By Kyle Clayton Fishermen come up with myriad activities to buck their boredom on a slow day at sea, but a deckhand on a Haines troller took the task to new heights-he climbed a tree. F/V Standy skipper Scott Visscher said he and his deckhand, Jerimiah Kinison, saw the tree floating vertically, like a bobber, several miles offshore of Yakobi Island, south of Cross Sound. “Jerimiah, being the merry prankster, he said ‘Ah I should climb it!'” Visscher said. “He had to talk me into it.” They pulled their gear, nosed the bow up to the floating tree and tied the bowline around the trunk. “It was rock solid. It was eerie,” Kenison said. “It was like crawling out onto a piling.” Visscher said he saw a mass on his depth finder about 18 fathoms beneath the surface that looked like a whale. “I think it was the root wad that was holding the tree vertically. It had to be about a 120-foot-tree with 30 feet of it out the water,” Visscher said. Kinison thinks the root wad may have had a boulder trapped in it. He suspects the tall tree fell from one of the tall cliffs that line Cross Sound. Kinison, an experienced tree climber, at one time worked for the state, pruning trees in the Kelsall Valley. He said the tree was a spruce. “I have climbed thousands of trees, but I never climbed one in the water,” Kinison said.
Fishermen come up with myriad activities to buck their boredom on a slow day at sea, but a deckhand on a Haines troller took the task to new heights-he climbed a tree.
F/V Standy skipper Scott Visscher said he and his deckhand, Jerimiah Kinison, saw the tree floating vertically, like a bobber, several miles offshore of Yakobi Island, south of Cross Sound.
“Jerimiah, being the merry prankster, he said ‘Ah I should climb it!'” Visscher said. “He had to talk me into it.”
They pulled their gear, nosed the bow up to the floating tree and tied the bowline around the trunk.
“It was rock solid. It was eerie,” Kenison said. “It was like crawling out onto a piling.”
Visscher said he saw a mass on his depth finder about 18 fathoms beneath the surface that looked like a whale. “I think it was the root wad that was holding the tree vertically. It had to be about a 120-foot-tree with 30 feet of it out the water,” Visscher said.
Kinison thinks the root wad may have had a boulder trapped in it. He suspects the tall tree fell from one of the tall cliffs that line Cross Sound.
Kinison, an experienced tree climber, at one time worked for the state, pruning trees in the Kelsall Valley. He said the tree was a spruce.
“I have climbed thousands of trees, but I never climbed one in the water,” Kinison said.