Dakáa Xoo, among the sleeping man, references a hero story important to the Xunaa Tlingít. The Inians guard the bottleneck of Eey X‘é current’s mouth pass (North Inian Pass), at the northern extremity of West Xunaa biogeographic province. In June, 2016, Discovery offered a teachers’ expedition to Hobbit Hole, home of Zach Brown’s freshly minted Inian Island Institute.
Unbelievably, we had blue skies the entire time. Traveling in Lingit Aaní is an extraordinary privilege, best appreciated when we do our homework. For this trip, as for any Southeast outing when time permits, I spent several days preparing by assembling maps and resources. The pre-trip scoping portion is a good third of the entire journal. Embedded video makes file size too large, so that’s been deleted for this online version.

Sample page from journal for 20160614 (June 14). Elizabeth Hauser and Ben McKlucky hand-measuring a spruce. On right is our GPS bushwacking track at Hobbit Hole.

Both coming and going, we had a lot of fun with marine mammals. Trying to take ‘matchable’ telephotos to the whale-tail database is addicting. Among my humpback tail shots I found 3 matches. Returning, near Xutsnoowú Lutú, brown bear point, nostril (Pt Retreat), we even got to travel with orcas.