Homer → Kasitsna Bay Laboratory
Inspiring Girls* Expeditions is a free summer expedition for girls and gender nonconforming youth ages 16-18 to explore STEM and art topics while learning outdoor skills in the backcountry. Expeditions are 12 days and take place all over the world, including multiple U.S. states, Canada, New Zealand, Kyrgyzstan, Austria, and Switzerland. When I applied, I was able to choose and rank the three expeditions I was interested in. I selected Girls* On Water as my first choice, which focuses on sea kayaking and marine life in the intertidal zone. Additionally, I had to answer questions on my application about my experiences in school, my life outside of school, my physical abilities, and a creative component (I chose field sketching). A few months later, I learned I had gotten into the Girls* On Water expedition! By the end of June, I was taking a plane flight to Homer, Alaska.
Homer is a small town located in Southcentral Alaska filled with Sitka spruce, small bakeries, and sandhill cranes in the summer. It has a small airport, marshes, lots of moose, and a healthy number of tourists who hang out on the spit. Each of the 9 expedition participants arrived at the Kenai Peninsula College Homer campus by the afternoon of June 31st. Three including myself were from Southern California, three from Alaska, two from New York, and one from Louisiana. At the campus, we met our three instructors for the expedition: Laura, Emily, and Tyler, and played rounds of Taboo and Jenga. Then we transferred our essential clothing and other gear from our suitcases into drybags and learned to compress every last breath of air from them for compactability. After lunch, ice breakers, and Covid tests that all came back negative, we headed off to a former Girls* On Water instructor’s home to camp for the night. There we learned how to set up tents, made dinner, played charades, and got to know each other better in our three person tent groups.
After an early wake up the next morning, we broke down camp and headed to the Homer Spit where we boarded a water taxi that took us across Kachemak Bay to the Kasitsna Bay Laboratory. The lab and field station is jointly managed by the University of Alaska Anchorage and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and would be our home for the next day and a half. Once there, we geared up in dry suits, spray skirts, and Crocs for the first time, lifted the seven sea kayaks to the tideline, and entered the water for paddle school. We practiced using the rutter to steer by paddling a short distance around the harbor before finally performing a wet exit in which we flipped the kayaks over and had to get out while submerged under water. Following that, we collected water at the dock in the hopes of finding phytoplankton, which we then observed under microscopes. We ended the day by delegating our roles for the backcountry (which would rotate every day) and getting the high and low tides for tomorrow’s paddle.
The next day, we left any remaining gear that we didn’t need in the backcountry at K Bay Labs like soap, towels, and other bulky and unessential items and packed everything else in tightly compressed dry bags. We then walked out to where the sea kayaks were stored and brought them down to the tideline once again. Within an hour and a half, we had geared up and strategically crammed tents, sleeping bags, sleeping pads, our packed dry bags, all our food, and camp stoves into the seven kayaks we would be setting out with- two singles that instructors would use and five tandems that had two people each. Then, we were off! The weather was cloudy and rain would soon ensue. We were paddling against the current and our boats were at their heaviest weight for the whole trip. But we pushed on and within another hour and a half, we had paddled 2 miles to tranquil Jakalof Bay. First paddle: crushed. The sun was peeking through the clouds creating dramatic shadows as we unloaded the kayaks and put them to sleep on a bed of dunegrass.
*Inspiring Girls* Expeditions welcomes cisgender girls and transgender, agender, Two Spirit, nonbinary, intersex, and genderqueer youth