Pictures From Alaska

After having moved to Fairbanks, the Gulkana River has become something of the getaway river. Lots of good trout up stream, beautiful valley and the best Grayling fishing in the state (or so I've read). Also makes for a great class II/III rafting trip from the headwater to Sourdough.

My Dad made a trip up to Alaska to visit me for a month. I managed to clear my schedule for some adventures. From fishing Silver Salmon to fly fishing rainbows and hooking into some large lake trout. Covered a lot of the state with a bag full of lemon pepper and fishing rods. Bird Creek, Kenai River, Montana Creek, Cleer Creek, and even up to the Dietrich and Atigun Rivers. We hunted and shot black bear. We drove the Dalton Highway and hunted Brooks Range Dall Sheep where I took a couple long shots at a full curl Ram. We spent three straight weeks camping, fishing, and hunting Alaska in its best forms. here are thirty pictures I put up to highlight those three weeks. It was a blast!

Here are some random other pictures as well...

Lots of other slide shows to come when I get them uploaded..

Mountain and Rock Climbing

A Few Short Trip Reports from Climbing Excursions In Alaska (I'm just putting up a few).

The steel pierces the frozen wind blown snow a mere half inch. Creaking with every step I take, is the satisfaction of making ground and the uneasy feeling of knowing that is another foot in addition to the already over five hundred I would fall if I were to slip. My thighs burn and I stop precariously in the steep gulley to look around. I see peaks glaring across the ancient valley that once carried a large glacier. Alaska seems barren and empty in the winter. Following the ridge line down from the summit I'm working on getting to are what looks to be several false summits. I try not to bother looking down incase I regret telling myself, oh its not that high, just go for it. What am I doing?... no rope, no helmet, or even a first-aid kit in the dead of winter, climbing in Alaska. I only have a mountaineering axe and crampons with which I would probably end up jabbing into myself on accident if I were to fall. Regardless of how I managed to convince myself to go ahead with the climb and my current situation, I couldn't help but smile and look out across the landscape. Its an odd feeling because as much as I want to just turn around and enjoy the view, I really don't want to slip at this point. Ahead of me is a couple that I joined for the climb (I have no idea who the hell they are, I just met them in the parking lot but, the girls not bad looking.. working as a roped team they made quick work of the gulley and I followed suit quietly bitching to myself for not having any safety lines.

Almost two thirds of the way up the gulley, the steepness decreased but, now it became so windblown that the crunching was turning into a scratching as i had to step on ice crusted scree minimally frozen into place. Eventually reaching the summit ridge, we stopped to add a layer for now we were getting beat by the wind from the adjacent valley. The three of us began traversing up the ridge line which was littered with large rocks leading us through a maze of false summits and highly exposed corniced areas. After a good twenty minutes or so, we came to a large cornice overlooking the north face of the peak. After careful consideration we decided on a "safe" spot to take a look over the edge at the 2000' vertical foot drop. both amusing and thrilling. we continued on and I was starting to slow down a bit (it had been six hours of constant climbing by this point). The last obstacle we came to was an avalanche shoot... It didn't even phase me at this point in the day.. we were high enough on the mountain that the risk was minimal. I traversed straight across without even thinking about it.

We reached the summit shortly after and another amazing view came to be. This view is indigenous to Alaska. When you stand on top of a mountain in Colorado, the Rockies sprawl out in broad large peaks with occasional rock routes but, in Alaska, the peaks are jagged and jut straight up from the ocean with a lot of vertical gain.

I started rock climbing back in 1997 when my friend John Donahue invited me to go and have been off and on ever since.. I build up into the 5.12's then I don't climb for a while and then build back up... I'm currently in the building back up phase. Bar none, the best climber that I know is Nathanial Walker. We grew up in the same town and I've know him and his family for the better part of my life. Having climbed with him on several occasions, I've seen him make a 5.12 look like a 5.8. I've seen him climb a sixty foot 5.10 free-solo without flinching. Out of the few times I've climbed with Nathanial, it never failed that I would end up saying, "what the.. how the hell... no way you just did that.." and I'm pretty good!... Its truly crazy to go climbing with someone who is surely one of the best out there.

"This was the Shot of the Month a few years back (If I remember right, it was at Rifle in Colorado).

Working Strange Ranger 5.13d on the Project Wall. After having had only three ascents in previous six years. nathanial is finishing up the crux section here, a desperate rightward traverse on bad slopers capped with this big lunge to a jug."

Photo by: Dave Pegg.

I'm sure I'll put a bunch of my climbing pictures on here at some point along with other mountaineering stuff but alas, I have other stuff I need to be doing right now... Probably after my Kodiak trip.

John Donahue working his way up Un-named 5.12 C/D a couple blocks from my parents house in Los Alamos, New Mexico. He's pretty much a badass as well except when he has sand in his vag. sometimes it takes a lot of arm twisting to get him going... especially these days...

Pre-Kodiak Thoughts

Nearly every year at some point I open the paper and read about a mauling or attack that ended someone’s life. It almost never fails that the individual was doing something utterly ridiculous or in some fashion, provoking the bear. Having spent nearly eight years camping and hunting in Alaska, I’m constantly amazed by the stupidity of “outdoorsmen” and others such as Timothy Treadwell. In my seasoned outdoor experiences, I have come across numerous grizzlies, some of which quite close but, I have only been confronted by one grizzly that made me nervous. A juvenile grizzly about three or four years of age walked right up to me and my dad trying to get the trout we were carrying. Even then, yelling at the bear a mere thirty feet away managed to make him change his mind. I never even took my rifle off my shoulder (I can’t say the same for dad, for that was his first wild grizzly experience). No doubt, there are indeed circumstances where a bear will “hunt” a human for food, but these are very rare and we have to realize, when in the woods, we are not highest rank on the food chain. I am a firm believer that the vast majority of incidents can be avoided with proper etiquette and knowledge of how bears act and react. Every time I come across a bear in the woods, surely my heart beats a bit faster but, I’m no longer scared as much as I am thrilled that I can share part of my day with an animal as powerful and magnificent as a bear is. You all know that since I spent a good paragraph bitching about how people act and provoke bear attacks that I will probably end up getting eaten by a bear. I just hope that by bringing up this fact, it’s more of a double jinx and that I will get back in one piece.




“There can be no death any more horrifying than one of a bear attack. Even the mere thought of a bear mauling a person sends shivers to the most seasoned and experienced outdoorsman. It addresses a pronounced deep and primal fear within all humans, the fear of death of being killed by a wild animal.”





Jim Oltersdorf of Soldotna, Alaska commenting on Ken Cates (Soldotna) death after he was bitten on the head by a Coastal Brown Bear crushing his skull in May of 1999.





According to the Alaska State Department of Fish and Game, Kodiak Brown Bears are considered a subspecies of the grizzly bear living exclusively in the Kodiak Archipelago in isolation for over 10,000 years. These bears are the largest in the world standing over ten feet high when standing on his hind legs and five feet at the shoulder on all fours. Weighing up to 1,500 pounds, Kodiak’s bears are often touted as the world’s largest land carnivore man eaters. Ironically fatalities from these bears are few in number (likely due to the inaccessibility of the area) however; even with few people exploring the archipelago, maulings occur almost annually. Is it the testosterone thrill that some pay 10,000-21,000 dollars to hunt these massive Kodiak bears? Regardless of the motives, every year, nearly five hundred people from around the world get a chance to hunt these bears and many of them go home empty handed, some with trophies and occasionally one with scars and a story for the grand kids. So what is my motive? To explore a place I have never been and to experience the mecha of bear hunting. Regardless if we shoot a bear or not, I know that I absolutely love being out and about. I know positively, that when I wake up in the morning and crawl out of the tent shivering cold to the bone to start a pot of coffee... I’ll look around, watching the snow capped mountains gain an outline at dawn and at that moment, all the drama, all the gossip, all the work, every mundane day to day crap everyone has to deal with will be gone. I will sip my coffee with a huge smile on my face because this is where I want to be.





I’ve had some opportunities in life to go and do some amazing things... I’ve stalked antelope on the prairie, bear in Alaska and New Mexico, elk on the edge of the Valle Grande, deer in Lincoln National Forrest, buffalo along the Chitina River, dall sheep in the Brooks Range, I’ve hiked through the Rocky Mountains and Sangre De Cristos, fished brook trout in Montana streams, climbed the majority of Colorado’s 14’ers, Fished islands in the Aleutians that probably hadn’t been fished since WWII. Caught 200 lb + halibut while watching orcas swim around the boat in a bay where we could see a smoking volcano only ten miles away. I’ve hooked Tuna trolling off the coast of Vancouver B.C... I’ve stood in the crows nest of a crabbing boat in the Bering sea with thirty foot waves and seventy mile an hour wind. I could go on and on but with every adventure I go on, I return and then I begin to think of yet another that I can’t wait to go on….



This made me laugh... I get an e-mail from my mom... her departing words to me...

"Please be safe and have fun. Are you done with

high risk activiites (not the kind in bed). Please say yes."

love mom

Afognak Island Here I Come…… So I suppose this means that if I don't have a trip report up by the first weekend in May, then uhm, I'm pretty much gonna be spread around Afognak in piles of bear shit.

Commercial Fishing Excerpt

An Excerpt From My Six Months At Sea.


(I'll Put Pictures In When I get Around To It. This was written when I was 20 years old) If there was one thing I learned from spending six months traveling around Alaska on a Crabbing boat was what a hard days work really entails... 9-5 .. pish posh.. thats nothing.. We sometimes worked 40 hours straight.. When the fishing is good, you work until its not good anymore. Makes me realize just how easy I got these days now that I set my own hours.


A small warn yellow duffle bag slid down the shoot following an Alpine Lowe backpack. Pushing through the herd of people I grabbed by bags and headed out to the white Chevy Z71 in the parking lot. Dressed casually in a T-shirt and jeans, my captain drove me to his Seattle house explaining that he filled the positions for the remaining crew with a kid from Oregon and the same engineer as the previous summer. I crashed on the couch of the captain’s house in Seattle for the night. Captain is an interesting fellow. Having to keep everything in order constantly he was nearly obsessive compulsive, but it worked well for him because of what he does for a living. Owning two houses and playing in the stock market, he diligently keeps himself busy with either construction or fishing. His little poodle of a dog is the one thing that made my head turn. It just didn’t fit. Here was a man, a construction worker, a commercial fishing boat captain, yelling “here Ginger” at his rabbit sized poodle. (Above, the crabbers lined up at Seattle's Fishermans Terminal, I worked on the Norseman II, a 120' crabbing boat). He obviously was a man who was willing to take chances to get ahead in life; this is where my respect for him came from. In the boom years of the crabbing industry, Captain was out there in the ferocious Bering Sea in the ill-equipped boats of the time. Sometimes working the near constant launching and hauling of crab pots for all but the holidays. He gave me a chance, a New Mexican boy who had seen waves in National Geographic articles about the surf.
The morning rolled around and a quick walk several houses down the steep street provided excellent Danish’s at their local market. The three of us loaded the Chevy with rakes, shovels and wheel barrow and drove a couple miles down to Fisherman’s Terminal. We pulled along a small seining boat tied neatly to the wooden dock. In the middle of a serious overhaul, the boat had little paint and tools sprawled across the deck. A kid jumped out of the boat and hopped into the bed of the truck wedging himself between the wheel barrow and cab. I asked what was going on and he replied since he was letting me stay at his house until we were ready to leave on our voyage, I was going to help him move some wood chips to landscape his other suburban home. Fair enough I suppose. (To the left is a plane wreck we came across in the Aleutian Islands) Driving through Seattle, Captain pointed out buildings he did construction on during the winter months. Half an hour passed as we weaved through the horrid Seattle traffic until we arrived at his second home.
Captain built this house. Its long gravel driveway passed a large pile of woodchips and neatly mowed grass as it led to his dream home. This house was the one he was supposed to grow old in with his woman. Things obviously didn’t work out for whatever reason since this house was rented out and he lived as a single in his other home. Moving a little wood wasn’t a bad price to pay but this was a pile high enough to consider mountaineering.
We all hopped out of the truck and I met the guy who jumped on at the dock. Lars, A muscular kid about my age, was from Denmark. He had heard about the vast abundance of money available in the fishing industry and was in the United States on a work visa for the summer. Having lived in various countries around the world Lars was intriguing because of his wealth of knowledge and captivating stories. I tried to remember what he said as we started tell jokes and stories as we started to spread out the wet smelly wood chips. Near the summit of the chip pile a yellow dump truck moved along with its load of chips. Pushing the overloaded truck along a young boy, who lived in the house was attempting to help but, was getting in the way. Somewhere around 30 yards of damp heavy woodchips were spread out in a manner of hours and we headed back to his other home for the evening. After I showered, we baked some sockeye on a propane grill. Eating the fish, we sat on the back deck of his house watching the sun set. Night came pretty quick with a full stomach of salmon and I crashed quietly on the couch nudging the rather vocal white poodle out of my spot.
The next day came and again the little walked provided several freshly made pudding filled donuts. We sat around the living room watching the morning news while the Australian read previous day’s Wall Street Journal.
The boat slammed down on wave, waking me in the middle of a gale. What day is it? How long have I been laying here? Four days have past since we left Seattle’s Fisherman’s Terminal. My bunk, one of four crammed into a room most people wouldn’t consider large enough for a bathroom is drenched in sweat. Dehydrated and groggy I wrestled out my nest of sweat and stumbled out into the dining area. A pan tightly fastened to the stove was filling the boat with the smell of onions, black pepper and meat. My stomach quenches and I grab onto the wall for balance as we head into yet another wave. The diesel caterpillar engine and generators whine and fill the air with noise. Where is everyone? I smell cigarette smoke--I bet the engineer is smoking under the protected deck. I work my way up to the narrow stairs into wheel house where I find the other deck hand and captain laughing as the bow of the boat pounded down into another wave sending water screaming at the thick windows of the forward house. They were enjoying the gale. Captain smiles and says “well guess who woke up”? How long have I been out? I mutter. For nearly four days I hadn’t moved an inch. Feeling a little better I retreated back down stairs and followed the smell of smoke outside. The engineer was right where I thought he was. I longed for a cigarette but was satisfied with the mist from the broken waves filling my lungs and soothing my face. Another big wave hit and I grabbed onto a bar to keep me from loosing my balance. I ask myself why on earth would I get a job on fishing boat when I knowingly get seasick; again nonetheless. A painful dry heaving session left me weak, but remarkably, I felt better.
Eight days had passed since we had left Seattle and vomiting was all but a memory as I stood out on the bow looking with enthusiasm as we approach the land which I have grown to love, Alaska. Over the sky-scraping mountains the sun turned the clouds endless shades of pink and red. Night fell and I would awake at our destination, King Cove, Alaska.
I leaped out of bed after the captain called up and throw on my shoes and headed out on the deck. Tying up the 120 foot boat is not very difficult but the trick is to handle the three inch thick rope without having your hand ripped off by the boats momentum. With the captain yelling from the wheel house the boat docked and I jumped down to the dock to stand on land. Lightly swaying as I walked to the pay phone to call my girlfriend and let her know I made it back to Alaska.
Our emergency getaway craft was something of a joke. A hole was put into the floor of the 12' LUND skiff by forklift leaving the aluminum hull with a baseball sized hole. With a few screws and plate, the hole was carefully sealed and our vintage smoking 2 stroke outboard attached. A strike began as opening day started and lasted for nearly a week as fisherman negotiated their price with the large companies. A restless felling set in and we all went exploring on the nearby Unga Island. I fished for halibut off the boat and for dollies in the creeks the flowed from the volcano. We eventually were put on contract as the fisherman started to settle and were sent to Bristol Bay. The Bering Sea was quiet this time, thankfully, because it has ability to become some of the deadliest water in the world. For several seemingly endless weeks of crane driving and making trips to and from the bay area and even making trip back up the peninsula a good day to take fish in the shadow of the smoking Pavlof Volcano; which turned out to be more than we bargained for.
Arriving early at volcano, the lone two fishing boats hadn’t caught anything yet so it was a day off in the shade. With the binoculars we spotted a small creek running into the ocean about a half mile off. The engineer and I decided to take our barely floating skiff in for a fishing trip seeking the delicious relative to the Arctic Char, the Dollie. We pulled up onto the shore and walked up the little beach to the top of the little hill to take a look at the creek and its origins. A massive Coastal Brown Bear stood out against shrubbery 200yards off and looked at us nonchalantly and turned its head walking up the steep hill out of sight. The engineer said he will be back but for now, its time to go fishing. Our captain watching the bear in the binoculars from the boat had tried to radio us the sighting, but to no avail since our radio was left neatly packed in the skiff. I put on a little spinner and threw out a cast. Retrieving the large Pink Salmon with the small light weight rod proved time consuming and fun, but I wanted the Dollies. The little creek swarmed with salmon and with every cast I either snagged a salmon or one aggressively tried to swallow my spinner whole. Discouraged thinking there were no Dollies I moved into in the faster water and immediately had a nice little Dollie hooked. The grass, near shoulder height was hard to move around in so I kept to the shore of the creek where I stepped in bears tracks wherever I moved. Looking up stream at the engineer to see how he was doing a large brown head popped up out of the grass a mere 100 yards behind him and then disappeared. I motioned to him that the bear was on the creek up ahead of him so the engineer retreated back towards me. I am weary of such a potentially dangerous invisible animal near I constantly looked around while I cast for the Dollies. Every ten minutes or so the large bear would stand on its hind legs and look around, it was then that we would spot him and then move around accordingly; during the ten minutes in between sightings we had no idea where he was. After not sighting our friend for a shot while we stepped up on the little hill we originally climbed over to try to spot our large advancing invisible bear. We could not see him, but when we turned and looked out at our boat, it was not where we left it. The tide had come in and dislodged our boat from its position up on the rocks and was floating out in the water several hundred feet offshore. Quickly grabbing my fishing rod we ran down to the shore closest to our floating skiff. I waded out waist deep and started casting out to the boat trying snagging something in hopes of reeling it back in. The spinner was too light and I could not cast the distance that was required. While stripping down to his underwear the engineer told me to get him a fire going because when he got back he would be cold. I immediately went on a search for wood while trying to keep an eye out for out friend and the engineer. A daunting task considering there is not a single tree naturally growing in this environment. With several small pieces of drift wood and a portion of my pants the fire was started. The engineer had gained ground on our drifting skiff. The riptide was not only moving our boat further out to sea but down the shore line and I quickly found fire in the wrong location. I ran down the beach several hundred yards and started the fire building task once more. Ten minutes had passed and I could see the 40 degree water had the engineer slowing down. The skiff clearly was clearly out of reach. I yelled to the engineer to come back and he stopped swimming and treaded water facing me. I could barely hear his weak voice but the message was clear, “I can’t make it, come get me”. The biggest decision of my life is right before my eyes. If I swim out I could reach him but could I make it back? I decided that if I swam for him I would be in the exact same predicament that he was in, so I encouraged him to swim in on his own. For whatever reason confused or disoriented he started swimming further out. I kept yelling and eventually coaxed him in to the point where I new I could safely get out and back. With the engineer curled up around the little fire, I noticed the anchored on our main boat had been pulled and the remaining two on board maneuvering their way to the skiff. I ran back up the beech and got the engineers clothes and put them on. His body was like that on an ice burg, light blue and cold. After having to wait for the skiff to float into deep water before safely perusing, the two had the skiff in hand. Vintage as the outboard was, with the throttle wide open the skiff bounced from wave to wave towards shore. The deckhand smiled and said “Ugh! I made fire!” pertaining to the movie watched the night before with Tom Hanks. He soon realized the situation and became serious as we lifted the semi-conscious engineer into the skiff and whined the outboard back to the boat. The captain who had seen the bear and saw the engineer on the shore but not in the water assumed the bear attacked and was surprised not to see blood. I told him he had been in the water for nearly a half hour. The captain hopped into a bunk with the engineer and we covered them with what blankets and sleeping bags we could find. Eventually the engineer regained this coherent ness and before me and the other deckhand had returned from the creek again with the fish we had left he was outside smoking a cigarette waiting to gut his catch. A scary scene and definitely a clear memory for years to come, the fisherman showed up with their fish. I worked all night moving fish with the crane and vacuum until the fishing boats were empty. We delivered our fish and quickly we’re sent back up to Bristol Bay.
After receiving no fish at the Nushagak River we were told to head out to Dutch Harbor (Unalaska Island) in the Aleutian Islands. Immediately following the call for Dutch Harbor the anchor was pulled and a course across the Bering Sea was scribbled into the log book.
Looking at the weathered sea charts it was easy to determine that we were further out in the Bering Sea then the King Crabbers go. With that in mind I was a little nervous as I tried to climb into my bunk as the floor moved back and forth. I awoke for my shift of driving the boat to find we were headed in the wrong direction. Apparently in the night another call was placed and we were sent back to King Cove. Arriving in King Cove we were handed a few boxes of gear and sent back out towards Dutch Harbor. Unimak Pass is nestled between Unimak Island and the rest of the true Aleutian Islands and is where the warmer Pacific Ocean butts up against the frigid Bering Sea. This is where our only obstacle lays; Unimak Pass. With a little wind a froth of waves and irregular currents often turn deadly. This is where the weather captain says, “...is sometimes so bad that you can not tell if you are going forwards or backwards.” We passed the last smoking volcano on the Alaskan peninsula and started our voyage into the Aleutian Islands. The glossy water swirled as we headed into the pass but not even a single gust of wind jutted out from any of the volcano’s and our pass was uneventful. The dolphins raced the boat until their boredom ended the show. We settle down in the wheel house smelling the cooking turkey in the oven and watched the humpback whales breech off in the distance blowing water high into the sky. Occasionally a pod of killer whales would appear and show their massive 5 foot long drooping dorsal fins only to dive again.
Dutch Harbor’s night lights were more inviting than the water as the diesels engines were cut down to move up to the dock. We tied up to the same dock that during WW II the Japanese sunk one our large Navy ships. WWII unfortunately is not the only event that sunk ships in the area. Routine storms pound in from the Bering Sea crushing sturdy boats with winds pressing 100mph and 50 foot waves. The shore lines show all over the Aleutians, the importance of paying close attention to weather patterns. The skeletons of boats that never came back to the harbor are seen occasionally, rusting away the bunks that once held a hard working crew.
Morning came and showed exactly why I have grown to love this land. The beyond green hills with hill mountainsides sparsely covered with snow even during these summer month of July The eerie island still sports machine gun dugouts throughout the town of Unalaska and scattered around its green hills. A true fisherman’s town, Unalaska and its surrounding water has arguably the best halibut fishing in the world. Dutch Harbor, the hub of commercial fishing in Alaska and is home to the infamous Elbow Room. The bar caters too many of the sea going men who pass through this center community, waving the pockets full of money, hard earned from pulling their crab pots and surviving the season. The bar is properly named for the many rough and rowdy men who want to get in a little fun before taking on the Bering Sea once more.
We awaited the call as the small planes circled around the bay in attempt to find the enormous schools of fish coming to spawn. With a clear go, all the boats cluttering the bay no longer idled. Nets littered the harbor and the fisherman started the daunting task of pulling their catch back to the boat. The disappointed look of the warn fisherman’s face is saddening. Some of them even came thousands of miles for the 15 minutes of Dutch Harbor herring fishing for nothing. A pile of jellyfish and other useless sea dwelling critters filled the bottoms of many of held the sad faces they will carry home. There were however, the few out of the bunch who hit the big leagues and had well over a hundred thousand pounds of herring, so much that they could not pull their nets on board. Our diesel kicked into gear and we pulled up to a boat with a net so heavy that the edge of the boat is only mere centimeters of going under water. (Above: Makushin Bay, a halibut fishermans dream) I lift the huge vacuum tube with the crane lowering one end into the net to the adjacent boat and turn on the Trans Vac pumping herring strait out of the water into our tanks filled with chilled water. Fishing boats waited and one by one as the Tender boats wondered around and vacuumed up there fish for them and started to head back home. The skies, most places filled with seagulls where littered with Bald Eagles swooping down picking up missed herring with their talons. We started back for King Cove, our heavy load lowering the boat into the water making the ride in the building wave’s bearable smoother. Arriving back in King Cove as the weather deteriorated, I happily climbed on shore and called my girlfriend. Over the next few days our herring load was emptied and we retreated off the dock in the bay and anchored up.
A horrid fishing season was leaving many people edgy about further contracts and the potential of being dropped from their current one. Standing on the deck of company’s favorite boat was soothing. After nearly a week of sitting on anchor staring at land we got a call and were told to report to Prince William Sound.
It was blowing hard when we left gusting well into the gale status but, luckily it was at our tail and made for a faster and smoother ride. Within a day we were working our way behind Kodiak Island. It is nice to get into the land of trees once more. The shore lines cluttered with trees and small creeks

Buffalo Hunting in Alaska

Buffalo Hunting (Chitina Herd, Alaska)

With only two permits awards per year to hunt the Chitina Herd, we applied and on the first try, obtained a permit. The odds of obtaining this very permit was 0.5%.

I left Fairbanks around 7:15pm heading south with no other directions to the rest of the group except a brief call and instructions that I had to park and walk across a bridge to the hotel in McCarthy. Sounded easy enough. The sky drew dark as I came into Delta Junction and worked my way down towards Paxson. Rabbits everywhere.. Must have been a good rain year... Twenty miles from Paxson, I had to slow down due to around fifty Caribou crossing the road. I gassed up in Glennallen and kept heading south to the Chitina turn off. It was nearly 11:30pm by the time reached Chitina and the bumpy two lane highway ended abruptly with with a sign that read 'One Lane Next 60miles'. Sure enough, I had heard the rumors, A one lane dirt road through the hills for the last sixty miles to town... Why don't they just pave the damn thing. I pressed on at 30mph for the next two hours and as abruptly as it begun, the road ended in a small parking lot with about six cars and 330 miles from Fairbanks. I knew I was in the right spot because the Craft's truck was there. I saw a man picking up some fire wood and I asked him if he knew where the bridge was to the hotel. I was pointed in the direction of the bridge and was told that the hotel was about a mile down that path.... That path? Why the heck can't you drive to the hotel.. who wants to book a hotel that you have to tote all your luggage too? (hindsight showed that the entire town of McCarthy was over that footbridge so just about everyone had to walk in.) I strapped on my head lamp and .44 mag to my belt and started the walk... Must be a rather large river, it was really loud and the foot bridge was around 100yards in length. I got a bit spooked after the bridge. maybe it was the sign regarding the bears and it being two in the morning.. I dunno. I just kept following the pathway until finally a mile later I arrived in McCarthy. I walked down the dirt road (downtown) and saw a sign that read like it was out of a western movie, "Ma Johnson's Hotel". I guess this is the hotel.. I walked in and and no one in sight.. just a little hand written note that said.. “Buddy Wenzel, Craft's in room 112”. Fair enough.. I wondered down the short hallway (just a rather large house with a bunch of rooms) and I could hear Dirk (Sr.) snoring... yup this is it.. I opened the door and saw and empty cot. I crashed immediately, only to wake a few hours later to the sound of a chain saw outside.

Our flight time was set for 9am so we got things rolling fairly quickly in the morning. Gathered our gear and made last minute decisions as to what would be left behind (60lb max /pp). Our pilot came and picked us up and drove us over to the airstrip where we threw everything into the back of the plane and jumped in. I hate planes, but small planes I really hate! I was afraid to move much in fear of hitting switches with my knees. We flew up valley for about 45 minutes skirting the cliffs and watching sheep run as we buzzed them. We then made several tight circles about 100 feet off the ground as the pilot scoped out the landing area.. It was a bumpy landing on the gravel bed near the Chitina River. We were here. We threw everything on the dirt and the pilot wasted no time leaving... Now we are stuck... It would probably take five days to hike to the nearest phone if you were walking hard. And of course shortly after the pilot left we realized we had forgotten some stuff... Always happens... Except this was rather important; Dr. Craft forgot his diabetic medications so we got a bit antsy and worried. But there was nothing we could do now, no satellite phone. We just have to take it easy on him and let him take his time and rest all he needs. After getting camp situated, Dirk (Sr.) layed down to rest while me and Dirk (Jr.) went for a scout. The two of them had flown around the area the day prior and had taken an aerial survey of the surroundings looking for bullafo so we knew there where at least four or five in the general proximity of camp. We walked a good four miles up the river bed uttlerly amused by how large the wolve tracks were and by the enormous grizzly bear tracks in the mud.. the claw marks were a good two and half inches from the pad so with the curve I bet they were easily over 3 1/2 inch claws. We looked hard for buffalo but could not find any. After four miles we decided to hit the shrubbery along the tree line for the walk back to camp. when we were about two miles out from camp we reached a small clearing with about a dozen or so five foot in diameter dug out beds in the sand.. these have to be where the buffalo are bedding down. We were checking each one to see how fresh they were, none of them were used since the last rain. Then I heard something and looked up, I saw a large buffalo about forty yards in front of me just staring me down. I motioned to Dirk that he was there... we were just stunned... He wasn't afraid, in fact after standing there for a few moments, we started moving around to his side in plane sight to make sure he was a male and then he quickly stepped broad side to show off his size to us.. He was huge... We decided to back off and leave him as is and walk back to camp and get Dirk (Sr.) to come take a look. We finished the eight mile trek and the three of us returned as night was falling, but could not locate the bull. We returned back to camp just as darkness fell. My legs were already a bit tired from the 12 mile walk today and if I only knew that this was going to be my easy day, I wouldn't have whined so much about it. Dirk (Sr.) crashed in his tent while me and Dirk (Jr.) sat around a camp fire for a bit and yapped a bit (mostly about his cousin, who I happened to be dating).

We got up early the next day and loaded up the rifles, Its been 24hrs since landing so its go time (Alasks law stipulates that you cannot hunt big game within 24hrs of flying in most circumstances). We walked up about a mile past where we saw the bull and Dirk (Sr.) took a rest while me and his son went into the bush to find the buffalo and then return to get his dad ( we figured it would be best way to keep his dad rested considering his lack of medication). We walked into the bush and made a sweep about a 1 1/2 miles down and then back up to his dad, but no buffalo only very fresh sign down where we turned around. It was thick, I climbed a tree and tried to get a vantage point, but still could not see.. It was just amazing how such a large animal can just disappear. After returning, all three of us made our way back to camp, via the shrubbery in hopes of seeing him a second time, to no avail. We arrived back at camp for lunch. Dirk (Sr.) took a rest while me and Dirk (Jr) scouted out the other side of camp. We made a 2 mile loop but with not fresh sign we decided that the Bull was still up in that area somewhere, we just had to widen our parameters. We walked back up the valley where we saw the bull but went the four miles we had done initially and then turned around to work the tree line like we did the first day. We walked back down into the early we were at in the morning and then continued deeper into in the brush over many small creeks with salmon and tons of bear activity. We popped out about the brush about a mile from camp. Dirk (Jr.) was a bit perturbed at the lack of Buffalo sighting for the day, and we started to head back aross the mile wide river bed to camp when I found a fresh bed and sign. I called back to Dirk to come check it out... This was fresh. I told him they were close! I followed the tracked out a ways and saw another bed and Dirk found more sign, this is good, more than one buffalo was just here...I was walking around trying to figure out which way they headed out by looking at their tracks when Dirk spotted them about 800 yards off working their way across the river bed towards our camp. I grabbed the Leica rangefinder/binoculars and sure enough, that was a big bull in the lead. I made Dirk a quick deal that I would run back and get his dad while he tried to get into shooting position himself. We wanted his dad to shoot it. I jogged parallel to the buffalo the mile back to camp and got Dirk (Sr) up and going.. I got him in a vector that would intersect the buffalo and told him where Dirk (Jr.) was in relation. I ran back down the the creek bed to Dirk (Jr.) and let him know where his dad was and then I took up position right in the middle. we worked into the bush. I stopped all of sudden when I heard the sound of horse.. It was them, they must be only fifty feet or so through that bush.. then it went quiet.. they were moving.... about thirty seconds later, I hear a shot, followed by a second, then a third... then nothing. It can from the direction of Dirk (Jr.) I worked by way over to Dirk (Sr.) then we walked down out of the brush. I could see off on the other side of the river bed about a mile off, two buffalo standing there and then one more larger buffalo in the middle of the river bed. He got it! Since I knew Dirk (Jr.) had limited rounds in his .375 H&H mag, I grabbed Dirk (Sr.)'s .300 WSM and jogged out to the scene. The Bull had passed by the time I arrived, completely drenched from crossing the river in a hurry, I congratulated Dirk (Jr.) and handed him a knife. It was nearly dark, and with no headlamps on us, the three of us had to make a walk to camp and get provisions before we could get to work on the massive animal. The day ended in the dark with about 19 miles on foot of which 2 was jogging.

Day three soon arrived and Me and Dirk (Jr) walked the mile to the downed bull in predawn hours with a backpack, diamond sharpener and seven or eight knives.. Today was to be a long one. We started the task of taking the hide, which was more than a little task with a hide nearly 2 inches thick in places. Dirk (Sr) arrived a couple hours into it and the three of us had the animal half skinned and had taken two quarters off in a few hours. Dirk (Jr) took the first load. We tied then entire hind quarter to a frame and Dirk (Sr) and me hoisted it up in on his son. I quarter was least a hundred lbs. Dirk (Jr) started to make his walk threw the river back to camp. There was no way to avoid getting wet. The river was at least mid-shin deep which put it high enough to swamp our feet with glacier water. Dirk (Sr) and me continued to work on the buffalo until Dirk (Jr) returned, I got loaded up with a quarter and started my trip while the two of them worked on the buffalo... Me and Dirk (Jr) kept switching off carry 80-100lb loads to camp with water logged boots until dark. When night fell all that was left at the downed sight was the hide and skull. I ate a quick dinner at the camp fire and had some coffee while drying out my boots... I crashed tired and sore from carrying the loads. The day ended quiety in the dark with about 8 miles on foot of which three had at least an 80lb load.

The morning came and we still had a lot of work to do. Dirk (Jr.) and myself went back down to the carcass to get the remainder of the bull. I loaded up with skull and the and the gear on my frame while he had his rifle and cape on his.. This was heavy and we still had the remainder of the hide which was about 100lbs folded up. There just was not way we could get this all in one trip. We left the rest of the hide and went back to camp. We were in a hurry because our pilot was scheduled to pick us up at ten am so we had to shuttle all the meat and camp over to the landing sight. We finished getting the gear over and ten minutes later the bush plane arrived. The Pilot was fasinated by the bull.. He mentioned that it was the largest he had ever seen and that we should get it check against the current record. Dirk (Sr.) and the meat was loaded onto the plane which left no extra weight for either our gear or Dirk (Jr) and myself. The Pilot would have come back.. we had at least an hour to get down to the carcass and get the hide now! we did just that. Dirk (Jr) and me got back to the landing sight and within fifteen minutes, the buzz of the plane could be heard and soon we were loading the truck with the spoils of a long weekend with about 31 miles on foot. I drove the 330miles back to Fairbanks with a nice big smile…

The Craft boys were excited to have their buffalo and thanked me for being the logistical planner and for pushing them to go. I am grateful to Dr. Craft for letting me plan and take part in that hunt and especially for paying my way (all I had to pay for was gas to drive down and back) and I’m fully aware that he spent thousands. He was even gracious enough to have the hide tanned and gave it to me along with several hundred pounds of the professionally processed buffalo meat.