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.