-film cameras in 1890 and eliminated the need to coat glass plates with high explosives in a hot, horse-drawn darkroom.

Digital imaging is a major paradigm shift in the classic sense articulated by Thomas Kuhn in his seminal book, “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.” A true paradigm shift is a fundamentally new and better way of organizing, understanding and using all known information about a subject. Well-known examples of paradigm shifts in the sciences include quantum physics, discovering how DNA affects all biology, and plate tectonics, which revolutionized our understanding of how geology actually works.

Paradigm shifts are particularly important because they point the way to previously unimagined techniques, knowledge and opportunities. So, why do I believe that digital photography is causing such a major reorientation of photography? Before answering that question, let’s consider the flip side of a paradigm shift, the gathering of all existing knowledge under a more spacious tent.

Digital imaging and silver-based film photography continue to depend on a great deal of shared knowledge, technique and equipment. Both use the same optics, or nearly so. The best digital cameras look and handle very much like film-era professional cameras, such as Leica rangefinder and Olympus OM-series film cameras. We still use the same shutter speeds and lens apertures.

Well-done “straight” docum-entary and fine-art digital photographs are virtually indistinguishable from silver-based photographs. What constitutes a technically good photographic print hasn’t changed, nor has the human eye and brain’s response to tonal ranges, subtle detail and color gradations. The subjects we photograph and how we “see” them has not changed a great deal, at least not yet.

In fact, the concepts underlying the fabled Zone System, the traditional gold standard for excellent, silver-based, black-and-white photography, can be readily adapted to digital cameras. Check my July 22, 2009, and July 29, 2009, Redoubt Reporter articles for details.