Clam Gulch

Practicing digging for razor clams at Clam Gulch.

Clam digging for razor clams is a popular sport along the sandy beaches of the western Kenai Peninsula, from Anchor Point to Kasilof. The Milepost reports that "many thousands of clams are dug each year at Clam Gulch," so Peg and Craig, David and I, and Harold and Ruthanne (RVers parked next to us) decided to try our luck. 

Waiting for the low tide.

Clamming is best if you have a tide of -3 or -4.  On the day we went there was a -4 tide, so that was very auspicious.  However, we got to the beach a little early and had to wait for the tide to go out. 

In this photo you can see Mt. Redoubt in the background, across Cook Inlet. "Redoubt" is the Russian name for an ungarrisoned  fort. During the time the Russians controlled a good part of Alaska, they had five redoubts on the Kenai Peninsula. The Dena'ina word for Mt. Redoubt, Bentuggezh K'enulgheli, means "One with a notched forehead".

This volcano erupted in 2009 after 20 years of silence.  The Alaska Volcano Observatory reported elevated levels of seismic activity in January, and in March Redoubt had its first eruption.  It sent a plume of ash 50,000 feet into the air.  There were several more eruptions in April and then they subsided in June.  Mt. Redoubt has been quiet since then, but of course the monitoring is on-going. The alert level has dropped to yellow.  However, having three active volcanos visible from the Kenai shoreline keeps you aware of the power of Mother Nature!

David with a clam shovel and Craig with a clam pipe.

By law you must have a sport fishing license to dig, so the guys dug and we gals were their assistants. It is amazing how fast the clams could move, so we had to be quick to grab them.

The bag limit is 60 clams regardless of size and you must keep the first 60 you dig. At first David and I kept breaking the shells in our hurry to catch the clams.  We joked that we were digging for minced clams!

Success!

We dug up one butter clam, and about 30 razor clams.

Back at the RV we all had the "fun" of cleaning the clams.  By the time we were finished I couldn't think of cooking them, so we had a salad that night and saved the chowder for the next day.  

Cleaning clams.

Many people in Alaska are on subsistance living. They depend on hunting and fishing to survive. It sounds rather romantic to "live off the land".... but it is harder than you think because once you catch the food you have to work to preserve it.  In the Tlingit Heritage Center in Teslin, I read that a single family would try to cache about 500 salmon, 5-6 moose and a quantity of small game for their use during the winter. That's work!