Blueberries!

Well it's quickly becoming the time of year where berries are everywhere. A friend and I decided to take full advantage of the blueberries and raspberries near the Chatinika River today for a couple hours and took home more than I was expected for a quick outing. Saw a moose calf, lost a pint of blood to mosquitos but it was a fun quick, tasty trip.

Moose Pee

So yeah, I was stalking a moose the other week early in the morning and got a little more than I bargained for... I'll admit, I felt like a voyeur after this.

Upper Paradise Lake and Russian River

Alright, last one from last summer... I'm going to attempt to stay up to date now... We hired a pilot to take us by Dehavilland from Moose Pass to Upper Paradise Lake near Seward for a long weekend where hiked, went fishing and generally relaxed. A neat place. Hiking is difficult due to the thick Alders and other undergrowth. We bushwhacked for two hours in the thicket until we got above tree line. After that, the hike was nice. Coming back down was another story as we found ourselves in salmon berries (tasted great)with steaming piles of bear crap. We didn't have much a choice except to keep on trudging down through the berries and alders until we got back to our boat and paddled back to the cabin. It was a nice little retreat up into the mountains. I'm sure I'll do something similar again. Afterwards we hit up the Russian River to see if we could find some Grizzly bears. It didn't disappoint!

McCarthy/Kennicott and Valdez

Well, here is yet another one that I'm behind on putting up... I'm about up to date I think with the bigger/more fun AK trips at least (aside from one more). Kennicott/McCarthy was on tap for this trip and a little Valdez Silver Salmon fishing to finish it off. A friend and I drove the Denali Highway from Anchorage to McCarthy and camped along the road. Spent the day hiking out at Root Glacier and exploring Kennicott. I've gone there several times now, I think I like it.. Maybe not the hippy pot smoking town of McCarthy, but Kennicott... The mine is just that, a mine. However, the area is awesome to go play around in and during the summer when all the tourists flock to Denali, the Wrangell St. Elias area is not only better than Denali, you don't have to fight the crowds. Its a well kept secret in the state during the summer months for sure.. Maybe it is just the 60 mile dirt road that keeps a lot of them out...

The stairwell glaicer there around the corner from the Kennicott Mine is the largest in the world and it doesn't dissapoint! Also one of the more amusing parts to walking on glaciers is the blue pools that are crystal clear. You can look probably a hundred feet down and still see no bottom. The hike to the actual mines is several hours long so most are content just walking to the glacier which is only about a half mile. I could spend weeks hiking up those valleys, high up into the mountains and glaciers... its a once a year area for me I think.

After hiking around, we hit the SIlver's off of Alison Point in Valdez. We hooked several nice Salmon right off the bat so that was fun. A foggy day in Valdez.. go figure!

Hitting The Snow

Yet another older trip, at least this one was from February of this year! A co-worker and I took off to the mountains near the Gulkana Glacier for a day of riding. It was a stunning day, crystal clear. We must have gone thirty or so miles up into the mountains, eventually leaving the other snow mobile tracks behind we found fresh powder waist deep. Couldn't beat the scenery and we played around the whole day going from one valley over the mountains to the next, burying ourselves in powder and sometimes getting some air going off of cornices on the down side. Super fun.

Minto Flats

Here is another catch up trip. A couple friends and I had flown from Fairbanks to Minto Flats for a weekend of pike fishing. Probably one of the most enjoyable fishing trips in a long time. The average pike we hooked was about 2 feet and we hooked into several that were much larger. Nearly one in three casts would have a pike on. I couldn't even tell you how many we hooked but, my arms were sore from reeling when we left! A little pricey to get there but, well worth it if the fishing is good! We stayed in a wall tent along a main channel and fished the heavy weeds for the big pike and then casted up and down the main channel as well but the pike there seemed to be the smaller ones. I was amazed at how many pike were in the water and even more curious to how many small critters actually manage to swim across the channel without being devoured. Those fish mangled every single thing we plopped into the water.

Dalton Highway

Here's a little catch up on a trip that happened last year but, I just never got around to getting some pictures up from it. I ended up driving the Dalton Highway on two occasions last year. Definitely a remote portion of the state with bugs so bad in the summer time that you just start humming the song of mosquitos after a while. A road where one definitely needs a couple extra spare tires and a good engine. 440 miles of dirt road and any sort of mechanical help is few and far between. As far as I'm concerned, it is top tier on the list of places I like to escape to in the AK. Few people and remote! I spent a total of 10 days up north, fishing and whatnot. I hunted Dall Sheep in 2004 up here as well. The caribou are seasonal visitors along the Dalton and are quite hit or miss but when they are there, they are there in the thousands. Sheep are plentiful but, the 5 miles corridor for rifles is pretty rough on foot but, we managed. An awesome road. Atigun pass is spectacular and the Lake Trout in Gailbraith Lake are hungry!