Alaska 2013

Last January, my friend, Brett Taylor, offered me a spot in his regular Alaska trek. Most of the group had made a trip like this several times over the past decade or so. I would be the green horn! As it turned out in the end, they ended up expanding the group to include 12 … much larger than originally planned. They were mostly high school buddies, through Brett’s connection was work related to one of the organizers. Besides the school mates and Brett, the group included a recently called missionary (Australia), Brett’s daughter and new son-in-law, and me.

Through the months leading up to the trip, we had several conference calls to discuss equipment needs, food assignments, logistics, etc. Since this was an unguided trip, we would be entirely on our own once the flight service landed us on Kanectok Lake, the head waters of the 100 mile river we were to negotiate and fish.

I decided to fly standby to Anchorage, but bought a ticket to Bethel on Alaska Air to ensure that I would not miss the fly out from Bethel because once they fly a group into the head waters and they start down the river, there is no possible way to get another person to join the group … the trip would be lost.

The flight to Anchorage: Monday August 19^th finally came … I decided to try to get on the early direct flight to Anchorage from SLC (10:00 am). I checked my personal dry bag and a group equipment bag, and carried on my rods, reels and change of clothes for the return trip. Maureen was on an overnight trip so she wasn’t available to take me to the airport that morning, so I arranged with my home teacher, Elder Glen Pace, to give me a ride to the airport. At the last minute, Brett offered to swing by and take me with them. This was a relief since I was a bit worried about how I was going to get all my gear into the terminal to check it in ( I did not think they would be able to check them curbside through to Bethel given my unique flight arrangements).

In hind sight, it would have been much better for me to have purchased a ticket on Alaska Air for all of the flights … it wasn’t that expensive and it would have helped both Maureen and I in the stress department! She ended up being my travel agent again to both help me get there and to return … thanks, Sweetie!

Maureen actually met me at the gate after her trip and planned to ensure that I made it on to the flight and to see me off. As it turned out, I did get a seat on the flight, but it was delayed for a mechanical reason. A few minutes turned into an hour, then two … eventually costing us a twelve hour delay. Maureen stayed with me until around 6:00 pm … she figured that if they had not cancelled the flight by then, it would eventually take off, and she had a lot to do at home. Sure enough, they ended up changing planes and getting us out of there around 10:30 pm, arriving in Anchorage around 1:00 am. Maureen had arranged a hotel for me that night so I could at least get a few hours of sleep before the big adventure began.

Bethel: The flight to Bethel was uneventful arriving at 7:30 am. Miraculously, all of our bags made it! The outfitter, Papa Bear Adventures, met us at the airport with a couple of trucks and took us to their lodge. I use that term loosely … it was just a small clap board house on a dirt road, just like every other residence in Bethel! Bethel was everything that Nathan and Holly said it would be! He he …

The weather was cold, foggy and wet. We divided our gear into four groups since it would take for flights to get us into the lake. After weighing and thoughtfully dividing the gear, all we had to do then was to wait for a break in the weather. Finally around 6:00 pm the pilots gave us the “all clear” and the first two groups loaded up the two Beavers for the one hour flight into Kanectok Lake. We decided that the most experienced guys should go with this first group just in case they might have to spend the night up there at the lake. This turned out to be a good decision.

The planes returned for the rest of us a couple of hours later. We loaded up the first plane and they took off, but about 80 miles into the flight the pilots decided it was just too dangerous to attempt to traverse the mountain range in the fog and so returned us back to Bethel. What a disappointment!  And so the wait began …

We were sure we would get out the next day since the weather seemed to be a bit better than the day before in Bethel. However, what mattered was how the weather was up where we were going not what it was like where we were! As it turned out, we were stranded for the next two days! Finally, the group already up at the lake decided that they had better push on or they would not be able to traverse the 100 miles of river and make it out on time the next Tuesday. Most of our remaining group wanted to extend our trip so that they would not be rushed down the river, that is, if the pilots could ever get us in! I told them that I could not extend. One of the other organizers also said that extending would not work for him either. We were about to pull the plug on our entire trip and come back home when the pilots told us that they thought they could get us into another river system called the “Arolik” … a 45 mile river, much shorter than the 100 mile Kanectok. We decided that would be our best option so we boarded the planes again and we were off!

The Arolik: We landed without incident in the lake and immediately began to assemble rafts (after coating ourselves with bug juice!). We all pitched in, some building frames, others pumping up the rafts. Remember how I said we had divided the gear evenly. Well, that wasn’t entirely true. Weight-wise it was close, but none of us foresaw this scenario as even a remote possibility! As it turned out, the other group had the water purification filters, lighters, our kitchen box and the ammo  … we had all the bread, most of the toilet paper. Consequently, we had to boil our drinking water and hope that no bears became a problem!

Within a half hour we were all loaded and on the river. What we didn’t know was that the first 10 miles of this river was “unfloatable” – just too little water! We had to walk the boats down the river … what a pain! We made it a few before we had to think about setting up camp for the night. Just after 9:00 pm, we found a great little gravel bar and decided to call it home for the night.  Of course, I had to try to do a little fishing before it got too dark. We hadn’t been able to fish the entire way thus far … we were too busy pulling boats along. Besides, there just wasn’t much water in the river. I did manage to drift an egg pattern in a couple of deeper runs only to have my indicator be the target of several small grayling strikes. Being somewhat desperate to catch a fish, I did the unthinkable … I applied floatant to glow bug egg pattern and drifted it like a dry fly! Sure enough those little graylings just couldn’t leave it alone! At least the stink of being “skunked” was off! Four days in Alaska without catching a fish makes one a bit crazy you know!

The next morning we broke camp and pushed forward a few more miles to the confluence of the south fork. The river was now floatable and fishable! We stopped and set up a couple of fishing rods to fish along the way. I thought a “bounce” rig would be perfect for this river so I set it up … probably the first time one had ever been used up there! None of the people I had spoken with had ever heard of it before so I thought it might be effect … boy was I right! One fish after another … huge trout, grayling, dolly varden and arctic char! Just incredible!

About mid-afternoon, we stopped fish some promising “salmon” water ahead. Because the water was so clear, it was important to sneak up on the silvers … they are very spooky in clear water. So I carefully made my way within casting distance and “bang” … fish on! I had been using my 6 wt. rod for the other fish and just re-rigged it with a streamer ... I didn't have time to dig out my big stick for the salmon! Somehow I was able to land the 20lb. silver on 3x tippet with my 6 wt. rod! Pretty fun! After catching several salmon, the others moved into my spot and I climbed up onto a ledge so that I could better see down into the water. I would spot the fish and tell the others where to cast … we caught several other silvers this way. Finally, the fish moved up stream from us and we had to move on. I was fun to observe how they reacted to our presentations and to our presence.

We made camp that night downstream of a good looking run so after pitching our tent and while the others took their turn with dinner, I booked it upstream to the spot we passed over earlier. The bounce rig was on fire! Drift after drift produced incredible fish … 30” char, 24” grayling, 24” dollies, and 28” rainbow trout! They needed a crowbar to get me off the river that night!

The next morning the weather was beautiful after the fog burned off. In fact, it stayed partly cloudy most of the day! We had great fishing as we made our way downstream and really enjoyed the A-typical day! Every place we stopped had evidence of bear activity … tracks and scat everywhere, partially eaten salmon, etc. We didn’t have any up close and personal bear encounters, but we did see a couple as we made our way down the river. We were glad that these were the only bear encounters for us on this trip!

Weather: That night the weather turned for the worst, raining and blowing all night! It was so bad that the tent kept smacking down on us with each wind gust throughout the night! In fact, the weather was so brutal, we didn’t even attempt to leave our tents until later next morning. The wind finally eased up a little enough for us to break camp and get back on the river. It never stopped raining and blowing the rest of the trip! We had to keep forging ahead though, in order to make it down the river in a timely manner. We found a good camp site later that day and made camp early so we could get out of the weather.

The next day, Monday, was wet and cold but not as windy … thank goodness! As it turned out, it was our best fishing day of our trip! We were able to catch a lot of silvers along the way, stopping at each hole and fishing it until it shut down. I fly fished the entire trip, while the others mostly used spinning gear to make the long casts necessary to reach the salmon. My right hand finally started hurting me so bad that I had to stop fly fishing. Let me say that again, I finally reached the point that I had fished too much … is that even possible?!! Yes, it was! To this day, my hand is still swollen and sore with little improvement since getting back home. Maureen has convinced me that I need to go to the doctor to get it diagnosed! I’m pretty sure he is going to say that I have “flyfishingitis” and that abstinence and time are all I will need to recover! Hope it doesn’t take too long …

The tide: That night we made our last camp on the river. We found the highest gravel bar we could and set up camp. We knew we were within a mile or so of our take out point based on the GPS coordinate we had been given. Sometime around 2 am, we awoke to just in time to see the water only a couple of feet away! After some concerned shouts, we were all up and stowing our sleeping bags and pads, getting dressed and putting on our waders! Within 10 minutes, the water was coming in our tent just as I got my foot into my wading boots! By the time we had our tents down the water was knee deep. We threw our gear into the boats and drug them up onto the tundra grass as the tide continued to rise. We just had to wait there in the blackness, until the sun came up five hours later. Oh, did I mention it was raining and blowing the entire time! That wind right off the Behring Sea is pretty cold at 3:00 am! Those were the longest hours of my life (except for maybe the several hours of darkness just after the Guatemala earthquake back in 1976)!

Finally the tide receded and it got light! We made our way downstream to the take out point. Once we found it, we had to unload the boats and portage them up over the tundra to a flooded area where we reloaded them and pushed them a long way to the road. There we unloaded the gear again, disassembled the boats and waited a couple more hours until the pick-up guy came! That was one of the most miserable mornings of my life … cold, wet, and exhausted! Finally the kid came with the truck. We loaded the gear into his truck and trailer and he took us about 20 miles to an air strip in the Eskimo village of Quinahagak where we again waited for the other half of our group to arrive an hour or so later. What a reunion when we were all back together! It was fun to hear about their trip as well as regale them with stories from ours. We ended up donating our leftover food and camp equipment to the lady at the airstrip … she was thrilled! We spent the next couple of hours waiting for our plane ride back to Bethel continuing to recount the events of each of our unique trips!

Finally our planes arrived and we made our way back to Bethel … to a hot shower and clean, dry clothes! We reorganized our gear and made ready for our flights back into civilization! It seemed to take forever to check all of our gear at the Bethel airport, but we finally made it on to the very full flight back to Anchorage. Once there, we made our way to the airport Chile’s restaurant (apparently a tradition from years past). Each of us had different flights to catch so we said our goodbyes and off we went. I, again, was flying standby on the 1:30 am flight back to Utah. It was oversold and I did not get on. Maureen was worried about me not making that flight and she was already working on getting me back home … by now it was nearly 4 am back in Utah. She was able to get me a ID90 ticket on an Alaska Air flight into Seattle around 5 am. Once in Seattle, I tried to board two Delta flights back to SLC but they were also oversold. She finally was able to purchase a ZED fare on a Southwest flight round that left Seattle about 3:30 pm. Whew … what an ordeal to get home! She picked me up at the airport around 6:00 pm only to have to turn around and go back for her evening flight she had to work that night!

This trip did not entirely cure me of Alaska, but it did help me check this sort of trip off my bucket list for good! I am tired, sore and sleepy … nothing a little time won’t cure! I am already thinking of my next adventure … this time it will be with a guide, a bed and a shower!