Night view of Kuluk Bay. View to the southeast from Tacan Hill. January 4, 1977.
Night view of Adak town from the west ring road. January 4, 1977.
Picture of the photographer, Michael Gordon, sitting on the tundra near Mount Adagdak (or, to be more precise, a bit seaward of Lake Andy going out toward the Loran Station from the Lake Andy seawall). As you can see, no trees! Not much sunshine, either. But it is wonderful for sitting on a soft (wet) spot and thinking about things.
A detail view from Monument Hill of one of the piers, and on a double-lucky day, it was sunny and we had a vessel, the Aleutian Developer, unloading and making things interesting.
View (same lucky bonus day!) northwest of the VP Hangar and up on the hill, some huts/houses/junk. BONUS SUPER HUGE almost-1800 Pixel view! See if you can see your parked car! See the squadron logos painted on the hangar! Discover new meaning in "world wide wait!" as you download 350K.
View of Sweeper Cove from Monument Hill. Bonus: Another huge piggy 1800 pixel view, see every stick and rusty car. (290K)
View west from Monument Hill. Shows some of the base facilities, shopping, gasoline station, commissary, hospital, hangars, air terminal; and in the background the facilities on the side of the hill, known as Bering Hill. Bonus: HUGE picture (like above) (254K)
View to the Northwest from Monument Hill. See the Bonus Big Pix. This one is good for seeing the barracks and some of the housing areas. The Kuluk houses are old but well-built and have "character". The Turnkey houses are nice to look at but not so well built and a bit leaky. The newest houses, which aren’t even in these pictures, are so awful that they might as well not be shown anyway ‘cause they aren’t likely to still be there when the Aleut Corporation takes over. They were very nice to start with, had solariums and everything, but they were built on sand (to isolate them from earthquakes), but they sank and settled, shearing off some pipes ‘n stuff. Burned a bunch of them on the barge, too, when a worker with a cutting torch, cutting steel cables holding them, lit them on fire instead. Oh well. Why am I telling stories that don’t even go with this picture? Well, you go there for a couple of years and see what happens. J
View north from Monument hill. Another view of the housing all the way to runway 4 pointed at Anchorage. It also points at Great Sitkin Volcano 21 miles away, so turning north or south after takeoff is prudent but don’t turn too quickly or you’ll plow right into Mount Adagdak if you turn north, or Razorback if you turn south. Ouch. The Bonus Big Pix.
This is a lovely gallery photo of Adak Town, as seen from the south across Sweeper Cove. By the way, superb cross-country skiing and zoomy inner-tubing on Mount Moffett in the background, if you don’t mind the tedious climb UP. Watch out when snomobiling or tundra sliding (sliding on the wet grass using nothing more than your wet behind, jacket, or cardboard). There may yet be some of those nasty steel spiral spiky things meant to catch Japanese in World War 2. Most of them are along the beaches but I found some up on the mountain, too. No bonus biggie on this one but this is one you can find in the Alaska Geographic Magazine (I don’t remember exactly which issue, but it’ll be 1977 or 1978). PS, I had some of my nice eagle photos published in the March, 1978 issue of Alaska Magazine.
Yes, it snows. Not really a horrible awful lot of it; except some years can be deeper than others. The problem is the WIND that blows it up against the side of everything. Then rain, then freeze, then snow, then wind; yukk, what a mess. But it is sure pretty to shoot it eighty feet into the air and watch it fall back down, thud, right on your car. Or, "clunk", the whirling blades chew up your car you left buried in a drift.
The Aleutian Developer. The harbor facility at Adak was a bit weak, but that’s OK, the Aleutian Developer had its own gantry crane, plus an electric bow thruster to get away from the pier (or push into it when the winds were contrary, which was almost always the case) and extremo fine dual radar, one so fine it could see fist-size rocks on the shore, as well as locate the bald eagle nest over on Lucky Point. My good buddy Willie Scales was the Chief Engineer on this ship, and so I spent some time down inside. The crew’s meals were certainly better than mine!
The Coast Guard has some very fine ships. This is the USCGS Munro; another occasional visitor was the USCGS Boutwell. These ships can really scream; dual gas turbine engines let them slice through the sea at up to about 40 knots but they burn fuel too fast so they don't go that fast very often. When cruising, they use a big diesel engine. They are spotless clean down in the engine room, not a drop of oil splattered on the decks. Very modern, too, aircraft style controls and variable-pitch screws, these ships can stop in their own length if they really desperately need to, and in Alaska, one can imagine plenty of circumstances for such maneuverability. There were some sailors on one of these that I befriended; they played "Dungeons and Dragons" (tm, TSR Inc.) and I took them inner-tubing on Mount Moffett. See comments added by Rich
Fort Dooley, the Marines recreation cabin on the north side of Kuluk Bay. It has about a 200 foot cliff, down to the sea; so it is a wonderful place to sit and contemplate. I have discovered one Tom Dooley, born on Adak, either himself or his father may be the namesake. (http://www.ptialaska.net/~eclectic)
A fine view southward from the northwest corner of Kuluk Bay. To the left of this photo is Fort Dooley and the cliffs of Kuluk Bay, home to a couple of eagle nests.
(room for future expansion!)