Packing Up
Shawn came out the last day to help me break camp and drive Dan's boat back to the lower river camp where I reunited with Ron and Buzz. We had a bonfire drank the last of our beer then woke and finished breaking that camp. After loading everything into planes, puling of our outboards and flying them out, and hauling the boats up onshore we loaded ourselves into Dan's plane and headed back to the lodge.
Enjoying an ice cold beer that's not a Budweiser. Thanks Dan.
Got to enjoy some great scenery on the ride home.
Final approach on Lake Aleknagik.
Izavieknik
Since I had the day off I loaded up a bunch of gas and took a trip. The plan was to go 20 miles up river to its headwaters at Togiak Lake, then cross the 10 mile lake, see how far I could make it up the next river, the Izavieknik, and if possible make it all the way to Upper Togiak Lake.
The river gets smaller and smaller the closer you get to the lake.
Standing in Togiak Lake looking into the beginnings of the Togiak River.
About to head across the lake.
At the mouth of the Izavieknik.
Checking it out.
Thought about turning around but didn't.
I got to this island and didn't have enough water to get around either side. On my GPS it looked like I was only about two miles from Upper Togiak Lake. Maybe I'll be able to make it next year if the water isn't so low.
Caught some pretty Dolly Varden.
Headed back across the lake and home.
Sockeye
I've wanted to get some shots of the Sockeye podding up and spawning from up above and finally found a good place for it. I stayed for a while hoping some bear would come and fish but had no such luck.
Coho
Finally caught the first Silver Salmon of the season. Better really late than never I suppose.
Kemuk
Yesterday I packed my bags, took the cook tent from what is now the lower river camp and moved 30 miles upriver to the Kemuk camp where I'll live by myself until the end of the season. Weather permitting Dan will fly in to guide with me and bring me supplies, otherwise I'll have to entertain myself.
Met the new neighbors.
Drove around and checked out the new neighborhood.
It's alright up here.
Weather Day
No work today, the weather is to bad at the lodge for the planes to leave. It's terrible here on the Togiak too.
Fire Damage
I climbed up onto the tundra today to check out the fire damage.
Good to be Back
Camp has been set up again, everything smells like smoke and some of the tundra is still smoldering but the fire has mostly burned itself out. It burned to just up behind our camp but nothing was destroyed. It was nice having hot showers for a while but even better to be back on the Togiak.
Leaving Again
The last few days at the lodge have taught me that I definitely enjoy camp life more. Buzz has learned the same lesson and after learning I'll be returning to the Togiak for good tomorrow while he stays behind he looks into the possibility of becoming a stowaway.
Buzz had to stay, I'll be sleeping at Togiak River Lodge for at least another night or two and it will be a lot of work setting up camp again but it's nice to be leaving again.
Commuting to Work
The last few days Buzz and I have been been flying out to the Togiak and back again. Waking up at 5:00 AM instead of 7:00 AM is a drag but getting to watch the fire from the air has been a cool perk.
Back to the Lodge (again)
If visions of relaxing on our new front porch and dining on prime rib seemed to good to be true it turns there was a good reason for it. On the morning satellite phone check in with the lodge I'm told Dan is going to come try and get Buzz and I out and back to the lodge, Ron is going to stay behind and look after our boats. We go down river to the landing zone and wait. And wait. Then we wait some more.
It's still very smoky and eventually we learn over the satellite phone that Dan had to put the plane down on a lake to wait it out. Maybe we'll get to go back and eat prime rib? Beavers engines have a very distinctive sound and eventually we hear one somewhere out in the smoke. Dan has come to rescue us, I guess that's what he thinks he's doing anyway.
"Kind of smoky, huh?" I say to Dan, as I get in the co pilot seat. "It'll be fine but we have to go to Rainbo camp get some fuel, and drop off a motor so we can wait it out there a little more, we might even spend the night", he says. Sounds promising.
Rainbo Camp is located right on the coast, on an estuary visible to the right. We'll land on the pond to the left and walk the outboard we brought across a floating plank walkway, everything comes and goes from this camp that way.
Dan calls the lodge to tell them what we're doing.
The smoke has been a bit of a problem at Rainbo Camp the last few days too and we show Tim, the camp cook, some pictures of the fire from the air.
Kaiser is happy to see us too.
Guests spend the night at Rainbo so they have a much fancier kitchen and dining tent than we have on the Togiak. Luckily we don't have to sleep the floor of it though.
The smoke lets up a little, the Beaver has been refueled, we take off and pass over Matty and Garrett on our way back to the lodge.
Abandoning Camp
Not to sound pessimistic but when you sign up to work a season in Alaska the only thing you really know for certain is that at some point you're going to have to deal with things you'd really rather not have to deal with. In a way this can be fun and certainly adventurous but sometimes it takes a while to see it as anything but a huge pain in your ass. This would be one of those times.
This is what we woke up to this morning, and this is before it got much worse. After two days of favorable winds and somehow managing to find windows to get planes in things have clearly shifted.
I realize I never took a picture of camp without the smoke screen so I should point out there are supposed to be quite a few mountains back there. Looking the other way, that little orange dot in the sky would be the sun on an otherwise clear day.
After a couple satellite phone conversations with the lodge I'm told it's ultimately my call on whether or not we break camp. Ten minutes later after even more smoke rolls in I call them back and tell them we're about to evacuate down river to the Togiak River Lodge who had already offered us a place to stay if things got bad. Even that could prove to not be a long term solution but for now it's much further from the fire than we are at the moment.
We have a lot of work ahead of us so Buzz makes some hash browns.
We take the tent tops down and throw them, along with everything else that might burn, on the other side of the river. It's still possible the fire could jump the river but there isn't room to take it all with us. Ron lowers the flag and we prepare to make the fifteen mile trip downriver to Togiak River Lodge, we've called ahead to warn them and are told hot showers will be waiting for us!
We load our personal equipment, the camp radio, and our fuel into boats. Tow the two spare boats to a place they might be safe and continue downriver to one of the best showers I've ever had, a hot meal and even salad, something completely unheard of where we just came from.
No pictures of the Togiak River Lodge unfortunately. Kevin, who runs the place put us up in our own house just down from it though and agreed to feed us at the lodge for as long as we needed. There would be prime rib tomorrow, we seemed to have had it made. Or so we thought.
Tundra Fire
It's been a very hot and dry summer so far but last night a strong thunderstorm rolled through. At some point around 3 AM the tent lit up like a lightbulb followed by a huge thunder clap, I remember thinking "damn, I hope that doesn't start a tundra fire" before rolling over and going back to sleep. In the morning the storm had passed leaving behind a gorgeous sunny day, Buzz and I drove down river to meet Reuben's plane and I'd all but forgotten about my thought the night before. Then on the drive back up river to meet Reuben again I started noticing the smoke and at every bend in the river it became clearer exactly how close to camp it was. After getting back to camp the only positive thing that could be said was the wind was carrying the smoke away from us, for now anyway.
We took a short hike across the Tundra to get a better idea of exactly where it was and in the thirty minutes between these two pictures you can see it's already burning much hotter.
Tundra is mostly mosses and lichens and when it's dry its basically just a few hundred thousand acres of kindling, exactly what you'd look for when trying to start a campfire. I've seen tundra fires in the past but none burning as hot as this one. Of course I've never seen tundra as dry as this either, while it's usually like walking on a sponge this felt more like walking on popcorn as it crackled beneath our feet with each step. Without another rain storm nothing that was about to happen would be good.
Back to the Lodge
Tomorrow is the first day guests will be arriving at the lodge and I found out via satellite phone this morning that, due to some people at the lodge still waiting on new Coast Guard licenses, I'll be heading back to help out for the first day then flying back out to the river with guests the next. When Dan showed up to get me I was surprised to see Eric from the Birch Creek camp in the co pilot seat of the Beaver. Actually there wasn't a seat, it was removed to fit some fancy tent doors so Eric is sitting on the floor with Stella, his Mini Australian Shepherd.
Bobby broke his arm and comes back early. He was replaced by Buzz who I just met for two minutes as he stepped on the plane and I got on.
Final approach on Lake Aleknagik.
Arrival on the Togiak
I've spent the last few days assembling equipment and today we began loading five outboard motors, two WeatherPort tents and everything else needed to live and work on the river for the next three months into the airplanes. After a 45 minute flight over some of the prettiest and wildest country imaginable we'll land on the Togiak River and begin the process of mounting boat motors and hauling gear down to the gravel bar that will become home.
The first planeloads contain ourselves and the boat motors. The boats are tied up in the trees over the winter. We'll haul the boats down and start mounting the motors while we wait for Reuben and Dan fly the rest of supplies out to us.
The pile begins to grow but there is still a lot more to come.
Reuben leaving after the last load of the day.
Home sweet home.
Fall Tundra
Arctic tundra is one of the more interesting and unique things you will ever see. The presence of permafrost a short distance below ground largely prohibits the growth of trees with the except along river and creek banks. Broad expanses of land are left to be covered entirely by small stringy grasses, small bushes, mosses and lichens. As the top layer of the earth begins to thaw in the summer the land takes on the feeling of a giant sponge on top of an endless sea of bowling balls.
A trek across the tundra is slow and difficult going but offers many rewards not limited to the presence of many edible berries. Blueberries, blackberries and salmonberries that you might see on large billowing bushes in other areas of the world grow in a dwarfed manner often right against the ground. Upon closer inspection what, from afar, looks like a large monotonous field of green and brown grass shows itself to be one of the more varied and diverse biomes in the world.
As summer turns to fall the true nature of the tundra becomes more visually apparent. The taller grasses die off, the lichens turn a stark white color and the small plants take on vivid colors similar to fall colors on to perennial trees further south. The fall tundra fields are a striking scene viewed across a distance against the evergreen trees near drainages as well as when examined closely at your feet.
DamNation
I don't want to fill this thing up with plugs and/or political rantings but if you find yourself in the mood to watch an environmental documentary I would highly suggest "DamNation". Available on Netflix as well as iTunes, this is a great documentary about a very interesting issue you could be entirely unaware of.
The Narrows
Just upriver from St. Joe, Arkansas "The Narrows" is one of the best places to climb up and view the Buffalo National River from above. Worn away on one side by the Buffalo and Richland Creek on the other all that remains of the bluff is a thin spine which rises steadily upwards, a fairly easy climb up but a slightly unnerving decent back down.
As the fog begins to lift the last wisps outline the path the river takes through the hills of the Ozarks.
The view downriver, still under a light fog.
With the fog fully lifted you can start to make out "Skull Rock" around the bend, one of the most unique bluffs on the river.
The river has worn a series of small caves into Skull Rock large enough for boats to pass through.
Redesign
I'm taking some time to redesign this web site before heading to Alaska again and figured I'd try putting a blog on it this time too. Please feel free to use the comments section if you want, It would be nice to hear from you. While I'm certainly not the only person I know who largely shuns Facebook I do have some regret about that from time but it mostly has to do with it's transition to more of an advertising engine than a way to really stay in touch with people.
I plan on taking my iPad with me to Alaska and using this as something of a journal while there. My internet access will likely be even more limited this go-round but if nothing else I'll post everything in one big drop when I return home where it hopefully won't be lost amongst the sea of ads and "suggestions" on Facebook.
At any rate I'm not entirely sure what will wind up getting posted here over the long-term, hopefully some photos and ramblings on what I'm up to and thinking. I would definitely welcome any feedback on what you would like to see more (or less) of. Also if you haven't heard from me in a while please use the contact section to drop me an email, that is definitely the best way to stay in touch.
Abandoned Mink Farm -Nulato Hills, Alaska