It is that time of year again. The days are a bit shorter, crisp air in the morning and people are starting to think about where they want to set up camp and call for moose or in my case stalk some caribou in the A.N.W.R. off the Dalton Highway on the Ivishak River once again. I had a stiff learning curve running up the Sagavanirktok and Ivishak Rivers last fall with a couple near disastrous mishaps. I do believe I will blame those on inexperience with shallow water river running and having only bought the boat a mere week before attempting the hunt in 2010. Now that I've had a go around and a year to run the boat pretty hard in various rivers such as the Gulkana, Little Susitna, Chena, and the Yukon and Dall Rivers as well. Roughly two months ago, I had the boat shop do a good one over on the motor to get it in prime condition so I wouldn't end up stranded with some silly mechanical issue. I've managed to have a fairly busy week having gone up the Steese Highway Monday to cow moose hunt. Unfortunately all we found was a little black bear on the way back Wednesday afternoon.
http://connect.garmin.com/player/109164930 Cow Moose. Twelvemile Summit: 4-Wheelers.
I had twenty-four hours to get the gear cleaned up the re-orgainized for Thursday morning after getting back into town Wednesday afternoon. I was a bit pressed for time but come Thursday, I was ready.
At any rate, ready as I'm going to be, Ben and I loaded up the truck and headed north. The truck bed was full as could be since we had decided to bring enough fuel with us to do the entire trip without having to stop and gas up paying ridiculous prices for gas (It was 5.40 per gallon in Coldfoot). So we had borrowed a thirty gallon poly and used all our five gallon cans and filled my boats two-nine gallon cans and tossed them all in the pickup totalling 68 gallons plus another 20 gallons in the truck tank.
We left Fairbanks about 1:30pm on Thursday afternoon arriving at the boat launch on a small braid of the Sagavanirktok about 11:00pm just a few miles north of Pump Station Two. We spoke with a man who had been running the river the last few days and grabbed a bit of beta on who was up river, where a
nd if there there caribou and all sounded well. We dry launched the boat since there wasn't enough water to float my boat at the launch which seems to be a problem every year. I'm glad it is to because it keeps most boats out of there. This hunt is truly for the small man handling tunnel flat bottom jets and air boats. There is of course, the random few who decide
and covered 21.77 miles. If I had to do it again, it wouldn't take nearly as long. We had stopped several times to look at the GPS units and track out to the road to gauge the 5-mile minimum distance in addition to having to pull the boat of the rocks when we would get stuck. On the run up we spotted about ten caribou with a couple bulls in the group on the river just shy of the five mile marker. It was a welcomed sign as we continued up.
they can do it with their Predator or Extreme Shallow and pretty much destroy their 40K boats on the trip, but hey they made it... kind of... After launching and loading up the boat with most of the gear which included 28 gallons of gas we pitched a tent next to the truck and crashed out about 12:30. We were up and boiling a bit of water for coffee by 6:00 am on Friday and revving the motor up shortly thereafter. We started out strong but within a couple minutes we found ourselves pulling the boat off of some rocks in a shallow portion of the Sag. We rounded a couple more corners before getting stuck again. This continued for a while until we made enough ground up river to get out into the main channel. In all the huss and fuss of pulling the boat off the rocks and making ground up stream, we completely missed the Ivishak confluence and had to turn around and go back down stream and then up into the Ivishak. We made pretty quick work of the Rivers up to camp once we got out into the main channels. By the time we stopped and set up camp we had been on the river for two hours and forty minutes
http://connect.garmin.com/player/110109640 ----Run To Ivishak Caribou Camp.
Once at camp we hastily unloaded some gear from the boat, set up the tent and headed to higher ground to take a look. A half hour later we spotted our first caribou and began to head in its direction over a small knob on the tundra. When we reached the top of the knob we spotted about forty caribou about a mile out.
They were too far off at the moment so we decided to continue on after the lone caribou we had spotted in front of us that was just down the other side of the hill somewhere out of sight. Fifteen minutes later we lucked out because we completely abandoned the lone caribou and focused on the herd as they had decided to come our way. Within no time, they were a couple hundred yards out in front of us and we opened up with the rifles. We shot four cows and a bull. Having already planned on taking cows for meat and possibly a bull or two it worked out perfectly. However, now we had five animals to gut and cut up. It wasn't until 11:30pm that we had all five back at camp and we sat down to cook up some bacon and eggs. luckily we made it back because before dinner was even done cooking a thick fog rolled up the valley and visibility was down to fifty feet. I was exhausted and barely managed to finish dinner before curling up in the sleeping bag to crash for the day. I was glad to have found the bou on the first morning, it will save us a day on this trip. Always a satisfying hunt when you have five animals hanging in camp on the first night. Last year I had shot two bulls on the first morning... Saturday morning rolled around and we slept in. Partly because of exhaustion from having to haul all the meat in packs making numerous trips and partly because the fog had not dissipated. It wasn't until 9:30am that the fog had lifted enough to really get the day going. We decided that we had enough weight in the boat that we were more comfortable in making a shuttle of sorts to get it out instead of one heavy trip. We packed the boat with all our gear and a little more than half the meat and headed down stream to the confluence of the Ivishak and Sag. We stashed the meat in a shady spot and turned around and buzzed back up to camp to pick up the remaining meat. Once back at the confluence with the second load we sat down and ate a bit of lunch in the sun on the cut bank. This was the bulk of the trip back so we were a bit relieved to be at this point. Its always a little nerve racking while upstream because of the possibility of having mechanical issues and whatnot. I'm generally relieved when I've cut that distance back to the truck. In the process of having to do this meat shuttle we covered 40.51 miles by river.
They were too far off at the moment so we decided to continue on after the lone caribou we had spotted in front of us that was just down the other side of the hill somewhere out of sight. Fifteen minutes later we lucked out because we completely abandoned the lone caribou and focused on the herd as they had decided to come our way. Within no time, they were a couple hundred yards out in front of us and we opened up with the rifles. We shot four cows and a bull. Having already planned on taking cows for meat and possibly a bull or two it worked out perfectly. However, now we had five animals to gut and cut up. It wasn't until 11:30pm that we had all five back at camp and we sat down to cook up some bacon and eggs. luckily we made it back because before dinner was even done cooking a thick fog rolled up the valley and visibility was down to fifty feet. I was exhausted and barely managed to finish dinner before curling up in the sleeping bag to crash for the day. I was glad to have found the bou on the first morning, it will save us a day on this trip. Always a satisfying hunt when you have five animals hanging in camp on the first night. Last year I had shot two bulls on the first morning... Saturday morning rolled around and we slept in. Partly because of exhaustion from having to haul all the meat in packs making numerous trips and partly because the fog had not dissipated. It wasn't until 9:30am that the fog had lifted enough to really get the day going. We decided that we had enough weight in the boat that we were more comfortable in making a shuttle of sorts to get it out instead of one heavy trip. We packed the boat with all our gear and a little more than half the meat and headed down stream to the confluence of the Ivishak and Sag. We stashed the meat in a shady spot and turned around and buzzed back up to camp to pick up the remaining meat. Once back at the confluence with the second load we sat down and ate a bit of lunch in the sun on the cut bank. This was the bulk of the trip back so we were a bit relieved to be at this point. Its always a little nerve racking while upstream because of the possibility of having mechanical issues and whatnot. I'm generally relieved when I've cut that distance back to the truck. In the process of having to do this meat shuttle we covered 40.51 miles by river. http://connect.garmin.com/player/110109760 Shuttling Meat to Sag/Ivishak Confluence.
We loaded up the bulk of the meat once more and continued down the Sag to the braid that would lead us to the to the boat launch and made a meat stash again and returned to the confluence to pick up the remaining meat. Once back at the turn off to the braid we decided to just pack the boat with all the meat and make a run for the boat launch. We made it down having only to pull the boat off the rocks a couple times. This final leg of the return was 10.47 river miles.
http://connect.garmin.com/player/110109767 Meat Shuttle from Sag/Ivishak Confluence to Boat Launch.
Ben and I didn't hang around the launch very long, we loaded up the boat and truck and were on our way pretty quick. We did get visited by a trooper while we were loading up who questioned us about our tags, licenses, and meat retention. However, soon enough, we were pulling back out onto the Dalton Highway around 3:30pm. We stopped in Coldfoot to eat but we still had plenty of gas in the poly so we filled up a little further down the road at the Koyukuk crossing. We eventually made our way back into Fairbanks and got the meat set out in a cool basement for the remainder of the night and I crashed by 3:00am. I was up and about by 10:00 am Sunday and we were cutting up the meat and putting it into the freezer by lunch time. Another quick trip up north that went well. No complaints.
Pump Station #2 N 69 27'31.5" W 148 33'32.3"
Dalton Turn Off To Boat Launch N 69 34'04.3" W 148 37'06.8"
Boat Launch N 69 34'10.8" W 148 36'27.6"
Sag Braid Leading Down To Boat Launch From Main Channel N 69 31'59.1" W 148 32'49.6"
Ivishak/Sagavanirktok Confluence N 69 30'15.4" W 148 30'17.8"
Echooka/Ivishak Confluence N 69 25'01.4" W 148 16'24.1"
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